Human Factors Analysis of Consumer Personal Protective Equipment

Despite the movement of workers away from hard labor and into office environments work injuries continue to be a problem for many businesses. Human factors engineering (HFE) is the study of the impact of workplace design, and workplace environment, on people and includes those issues that have an impact on the body’s structure and functioning. The goal of HFE is to assure the personal health, wellness and safety of people in their workplace, while enhancing their productivity. There is still a need to implement test procedures, which define task requirements in terms of psychomotor ability and physiological capacity rather than the limited measures of aerobic power or muscular strength. in part one of paper we examines the current practices used to develop job task requirements in the traditionally maledominated occupations of firefighter, police officer and armed forces personnel and the role of task analysis. A case study of a local firefighting unit is presented in the context of task analysis. There is a variety of fire/emergency escape devices, commonly called “smoke hoods” or “smoke masks,” marketed to assist consumers in safe egress from fire emergencies. In part two we describe these products as respiratory protective emergency escape devices (RPEDs). Five RPEDs are selected for evaluation on the basis of availability (all available online) and price (covering a range of prices). We conduct a human factors analysis of these RPEDS. Then we present the results of the staff analysis, which included an evaluation of fit, filter-related factors, Behavioral factors, instructions, warnings, and general usability, and a donning test.

Keywords:

Human Factors Engineering , Firefighting , Task analysis , Protective equipment