Personal protective equipment (PPE) is critical for those dealing with toxic, infectious, and radioactive materials. An easily accessible guide for professionals and researchers in all PPE fields, this book takes a fresh look at how PPE is designed, selected, and used in today's emergency response environment where users may need to be protected against deliberately used chemical, biological, or radiological agents in terrorism or warfare scenarios as well as more traditional hazards. Covering the physics, chemistry, and physiology of these hazards, the book explains how PPE protects from various forms of hazards as well as how to use this information to select PPE against these highly hazardous substances for first responder or military users. The design of PPE and components plus relevant performance and evaluation standards are also discussed.

Protective clothing, Occupational safety, Clothing, Safety measures, Emergency services, Rescue, Breathing apparatus, Chemical hazards, Chemical-resistant materials, Biological hazards, Radiation protection, Radiation hazards, Decontamination, Classification systems, Performance, Test methods, Marking, Instructions for use

This text is intended to assist Chemical Health and Safety Professionals in preparing for their profession and for the appropriate Certification examinations to validate their training and expertise in the many different areas required to protect workers dealing with hazardous materials in the laboratory, semiworks or chemical production industries and in a research or university setting. This is also intended to be a useful reference to all of the areas that the Chemical Health and Safety Professional needs to protect the employees who rely on them to maintain a safe working environment. The topics covered include everything from chemical, biological and radiological hazards to the many different Federal, State and International Regulations that require specific actions wherever hazardous materials are present. This text covers everything from Risk Assessment to Personal Protective Equipment to Audits to the required documentation that the Chemical Health and Safety Professional is required to maintain.

"This guidance document provides local, State and Federal emergency response entities with comparison information on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration/Environmental Protection Agency (OSHA/EPA) Protection Levels A, B, and C to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) adopted Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) performance based standards for response to terrorism incidents involving Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) hazards."--NIOSHTIC-2.