MARBLEHEAD, Mass., Sept. 22, 2020 — The newly-formed Partnership for Electrical Safety is committed to ensuring that every American working on or near energized electrical equipment is provided with the appropriate arc-rated clothing and personal protective equipment. Electric arc flash is an electrical explosion that results in a fireball that can reach temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun. This fireball can ignite flammable clothing and seriously burn exposed skin, causing catastrophic or fatal injury.
Proper Arc-Rated clothing and personal protective equipment allows those whose jobs place them in a potentially hazardous situation to comfortably perform their essential work and return home safely at the end of the work day. Hundreds of thousands of Americans working on or near energized electrical equipment are not currently provided proper protection from a deadly hazard, despite OSHA standards that have been in place for more than 20 years. The Partnership for Electrical Safety has been formed to directly address this longstanding issue and are dedicated to improving the health and safety of unprotected electrical workers across the United States.
“The Partnership for Electrical Safety strongly believes that the PPE requirements of NFPA 70E: Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace provide the appropriate best practices to ensure worker safety and should be broadly adopted for substantially all live or potentially live electrical work in the United States,” said Scott Margolin, co-chairman of The Partnership for Electrical Safety.