Respirator

The respirator is a great product which saves our lungs from various types of toxic vapours and dust.  Although not the most aesthetically pleasing product, the main purpose of its design is to protect our lungs whilst sitting comfortably on our face. The materials, form and colour scheme are not designed with aesthetics at the forefront of the decisions, rather the ergonomics have been the major consideration. The location of the filters and valves are largely determined by the need to create a certain weight distribution to make the mask sit comfortably, and flush with your face whilst trying not to reduce your field of vision. Even though there can be major improvements made to their appearance, the basic and purely ergonomic design is not out of place in workshops where most products share this attribute.

When first wearing a respirator the weight is the worst aspect of it, but after you get over that fact you forget you are even wearing it. When wearing the respirator by itself it works great, but the problems come when you are doing work which requires both a respirator and eye protection.  The tip of the respirator sits between your eyes making eye protection very awkward to wear. If using normal safety glasses they can't rest on your nose, but must sit up on the respirator. This makes the glasses sit at a further distance from your face which is both awkward and reduces their effectiveness of stopping flying pieces getting into your eyes. I have also tried wearing safety goggles which are styled like skiing goggles; these do not sit flush with your face but move around propped up by the tip of the respirator.

This problem has become more problematic in recent weeks when I have been wearing the respirator more than usual. This problem can be annoyingly be worked around, but wearing the protection of a respirator reduces the effectiveness of another piece of safety gear, the safety glasses. It may just be the respirator that I use which has this problem, but a simple modification of the design to make the seal sit further down from the bridge of your nose would solve this problem.

Jarrod Burge