Innocentive (https://www.innocentive.com/) is a crowdsourcing platform for industry solutions. Public and private agencies list “challenges” on the site, and offer cash awards for innovative solutions to tricky problems.
Recently a (unnamed) clothing manufacturer launched a challenge to pose a ‘problem’ and high-level solutions relating to the clothing and textile industry. I chose the health and safety issues from day-to-day emergency services uniforms.
The more I researched the topic, the more risks I came across from uniforms themselves (i.e. uniforms, rather than issues relating to PPE or tactical gear). I would love to revisit this at some stage, as there is precious little research and no common standards or best practice guidelines about the dangers of uniforms to emergency services workers.
Feel free to download and use this reference. I would appreciate if you could attribute the reference to me if so (and let me know). Also, please get in touch if you would like to collaborate further on this topic.
Abstract
Uniforms are worn by emergency services workers, worldwide, for a large portion of their day and in strenuous, hazardous conditions. These people work, sleep, commute and spend time at home in uniform.
There are some international guidelines and standards for certain types of uniforms. However, these only target specific health and safety problems. It is complex, confusing and repetitive for designers and procurement teams to address the numerous, and serious, health risks from the wrong uniforms.
There are millions of people who wear uniforms for much of their day (e.g. around 1 million police in the US alone). Emergency services uniforms are a multi-billion-dollar industry that is closely connected with the health and wellbeing market. The majority of new designs and technologies around these uniforms have an explicit focus on the health and wellbeing problems identified in the Solution. However, there is currently little industry best practice in this area and commercial products usually only focus on a narrow range of solutions.
Most of the problems identified in the Solution relate to medium or long-term health issues, and can range from discomfort (e.g. rash, skin infections) to serious health dangers that pose a risk to life (chemicals, contaminants, infection). Other problems have real health impacts but are difficult to quantify – e.g. restrictive or inappropriate uniforms interfering with hazardous work, risk of vehicle accident because of lack of visibility, risk of attack by members of the public (perception of police militarisation, and mis-identification of emergency service workers as law enforcement).
Other consequences are – regularly – union issues, public reputation, high court cases, public fines and costly processes to change or replace uniforms.
Many of the problems are also relevant for other multi-billion-dollar uniform markets – e.g. school uniforms, workwear, government, service or prison uniforms.Solution Conclusion
Although the Challenge asked for a focus on the problem, three high-level solutions are suggested:
– Establish a global industry charter, voluntary standard or similar – focused on the intersection and commonalities between the various health and safety problems for different emergency services.
– Establish a Center of Excellence (e.g. online) to define and lead the conversation about industry best practice – research, education, innovation, promotion.
– Develop new apparel/materials/textiles and market them as addressing a range of the problems noted in the Solution.
Simpson Consulting 