Certification is only part of the story when it comes to flame-resistant (FR) clothing. Ensuring true protection requires understanding how your PPE performs in real-life scenarios- particularly if you’re working in high-risk industries like petrochemicals, where both flame and chemical protection are essential.
This article highlights the critical differences in performance between FR SMS coveralls and Pyrolon, demonstrating why Pyrolon offers superior protection in flash-fire scenarios.
Why Certification Alone Doesnt Guarantee Safety
In a previous blog, we covered the importance of understanding standards like EN 11612 and NFPA 2112. While certification can indicate compliance, it doesn’t always guarantee protection for your specific application. Details within these standards matter, from test requirements to performance classifications, and misinterpretations can lead to false assumptions about PPE safety. Certification isn’t always straightforward – many products claim compliance, but counterfeit certifications are common outside of Europe, where certification isn’t legally enforced.
To verify full certification, look for the official CE mark with a 4-digit number from the notified body on the label. A proper certification ensures your PPE has been audited and meets all regulatory requirements.
However, even apparent proper certification does not necessarily indicate that a product fully meets a standard. This becomes evident in the case of Secondary FR Clothing.
Understanding Secondary FR Workwear Certification
In many applications especially in the petrochemical industry – protection is needed from both flash fires and chemical splashes. While standard chemical protective clothing should not be worn over primary FR garments. These garments are constructed with flammable polymers and in flash fire will ignite and burn, melt, and adhere to the primary FR garment beneath it. It will continue to burn long after the flash fire is over, severely compromising FR protection. This has been proved using thermal mannequin testing – as outlined in our blog here.
Certified secondary FR clothing must pass EN 14116, which mandates flame-resistance levels classified as Index 1, 2, or 3. In North America, NFPA 2113 recommends that any PPE worn over primary FR clothing must be self-extinguishing, though it doesn’t specify test requirements.
Secondary FR clothing generally falls into two categories:
- Specially Engineered Self-Extinguishing Fabrics- like Pyrolon, which is designed to be worn safely over FR clothing.
- FR-Treated SMS Fabric – Standard SMS (spunbond-meltblown-spunbond) material with an applied FR treatment.
While both can claim to be certified to EN 14116, the performance of each in real-life flash fires is vastly different.
Certification and Performance of FR SMS Garments.
Despite its “FR” label, FR SMS coveralls typically perform poorly in flash-fire scenarios for two reasons:
- Not Fully Meeting All Standard Requirements: Some notified Bodies allow manufacturers to skip certain parts of standards yet still achieve certification. While this should be indicated in PPE user instructions, many users miss this detail, likely because few read instructions comprehensively. The EN 14116 standard, updated in 2015, now requires testing of fabric, seams, and zippers to meet self-extinguishing requirements at Index 1. Reviews of three major FR SMS brands show that only the fabric is tested and approved—not the seams or zippers—meaning these garments often don’t fully meet EN 14116. Users should be aware of these limitations.
- Thermal Testing Results on Body Burn Performance: Thermal mannequin tests of FR SMS garments indicate a performance level little different from standard, non-FR-treated SMS options. Lakeland has commissioned thermal mannequin testing of different disposable garments worn over primary FR workwear in a flash-fire simulation, in each case indicating predicted body burn to allow comparison of performance. Tests were conducted on both FR-treated and non-FR-treated versions of a common brand of SMS coverall, along with another standard type of widely used disposable coverall, flashspun polyethylene. The predicted body burn results from the tests are shown below.
In other words, the FR-treated SMS coverall showed almost no difference in performance from the non-FR treated version. In fact, in the case of the FR-treated version, whilst total body burn was marginally less, the incidence of the deeper 2nd degree burn was higher!
The probable reason for this is that SMS – whether FR treated or not – relies heavily on a tendency to shrink from a flame quickly, thus sometimes avoiding ignition. This might allow it to pass the minimum performance level in the EN 14116 flammability test, but in a flash-fire event, it makes very little difference to performance.
The conclusion can only be that FR SMS garments, despite being more expensive than their non-FR counterparts, offer almost no improvement in performance. So why pay extra?
Pyrolon Is The Solution
Lakeland’s Pyrolon line of secondary FR garments is designed for chemical protection and enhanced FR performance. Pyrolon meets all EN 14116 requirements for the latest version and has shown substantial improvements in thermal mannequin tests, demonstrating lower predicted body burn than FR SMS coveralls. The image below shows how Pyrolon XT and Plus 2 outperform both treated and untreated SMS options.
While FR SMS garments may cost less, they offer little to no improvement over non-FR alternatives. Pyrolon, on the other hand, provides real, tested protection that justifies its investment.
Ready to experience the Pyrolon difference? Request a Pyrolon sample or contact a Lakeland sales expert to explore your options and enhance workplace safe
