干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Protective clothing, appropriate for usage in pesticide handling must meet certain technological qualities such as resistance to liquid splash penetration, tensile strength and dimensional stability, as well as thermophysiological requirements-permeability for vapour, in particular -, guaranteeing a comfortable wearing without leading to extensive perspiration or heat exhaustion in hot weather.

During a two-years-experiment, protective overalls made of GORE-TEX(R) Taslan have been worn during pesticide application, work in forestry and under extreme climatic conditions in deserts. They have successfully stood the test, except for some suggestions brought forward concerning improvements in the fitting of the overalls.

Laboratory permeability tests, carried out with GORE-TEX(R) fabric, which has been washed five times before the tests, showed clearly, that even after 24 hours exposure to a pesticide spray containing Pendimethalin as active ingredient, less then 0.2 % of the total amount of the applied Pendimethalin penetrated the GORE-TEX(R) material. In comparison, 70 % of the total amount of Pendimethalin penetrated within eight hours a kind of cotton-polyester-textile, which is frequently used for manufacturing common working clothes.