American National Standard For High-Visibility Safety Apparel- ANSI/ISEA 107-1999 American National
Standard For High-Visibility Safety Apparel- Road construction, railway and utility workers; law enforcement and emergency response personnel; survey and airport ground crews and others are routinely exposed to the hazards of low visibility on the job. Now they can be assured of being seen, both day and night, if they wear apparel that conforms to a newly-published American National Standard from ISEA, The International Safety Equipment Association. Until the publication of this document, there was no uniform, authoritative guide for the design, performance specifications, and use of high visibility and reflective apparel including vests, jackets, bib/jumpsuit coveralls, trousers and harnesses. Garments that meet this standard can be worn 24 hours a day to provide users with a high level of conspicuity through the use of combined fluorescent and retroreflective materials. The standard specifies three conspicuity classes of garments based on wearer's activities: Class 3 garments provide the highest level of conspicuity where traffic exceeds 50 mph and are intended for workers who face serious hazards where weather, work or other factors impair visibility or often have high task loads that require attention away from their work. The standard recommends these garments for all roadway construction personnel, flaggers, and vehicle operators, utility workers, survey crews, emergency responders, railway workers, accident site investigators, and emergency response. Class 2 garments are intended for users during activities that need greater visibility in inclement weather conditions, or who perform tasks that divert their attention from appoaching traffic, whose work environments that have risks that exceed those for Class 1 and whose activities occur near roadways where traffic speeds exceed 25 mph but less than 50 mph. Workers who would wear this class of garment include railway workers, school crossing guards, high volume parking and toll gate personnel, delivery vehicle drivers, airport baggage handlers, ground crew, trash collection and recycling operations, ship cargo loading operations, forestry operations, roadway construction, utility, and emergency response and law enforcement personnel. Class 1 garments may be suitable for workers not directly in vehicle traffic paths and where vehicle speeds do not exceed 25 mph. Class 1 is suitable when workers' activities permit their full attention to approaching traffic. Parking service attendants, workers in warehouses with equipment traffic, shopping cart retrievers, sidewalk maintenance workers, and delivery vehicle drivers may wear this class of garment if above criteria are met. |