Enhanced Visibility – A New Uniform Safety Option

If an employee works in a street or highway right-of-way and is exposed to traffic or construction equipment, they must wear a highly visible upper-body garment to comply with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, and similar regulations in other countries.* Emergency responders and law-enforcement officers also must wear high-visibility apparel after an emergency has passed, and they’re doing traffic control, cleanup, investigations or similar tasks.

High-visibility apparel usually isn’t required for workers such as parking lot attendants and warehouse staff who don’t have street or highway exposure. However, wearing the garment makes them more visible. Employers should assess their employees’ risk of exposure and decide if additional protection is needed.

Many commercial laundry operators offer high-visibility garments to clients that are required to have their employees wear these garments by law due to the nature of their jobs. As noted, the requirements for high-visibility garments are laid out by several standards such as the ANSI/ISEA 107-2010 which sets the performance criteria for high-visibility apparel.

Often the use of high-visibiility clothing is cost-prohibitive. That's why high-visibility clothing isn’t used in settings where it would be beneficial, but isn’t required. This includes workplaces such as indoor manufacturing, garbage dumps, or other scenarios involving large machinery or and workers.This is where an enhanced-\visibility garment would increase employee safety.  

Enhanced visibility is designed to give employees additional distinguishability that may not be required by law, but would nonetheless enhance workplace safety.

In an effort to develop some certainty and continuity and to more clearly define what an enhanced-visibility garment design could look like, TRSA created enhanced-visibility industry guidelines to help companies specify uniforms that provide additional visibility for employees needing clothing in workplaces where high-visibility PPE isn’t mandatory, but where enhanced visibility would be advantageous.

These enhanced-visibility industry guidelines will provide direction on how to improve both daytime and nighttime visibility of employees by describing clothing in terms of color and suggested placement of retroreflective striping (material that reflects and returns a relatively high proportion of light in a direction close to the direction from which it came). The guidelines will be issued shortly.

Clothing providing enhanced visibility gives employees additional conspicuity that the law may not require, but would nonetheless enhance worker safety. Workplace environments that require employees to work around low-speed heavy equipment in low light or among obstructions are well-suited for clothing that provides an extra measure of visibility for employees. Some good examples include factory floors, manufacturing facilities, landfills and mines.

Garments described as providing enhanced visibility generally provide some measure of daytime visibility (perhaps by being fluorescent in color) and/or nighttime visibility (through the use of retroreflective striping) but at levels below those required by ANSI/ISEA 107-2010. Enhanced-visibility garments work best if their high-visibility materials conform to ANSI/ISEA 107 photometric requirements.

Enhanced visibility clothing is NOT a substitute for compliant high-visibility clothing which is required in areas where workers are exposed to roadway hazards, as mandated by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), Federal Highway Administration, 2009. For circumstances where high-visibility workwear is required, U.S. launderers should refer to the MUTCD and ANSI/ISEA 107-2010 for applicable high-visibility standard requirements. Operations in other countries should refer to local or national regulatory mandates.

TRSA, with input from its Enhanced Visibility Task Force has developed a set of enhanced-visibility industry guidelines to help companies provide enhanced-visibility uniform clothing for places where high visibility isn’t required, but would be beneficial. These enhanced-visibility industry guidelines provide performance requirements for conspicuous materials for use in enhanced-visibility items. They also specify the minimum amounts of materials, colors and placement of materials for garments used to enhance the visibility and safety of employees.

TRSA’s industry guidelines on enhanced visibility will help identify what employees can wear to help safeguard them in situations where enhanced visibility is appropriate. Employers should weigh a number of factors when evaluating clothing for characteristics that would enhance the visibility of a worker effectively in their work environment. These elements include the color of background material, the placement of retroreflective trim, as well as the care and maintenance requirements of the garment, depending on the types and levels of soiling encountered.

* The U.S. requirements for high-visibility garments are available in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), Federal Highway Administration and the American National Standard for High-Visibility Safety Apparel and Headwear ANSI/ISEA 107-2010 for applicable high-visibility standards.