Electricity Today T&D Magazine

The risk of injury, and even death, from electric shock is drastically reduced by taking a few simple steps with your rubber goods. Keep up with daily inspections and cleaning, use safe storage methods, and test your equipment regularly at an experienced, accredited testing lab.

Why Rubber Goods?

Rubber goods can include gloves, sleeves, boots, blankets, line hose, and more. These are key personal protective equipment (PPE) in preventing electrical current from entering your body and causing injury or death. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) require rubber goods to be worn when workers are within close proximity to...

When working in close proximity to exposed energized equipment or working on live electrical circuits, it’s necessary to protect not only the equipment being worked on but also the worker. Rubber insulating gloves and insulated hand tools are vital components of a successful PPE system and should be used in conjunction with each other to provide the maximum protection for the worker.
It’s common to perform a task on de-energized equipment which is locked out and tagged out while still being within the shock boundary and in close proximity to other live equipment. In this case, a worker could accidentally...