A Model for Protective Clothing Effects on Performance

Abstract Personal protective clothing (PPC) enables people to work in hazardous environments, but PPC can have a detrimental effect on worker performance. Predicting garment effects on worker performance is difficult because quantitative relationships among garment properties and human responses are not known. Presents a systematic structure for studying the relationships among garment properties and their immediate effects on the worker. Using a survey of 118 studies, previous work was categorized according to garment parameters and dependent measures. Except for studies of heat stress, most of these studies compared competing garments or simply measured physiological response, rather than relating these effects to garment attributes. Such results are seldom transferable to other clothing systems or tasks. Proposes a conceptual model based on this systematic structure. Introduces garment impediment indices (GIIs) as response functions of garment attributes, and offers an approach for developing quantitative models of PPC effects on worker performance.