3M Occupational Health and Environmental Safety is helping to make work environments safer and the use of personal protection equipment more effective by introducing RFID enabled respirators.
3M recently introduced a new state-of-the-art respirators equipped with RFID tags and software allow employers to monitor respirator inspections, cleaning, and maintenance in accordance with their respirator program.
This new Smart Safety Management System from 3M is the first of its kind in the safety market. Integrating patented Track and Trace RFID technology and software from 3M into select 3M respirators means that companies can, for the first time, monitor if employees are cleaning and maintaining safety equipment as required. The ability to track and analyze how employees maintain safety equipment can help make work environments safer, because it gives safety managers and industrial hygienists a tool to help enforce compliance with safety guidelines.
"Our goal is to make sure that our products can help provide a positive impact on the health of employees working in hazardous environments," says Julie Bushman, vice president and general manager for 3M's Occupational Health and Environmental Safety Division. "With those 3M respirators having RFID technology, companies have a new method to help ensure compliance with their respirator safety programs."
The new 3M personal protection system is customizable to meet any company's standards. Colden Corporation is utilizing 3M technology to make a positive impact on employee use and maintenance of respiratory devices.
"The RFID-enabled respirators, along with 3M's electronic recordkeeping system, saved us time and improved quality. The need for manual data transcription was eliminated, reducing error potential. Reports that used to take hours to produce manually each week were replaced by automatic reporting from 3M's system. We can now track more safety-related respirator maintenance activities, with better accuracy and in less time. We are very pleased with the features of this new 3M product and the results it brings," said Chris Wesley, certified industrial hygienist and principal, Colden Corporation.
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