Hazardous substances interact with chemical PPE in 3 ways - Penetration, Degradation and Permeation. A chemical PPE’s ability to protect is dependent on several variables. This is because chemicals have inherent properties which result in different interactions with different chemical PPE types. A piece of PPE which has poor performance against one chemical could have excellent performance against another.

In addition, there are various other factors such as chemical toxicity, hand and environmental temperature, as well as secondary mechanical hazards which can impact the duration which a PPE can be worn for.