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- The PPE Directive 89/686/EEC – an overview
The PPE Directive 89/686/EEC – an overview
A good eighteen years ago, the European Economic Community established a standard set of regulations in regard to personal protection equipment.
Hence, eye protection products for use at work are today subject to the EU Directive 89/868/EEC (PPE Directive: Council Directive dated 21st December 1989 for harmonisation within the member states in regard to personal protective equipment).
As in the case of all European directives, the PPE Directive was also transformed into national law, in Germany in the form of the 8th Ordinance to the Appliances and Product Safety Act concerning the introduction onto the market of personal protective equipment - 8 GPSGV. The PPE Directive distinguishes between 3 different categories:
Category I comprises exclusively PPE for which the user himself is able to conduct a risk analysis, for example gardening gloves, protective gloves against mildly aggressive detergents and similar products, but also sun glasses for private use.
Category III includes complex protective equipment. In this category, there is a risk that the user may suffer serious, mostly irreversible damage to his health or that he is exposed to a deadly danger if the protective equipment fails. This includes all protective breathing equipment, diving gear, protective filters against toxic aerosol or radiotoxic gasses, protection against ionising radiation – and eye protection equipment designed for use at high temperatures with extreme IR radiation, whereby there is a risk of flames, electrical flashovers, interference arc or molten material splashing. Blast furnace workers, for example, should only use Category III eye protection equipment as a fundamental matter of principle.
Category II incorporates all other kinds of personal protection equipment. Generally speaking, it can be said that any kind of personal protection equipment, therefore also every kind of eye protection equipment, which is used at work belongs to at least Category II – and is therefore subject to compulsory testing. The PPE Directive merely demands that eye protection equipment must satisfy the safety requirements, but it does not make any statement as to which requirements shall be applied as the basis for testing. Instead, the PPE Directive determines that, as far as they exist, standards harmonised at European level shall be applied.
And even if the standards must never be given a legally binding role, norms are, after all, worked out by interested parties in the respective industry so that, through this regulation, they assume something like the character of a law. This shall also ensure that the accredited testing laboratories conduct comparable measurements.
The assessment and certification procedures, which are conducted by a body notified by the EU (Notified Body) must be seen as separate from this. This body then confirms that the EC Type Examination Test has been carried out and that the manufacturer and/or distributor shall be authorised to use the CE Mark for the marketing and distribution of the respective eye protection equipment in Europe.
