Stakeholder Needs: Occupational workers such as firefighters, first responders, healthcare professionals, military personnel, industrial workers, and agricultural workers who perform their job tasks in hazardous environments often rely on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to protect themselves from occupational hazards that can result in workplace injuries and illnesses. Recently, the term PPE has become a critical need for the public due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, demand has directly led to a shortage of PPE for occupational health and safety across industries and created a gap in the research and innovation of -PPE to be used in various settings. The PPE systems people wear for protection offer both functional benefits and challenges. PPE makes working in hazardous environments possible yet can interfere with the ability of the worker to perform essential tasks. Therefore, research and development of materials and product designs for PPE and the development of consensus standards were critical to our nation's welfare, security, and ability to compete in a global economy.

Providing well-designed PPE for occupational workers and the general population who face challenging environments is necessary to increase job effectiveness and preserve the health and well-being of the wearers. The U.S. industries that manufacture protective materials, clothing, and equipment lead the world in innovation and production . World-class research and development are needed to maintain this position. However, COVID 19 highlighted our weaknesses in PPE manufacturing, including supply chain dependence on China and just-in-time logistics (a standard production method aimed at increasing efficiency and reducing manufacturing and distribution time). Additionally, the pandemic showed extreme inequities in the distribution of PPE in rural and BIPOC communities.

A critical component of inclusion and equality for underserved users such as women, the aging population, child workers, and a racially and ethnically diverse workforce is well-fitted PPE.  An unfortunate reality for underserved users working in fields previously exclusive to or dominated by young males, such as the military, emergency services, construction, and mining, is that the PPE has been designed for men [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].  Even for industries, such as healthcare, where women make up a more equitable proportion of the workforce, women often ask in regards to their respirators, gloves, and PPE: "Are these only made for men?" [6]. Women and underserved populations differ substantially while men in anthropometric body dimensions and shape can increase the prevalence of ill-fitting PPE, which has implications for health and safety and task performance, and career retention [2].

Importance of the Work: Currently, most occupations do not have user-specific PPE designed to improve function, fit, and comfort for females and other underserved populations.  The lack of options concerns, given that ill-fitting PPE is associated with decreased mobility, increased musculoskeletal pain, discomfort, and decreased ability to perform occupation-specific tasks [7,8,9]. In addition, research indicates that female, aging, and underserved workers are disproportionately disadvantaged by the fit of current PPE available, including by standard products such as respirators, protective gloves and boots, and body armor systems.

To highlight the diversity of the workforce in the United States, we offer some statistics: In 2021, 22 million workers will be employed by the U.S. healthcare industry. 75% of the healthcare workforce is women, and 40% are people of color [10, 11]. The firefighter population has seen a steady increase in female firefighters and officers, and as of 2020, some 11,000 women work as career firefighters, and 40,000 women volunteer or work in part-time and seasonal sectors. Additionally, the workforce is no longer middle aged.  Workers' ages 65 to 74 were projected to grow by 4.2 percent annually and the number of workers ages 75 and above by 6.7 percent annually [12]. The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Program estimates that there are between 400,000 to 500,000 child farm workers in the United States. These numbers how a significant need 

The development and dissemination of adequate PPE require analysis and research in various component areas, including anthropometrics, implementation of textile sensing technologies, and garment design and testing. Development, evaluation, and dissemination of PPE has been the focus of the NC-170 research group since 1982, and we have become nationally and internationally recognized for our leadership and contributions to state of the art in this area. To date, our focus has been on the development and testing of functional textiles and protective clothing systems, and other wearable products.  We aim to continue to innovate broadly in these areas.

Technical Feasibility of the Research: Our recent focus has been on PPE for pesticide operators, firefighter PPE, and material development, including wearable sensing. Our focused research on problems across hazardous occupations has shown that both similarities and dissimilarities exist in functional needs and issues of failure or lack of performance in PPE. Evaluation of PPE in one user context will often provide valuable insight, background, and expertise to other domains. Our approach will implement the systems perspective that has produced practical innovation in previous projects to consider the materials, human factors, design, and dissemination components identified above. The application of our approaches of anthropometric and ergonomic analysis, implementation of new technologies, and community-centric research and outreach will result in significant advances in garment-based PPE and protective gear for the feet, hands, and head.

Even as occupational conditions grow increasingly diverse and hazardous, new technologies offer the opportunity to impart increased functionality, wearability, and usability to PPE systems. For example, in materials science, new textiles, fibers, and finishing technologies can better meet workers' functional and comfort needs. In anthropometrics and ergonomic analysis, body scanning and motion capture technology can bring increased speed, accuracy, and insight into the development of design parameters, the design of new systems, and the evaluation of garments and related equipment. In garment design, smart materials and electronic components, and machine learning can impart novel functionality to PPE systems and allow the wearer's health and safety status and needs to be monitored continuously to inform system functions or oversight. Finally, in policy making and enforcement, developing standards (e.g., ASTM, ISO) for design, evaluation procedures, performance, and care of PPE can ensure harmonized requirements and ultimately increased safety across all units within an occupation.

Continued research into the development of methodologies to effectively and reliably measure functional properties of both materials and garment systems to inform standards that will ensure appropriate protection is provided by the PPE, as well as information on the use and care of these items to maintain their effectiveness, will result in systems with proven effectiveness. 

 Advantages of doing work as a multi-state effort: Our group is uniquely positioned to address problems associated with PPE from multidisciplinary approaches. We are comprised of members with a wide variety of areas of expertise and research backgrounds. The group currently represents 15 universities, including the University of Minnesota, University of Oregon, Washington State University, Kansas State University, Mississippi State University, Iowa State University, Cornell University, Oklahoma State University, University of Hawaii, University of California – Davis, Buffalo State College, Baylor College, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Washington University – St. Louis, Florida State University, and Mississippi State University. The NC170 group has an established record of collaborative accomplishment, both internally and with community/user groups and external research partners. As a result, we have accumulated an impressive array of cutting-edge research equipment and research facilities and have developed expertise in implementing new technologies to further state of the art in PPE.

Potential Impacts: The approaches we have developed leverage our collaborative skills and our technologies to address the design, development, and dissemination of PPE technologies in a process that looks at 1) barriers to acceptance and use of PPE, 2) design, development, and testing of PPE materials and technologies, 3) development of performance standards for PPE, and 4) development of novel textiles, materials, and functionality for PPE. We will identify new opportunities for research and development in PPE for firefighters, first responders, law enforcement officers, military personnel, pesticide operators, and healthcare workers through foundational and empirical research on under-investigated areas of the human body and its relationship with PPE. Our priority is to focus our research on underrepresented users of PPE to ensure their continued participation in the workforce and their safety. We will address these identified opportunities to assess and improve the protection and human factor performance of PPE through research and product development. Finally, we will communicate, standardize, and validate these findings by developing research-based performance guidelines for PPE.