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HSE defines Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) as "all equipment (including clothing affording protection against the weather) which is intended to be worn or held by a person at work and which protects against one or more risks to their health or safety."

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All PPE required to protect a worker must be provided free of charge by employers.

The main requirement of the PPE at Work Regulations 1992 is that personal protective equipment is to be supplied and used at work wherever there are risks to health and safety that cannot be adequately controlled in other ways.

This means that, wherever possible, engineering controls, safe systems of work and a well designed workplace should be used to prevent risk and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) should be a "last resort" but often is not.

Ironically equipment which is provided for a worker's safety can sometimes be the cause of an accident or contribute to the degree of injury. It is the relatively low costs of PPE - ear protectors, gloves, protective suits - compared to infrastructural and constructed solutions means they are often used by parsimonious employers and introduction of PPE may introduce new hazards to workers:

• disposable latex gloves used by health workers are made from natural rubber and are a major cause of allergic contact dermatitis and other allergic conditions.
• PPE is often designed for male bodies and this may introduce serious hazards for women workers when ill-fitting protective garments lead to reduced effectiveness and overly large gloves put the wearer at risk of getting caught in machinery.

Provision of suitable equipment

Regulations require that PPE:

• is properly assessed before use to ensure it is suitable;
• is maintained and stored properly;
• is provided with instructions on how to use it safely; and
• is used correctly by employees.

PPE should be ‘CE’ marked and comply with the requirements of the Personal Protective Equipment Regulations 2002. Equipment should be appropriate for the job, fit the employee correctly, must be well maintained and training should be provided for its correct use.

Always take legal medical and legal advice if you suffer an injury at work. injurywatch.co.uk's free legal helpdesk is always a good place to start.

Your employer may be negligent if:

• PPE is not provided free of charge
• PPE does not meet legal standards (CE marked)
• use of PPE equipment is not enforced
• training is not provided in its use
• PPE is defective or not properly maintained
• PPE is inappropriate for the risks involved and the conditions at the place where exposure to the risk occurs. For example, eye protection designed for providing protection against agricultural pesticides will not offer adequate face protection for someone using an angle grinder to cut steel or stone.
• PPE does not prevent or adequately control the risks involved or increases the overall level of risk
• PPE is the wrong size or cannot be adjusted to fit the wearer correctly
• proper consideration has not been given to the state of health of those who will be wearing it
• if the needs of the job and the demands placed on the wearer are unreasonable. For example the length of time the PPE needs to be worn, the physical effort required to do the job and the requirements for visibility and communication.
• more than one item of PPE is being worn, and they are not compatible. For example, if respirator make it difficult to get eye protection to fit properly?

As always, gather the evidence:

• see a doctor -the effect of your injuries might be obvious in most cases, but injuries don't always show up straight away
• keep a dossier. Include a diary recording all the details of the incident, who you saw and all the expenses or losses you incurred, including receipts
• record the details of the incident. Record details of working conditions as this will help assess whether PPE was appropriate. If your injury results from faulty equipment, take photographs of it (with a ruler to show the scale and signed and dated on the back)
• gather personal details of all the people who witnessed the incident
• gather information (backed up by witness statements from others) as to how long the hazard had remained unrectified. It may be that a surface had not been mended or that clean-up of surfaces was insufficiently frequent.
• note and detail any measures (such as signage) which had been taken to diminish the risk
• note and detail any measures (such as provision of inappropriate PPE) which exacerbated the risk
• your legal team should be able to produce a detailed safety report which may indicate whether equipment was appropriate to the your working circumstances.