HEALTH AND SAFETY
NO SIZE FITS ALL
In March 2020, researchers from Solent
University working in partnership with
the safety body CHIRP Maritime
and Nautilus International, launched a
questionnaire exploring seafarers’
experiences of personal protective
equipment (PPE). The study was
started after reading a report on
the dangers of poorly-fi tting PPE
produced by the Confi dential
Human Factors Incident Reporting
Programme (CHIRP). Over one
hundred seafarers completed the ques-tionnaire
and answered questions on issues
such as how they felt various items of PPE fi t
them personally, whether they had experienced
issues with PPE previously and how they had
been able (or not) to resolve these issues.
In this article we look at the key fi ndings from
a preliminary analysis of the questionnaire data.
48 SUOMEN MERENKULKU J FINLANDS SJÖFART
WHO TOOK PART IN THE QUESTIONNAIRE?
Unsurprisingly, given the geographical locations
of the three partner organisations, the
vast majority of participants in the
study were British (over 90%). The
participants were predominantly
male (83%), which is to be expect-ed
given the small number of
females in the industry.
Those who completed the
questionnaire ranged from seafar-ers
with little experience (under one
year) to one individual who stated they
had worked in the industry for nearly fi ve
decades.
Respondents came from across the many
different ship types and various sectors of the
industry. They included seafarers employed
onboard cruise vessels, ferries, tankers, contain-er
ships and offshore support vessels, amongst
Following an
appeal earlier
this year in the
Telegraph and
online, numer-ous
seafarers
took part in
Solent Univer-sity
research to
find out whether
poorly-fitting
personal pro-tective
equip-ment
is creating
hazards on-board
ship. Now
the results are
in and the initial
analysis is
proving very
interesting, as
DR HELEN
DEVEREUX
reports.
WHO
TOOK PART...
82% OFFICES
8%
RATINGS