Personal Protective Equipment

The need for personal protective equipment depends mainly on the pesticide being handled. You may wear ordinary work clothes (long sleeve shirt and pants) while using pesticides of low toxicity (category III or lower toxicity levels), but it is a good idea to reserve one set of work clothes specifically for this purpose. More toxic chemicals (categories I and II) require coveralls worn over another layer of clothes, or chemical resistant protective suits. In the Worker Protection Standards (WPS) for agricultural pesticides, the EPA defines a material as chemical resistant if it shows no measurable movement of pesticide through the material during use.