Shoes that put the personal in PPE
For many years, the focus of safety footwear manufacturers has been on protecting workers from external physical danger. Developers also want to address less visible health concerns such as plantar fasciitis now.
Safety has often seemed to be the number-one function of work shoes and, in using components such as thick soles and steel toe-caps, manufacturers and employers appear to have had in mind injury prevention from, say, heat, ice or falling objects. Health and safety go hand in hand, or foot in foot, though; health, as well as safety, is in the minds of developers of work footwear today. This is the same as saying that, as new materials and construction techniques become available and affordable, safety shoe manufacturers are becoming better at addressing injuries that may be less immediately obvious but that have, nevertheless, long been a cause of discomfort and pain for workers.
Take the strain
The key point is that many people, in a wide range of jobs, have to spend long periods of time on their feet. A common complaint resulting from this is plantar fasciitis, caused by straining the plantar fascia, the part of the foot that connects the heel bone to the metatarsals. What’s tricky is that the first piece of advice plantar fasciitis sufferers receive is often to cool their heels in order to heal their heels; in other words, to rest their feet by avoiding walking or standing up for prolonged periods. Yes, health is the new wealth, but the stark truth is that, in the face of precarious contracts and bills to pay, workers on factory production lines, for example, feel they are unable to afford the time off. This is not to say that the medical advice is anything less than sound: if they are able to rest, most people make a complete recovery from plantar fasciitis within a year.
There are alternatives. These range from taking over-the-counter pain-killers to having steroid injections in the painful part of the foot. The downside of the latter is that the injections themselves are also painful and post-injection pain can last for days. Further more, the symptoms frequently return within a month and, even though a patient would be able to have further injections every six weeks, this clearly constitutes short-term relief from the problem rather than a real solution.
Arch support
This leaves shoes as a way of helping people avoid plantar fasciitis in the first place or of easing the pain and discomfort if they develop the condition. Medical opinion backs this up; orthopaedic surgeons, podiatrists and physiotherapists are adamant that wearing shoes with good arch support and cushioned heels will help, as can specialist insoles or heel pads. Shoe manufacturers have admitted that safety shoes that offer too little support to the arch of the foot can be one of the factors that lead to people succumbing to the condition. By the same token, though, a shoe or boot with good arch support must be an ally in alleviating the symptoms of plantar fasciitis.
Band that binds
A major German safety footwear brand, Haix, has developed a system it calls Connexis specifically to address this. Integrated tape provides support in key parts of the shoe, helping keep the wearer’s foot in a natural position and reducing fatigue. A band to bind footwear and foot securely goes across the top of the vamp and runs under the inner sole. Lugs on the outer sole are angled to give pinpoint support in the places where it is needed most. Haix’s UK sales manager, Simon Ash, said in recent comments that what Connexis seeks to do is to integrate biomechanics and smart materials into the brand’s designs, specifically with the health and wellbeing of safety-shoe wearers in mind.
In Mr Ash’s view, the need to emphasise the second ‘P’ in PPE (‘protective’) has never been clearer than it has been during the covid-19 pandemic. But he goes on to say that “the next steps” in safety footwear will also need to give careful consideration to the first ‘P’ and make shoes and boots more ‘personal’. He believes this will mean looking closely at the health aspects of health and safety. He says that by working to make sure that this focus on wearers’ health falls into step with the focus on safety, manufacturers and designers can produce safety footwear that will meet the needs of workers in the years ahead.
Production line workers who have to stand for long periods of time in the course of their work can be susceptible to plantar fasciitis. Specially designed safety footwear can help prevent or alleviate the condition.
Credit: DuxX/Shutterstock
