Thepersonal protective measures are required to provide protection against lifethreatening professional hazards. The safety and security forces personnel aresubjected to many types of hazards during performing duties and rescueoperations. These hazards include Fire, corrosive or toxic chemicals,biological warfare agents, bullets or shrapnel and nuclear radiation. In thelight of recent terrorist activities, it has become difficult to protectagainst them with one set of traditional protective system, viz. Fire Fightersuit or NBC suit or bulletproof suit. Many of the localized to site hazardslike Fire, Nuclear or chemical are now proliferated from their earlier definedterritories. This has increased the need of personal protection system toinclude simultaneous protection from multiple hazards.

Thepresent review will discuss salient features related to the multiple hazardprotection, viz. materials, operational ease and test standards. For example,one can anticipate nuclear hazard at nuclear power plant but a terrorist attackcan bring need of protection against fire, chemical agents, bullets and / or biologicalagents. Therefore, material selection for a personnel protection system isextremely important. When proper materials like fabric, films, composites andradio-opaque shields are selected, they should not interfere during operationand finally the quality of the system should be assured by specific teststandards.

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