Orlando — Forty-one rows of safety and health vendors stretch across the cavernous exhibit hall at the National Safety Congress & Expo, which opened here Monday morning. As always at the NSC, personal protective equipment (PPE) suppliers are found on every row. What’s become different in recent years is the entrance of sports equipment manufacturers into the industrial safety market.

One recent entrant manufactures chin straps for cycling helmets. The company is partnering with a high-end safety helmet manufacturer because, as one of its representatives says at the expo, the industrial safety market is comprised of many, many more end-users than the cycling business.

This safety helmet vendor calls its target end-users industrial athletes – a target audience that appeals to PPE companies coming over from the sportswear industry. High-end innovative industrial PPE is not your father’s or mother’s PPE. Baby boomer blue collar workers tended to be handed commodity PPE because the price was right for limited safety budgets. That generation is quickly riding into the sunset, and the next generation of younger workers is more likely to fit the industrial athlete mold. Next gen workers are more likely to engage in off the job exercising – such as cycling, hiking, gym workouts – and are more apt to take personal protection gear – as well as personal health -- more seriously than past generations.

PPE compliance has always been an issue for safety and health pros. Are you seeing a difference with the younger workforce?