In the military they call it "mission creep." That's when a limited deployment, intended to protect an airfield, grows into a seven-year tropical expidition. Oops.
In our trade, we've been quite comfortable using simple, ordinary, dry leather gloves, simple tools, and cautious practices to make service connections. WHen inside a panel, a wrap of tape around a screwdriver was enough to keep us from letting the smoke out of components.
Various doctrines came about, mandating the use of safety glasses for every moment on site. Even hard hats became routine, more a fashion statement than anything else in most cases. When some cheap clothing was shown to make a minor event a major injury, we simply wanted to not wear such 'mother-in-law silk.'
But, hey, if 'some' s good, 'more' is better, right? Besides, WHO says your gear is appropriate? Everyone and his dog wanted a say ... we can't trust those ignorant trade types to make any decisions!
So we end up with NFPA70-E, which would have you wear a moon suit to change a light bulb. OK, maybe I exaggerate ... but the following statements are not exaggerations:
If there's the least POSSIBILITY of there being power present, you need to 'suit up' until you've PROVEN all power is locked out.
At a minimum level, that PPE includes a hard hat, safety glasses, face shield, fire resistant clothing, gloves and liners.
The "hard hat" needs to be an electrically rated one. Many places forbid the 'cowboy' style hats, even though they ARE rated. "Safety" is used to enforce an ignorant bias.
I'm not sure if an 'ordinary' face shield meets the minimum level, or if it needs to be one of the funky greenish 'arc flash rated' ones.
It's not enough that the clothing simply not be of the proven dangerous polyester type. No, they want it officially stamped as complying with some standard. The heavy welders' jackets -even leathers- lack the stamp, so are not recognized. This situation is improving as more stuff gets rated, but for now bureaucracy trumps common sense.
Ordinary gloves are out. Now not only need there be rubber liners, those liners need to be certified every six months by an independent testing place. It matters not that the gloves are brand new and set in the box for six months - where's the certifcate?
Notice that there's NO role in this for insulated tools. Whatever the tools are for, they're not insulated to protect you.
Nor is it enought to wrap the tools in tape. Our friends at Klein actually had the gall to sell 'high dielectric insulated' tools and at the same time insist that the insulation had NO voltage rating. When we finally accepted the German standard, we got the current version of 'insulated' tools ... but using those expensive tools does not lessen the required PPE one bit.
