Safety equipment and PPE

Safety equipment and PPE

What we stock

Gloves and hand protection

Nitrile, latex, vinyl, cut-resistant, coated-palm and general work gloves. See the comparison below.

Eye and hearing protection

Safety glasses, goggles, face shields, foam plugs and earmuffs.

High-visibility clothing

Hi-vis safety vests and outerwear for yards, loading docks and roadside work.

Respiratory protection

Disposable respirators and dust masks.

First aid

First aid kits and refills for workplace kits.

Head and foot protection

Hard hats and safety footwear.

Site and facility marking

Safety cones, caution tape, floor marking tape, reflective tape and safety signage for warehouses, shops and job sites.

What Manitoba requires of employers

Under Manitoba’s Workplace Safety and Health legislation, the employer is responsible for making sure workers have the protective equipment the job requires, that they are trained in how to use and care for it, and that it actually gets worn. Three things follow from that.

• PPE is the last line of defence, not the first. The hierarchy of controls puts eliminating the hazard first, then engineering it out, then administrative controls such as procedures and rotation, and only then PPE. A workplace relying on gloves and glasses to manage a hazard that could have been designed out is doing it in the wrong order. We sell PPE and we will still tell you this, because an inspector will.
• Certification is not optional. Protective equipment used in a Manitoba workplace needs to carry CSA, NIOSH or ANSI certification as applicable to the type. Uncertified equipment that looks the part does not meet the requirement.
• Prescription glasses are not safety glasses. This one catches people out constantly. Ordinary prescription eyewear does not count as eye protection unless it is CSA-approved safety eyewear. The options are over-the-glasses safety goggles, or prescription safety glasses made to the standard.

We are suppliers, not safety consultants, and your workplace safety program sets what you actually need. What we can do is make sure what you buy is certified and that it fits the people wearing it.

Specifying the common categories

• Eye protection. Safety glasses cover impact from the front; wraparound or goggles are needed where there is dust, splash or impact from the side. Anti-fog coating matters more than people expect in a Manitoba winter, where staff move between cold and warm repeatedly — fogged lenses get pushed up onto foreheads, which protects nobody.
• Hearing protection. Rated by Noise Reduction Rating. Higher is not automatically better: over-protection makes it hard to hear warnings and conversation, which creates its own hazard and means the plugs come out. Match the rating to the measured noise level rather than buying the highest number.
• High-visibility clothing. Graded by class, with the right class depending on traffic speed and how much of the body needs to be visible. Yard and warehouse work and roadside work are not the same requirement. Winter adds a wrinkle: hi-vis worn under a parka protects nobody, so outerwear needs to be hi-vis itself.
• Respiratory protection. Disposable dust masks handle nuisance dust. Anything beyond that — vapours, fumes, fine particulate — needs a rated respirator and, properly, a fit test. If you are not sure which side of that line a task sits on, that is a safety assessment question before it is a purchasing one.
• Hand protection. The summary table is under choosing gloves below, and the material comparison is covered in full in our glove guide.

Choosing gloves

Buying one glove for the whole building is how you end up with the wrong glove in the one place it counted.