When you are looking to buy safety footwear for your job, you need to know what actually Safety shoes with impact resistance are.
What does it consist of? How is it regulated? What’s the difference between the various types of shoes and boots? In this case, learning something more about the technical expedients developed by manufacturers will be of great help.
In this article i will try to explain to you what impact resistance in safety footwear is. Let’s analyze it together.
Safety shoes with impact resistance
Safety footwear is an essential element in any regulated workplace. It assures safety and protection against impacts and crushes caused by heavy objects or vehicles. Is your safety footwear protecting you?
Choosing the most appropriate safety footwear for the specific needs you have in your job is essential to make sure you have adequate protection. But by choosing the right kind of footwear you are only halfway done. Before you can go on and purchase a product, you’ll need to analyze the various features of each article you could be interested in.
The rules require safety footwear to comply with certain standards, especially with ASTM F2413-11 (America) and CSA Z195-14 (Canada), which divides such shoes and boots according to their characteristics.
But buying and wearing the right type of safety footwear will not be enough. All workers should indeed know the level of protection of the equipment they are wearing (in this case, of course, the equipment is the footwear).
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Safety shoes with impact resistance up to 101.2 Joules (America) and 125 Joules (Canada)
Let us start with a short description of protective toecaps in general: protective toecaps must protect the wearer’s toes from impacts and compressions (I/75 and C/75 standards), but the choice between the different types should not only depend from the level of protection, but also from that of comfort, the type of job and the type of feet.
From here the materials and the design of the toecap can vary.
Protective toecaps can be made of several different materials, such as steel, aluminum, composite materials, glass or carbon fiber. If you want to learn about the different properties of each kind of protective toecap, go on reading this article about protective toecaps. The interesting thing is that you will understand which toecap is the one you need for your next pair of safety shoes or boots.
In compliance with the standard I/75 and C/75, all protective toecaps offer protection from impacts of up to 101.2 J in America and 125J in Canada.
Luckily, feet injuries caused by falling objects at the workplace are not too frequent nowadays. Consequently, most products of this type are used for the impact resistance and to protect the footwear from wear. Careful, though: accidents can always happen, and you must be protected!
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The key points of Safety shoes with impact resistance
Impact and squeeze tests are run, following the regulations, which specify exactly how such tests must be carried out. The bottom line is that both tests are designed to check, after an impact or a compression of the tip, how much room is left inside the toe area, and whether the toecap has suffered damage due to the applied forces. Why? Because what we are interested in is that your toes are protected even in the harshest conditions.
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Conclusions
When an article of safety footwear doesn’t meet the expectations, often it is because the product is not the correct one for a certain task, with all the resulting risks. Safety professionals can make sure that each employee wears the right shoes, making an assessment of the dangers they take in each activity, in order to determine what kind of protection is necessary for each one.
Now you know in general terms what is the impact resistance of safety shoes.
Once you have chosen the safety footwear with the right protective toecap and the right impact resistance, you will be more protected and comfortable at work.
I can assure you that if you choose the most appropriate safety shoes for your needs you’ll live a better working experience.
What do you think about impact resistance?
Do you have any points to add?
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