What is Flame Resistant Clothing?

Many of today’s workers work in environments where fatal flash fires and arc flashes are prevalent. Unfortunately, the main source of fatal and serious burn injuries is typically a result of the igniting of an individual’s clothing. To reduce the severity of burn injuries from occurring involves the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). The type of PPE required in such environments is flame resistant clothing.

What do flame-resistant and flame retardant mean?

Before I proceed any further, we need to discuss the difference between flame-resistant and flame-retardant.
Flame-retardant is a term associated with a chemical that imparts the flame-resistance of a fabric. Chemical fire retardants were created to reduce the flammability of clothing fabrics and other materials making them resistant to heat and flames, especially for those people who work in environments where they encounter chemicals, intense heat or fire. Flame resistant clothing is fabric or garments that will self-extinguish when the source of ignition has been removed thereby significantly reducing the extent of injury.

What are the benefits of flame resistant clothing?

There are significant benefits to flame resistant clothing that it protects workers from flash fires and arc flashes that would typically ignite other fabrics. Another substantial benefit to flame resistant clothing is most garments are guaranteed to maintain their flame-resistant properties so long as they are washed according to manufacturer’s instructions. Typically, flame resistant properties will not wash out unless laundered with bleach. The best benefit of wearing flame-resistant clothing is that it has been proven to increase worker safety.

Flame resistant clothing can significantly reduce the chance of serious injury or death. This form of PPE is ideal for applications including firefighting, chemical, oil, gas, petrochemical, military, auto racing, and electrical industries. Get your flame resistant clothing and be safe.