NFPA 70E: Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace®
 

2015 Changes Summary for PPE Selection
 

The 2015 edition of NFPA 70E has been published and adopted as the most current edition of the NFPA 70E: Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace®. Most of the changes between the 2012 version and the 2015 are terminology changes. However there are a few changes which are important for wearers and safety managers, and for anyone involved in creating Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

First, the 2015 version of 70E makes a clearer distinction between the two methods that can be used to determine which PPE to wear. Wearers or safety personnel can either use the Incident Energy Analysis Method, which gives the calorie of clothing a person should wear in each activity; or the Arc Flash PPE Categories Method, which uses a look up table to give the PPE category that a person should wear in each activity. Secondly, the PPE activity tables have changed and now describe in detail what activities require what category. Using the PPE Categories Method requires that the person assessing the dangers must be doing exactly what the table describes. Finally, the 2015 version makes clear that even labels on cabinets should only have the results of one method, not both. Thus each piece of equipment that an employee would work on will either specify a calorie or a category, but not both. These changes suggest that companies will need to have more assessments performed on their equipment and will be able to rely on the Category look-up tables less.

Another major change in the 2015 edition of 70E is that category 0 has been eliminated. Category 0 did not require Arc Rated (AR) clothing, but mentioned other safety PPE that needed to be worn. Category 1 is now the first category and requires AR clothing with a minimum protection of 4 cal/cm2.

There are a great deal of terminology changes in the 2015 version of 70E, the most important one effecting how to choose the proper PPE is the change from “Hazard Risk Category (HRC)” to “PPE Category.” The categories still specify the same values as in the previous version: PPE Category 1 has a minimum arc rating of 4 cal/cm2, PPE Category 2 has a minimum arc rating of 8 cal/cm2, PPE Category 3 has a minimum arc rating of 25 cal/cm2 and PPE Category 4 has a minimum arc rating of 40 cal/cm2.

Many terminology changes include replacing many of the terms for “hazard” with “risk” in order to clarify how to determine if a danger is present. “Arc flash risk assessment” now replaces “arc flash hazard analysis.” Also, “electrical hazard risk assessment” now replaces “electrical hazard analysis.” And, “shock risk assessment” now replaces “shock hazard analysis.” And, “risk assessment” replaces “hazard identification and risk assessment.” Other notable terminology changes include the following: “Injury or damage to health” replaces “harm”, and “Likelihood” replaces “Probability.”

SOURCE : TENCATE E-NEWS