*Putting on MOPP Gear*

By Skid600

23 March 2003

Alright, the time has come for you to get into your MOPP Gear. BTW, MOPP is "Mission Oriented Protective Posture". The first step is to get your gear out. Your suit should be in a sealed bag inside a sealed bag. You want to make sure that there are no holes, cuts or tears on any of the packaging. If there are, you could have a chemical suit that won’t do anything but make you hot and sweaty. Inspect the packaging very carefully.

Once you have verified that the packaging is still good, you’re going to put it on. Now, you want to have your mask on already, but this was for training purposes so in the first couple of pictures I am not wearing my mask (the photographer wasn’t supposed to get that high up J ). The first step of putting on your MOPP Gear is the pants, self-explanatory… one leg at a time (unless you’re very coordinated).

Next you’re going to put on you’re jacket, again very self-explanatory. You just have to make sure you get the snaps in the back and the drawstring at the waist. These help to ensure that contaminants do not get inside the suit through the split around the waist.

Once you have the jacket snapped, zipped and tied, you move to putting on your rubber protective boots (if you don’t have the "official issue" protective boots, standard waterproof rain boots can be used for a limited time (as long as there are no leaks of any size in them). After you put the boots on, you need to zip down the bottom of the pant legs to make sure they are tight (it’s a heck of a time trying to get the boots on if you’ve already zipped these). And you also need to tie the straps around the bottom of the pant legs (similar to the ties on the bottom of the jacket).

Once you have the pants zipped and tied around the boots, it’s time to put on the gloves. The reason I wait until last to put on the gloves is so that I can move faster with the snaps, zippers and ties. Once you get the gloves on, you need to pull the sleeves of the jacket over top of them and tighten the Velcro straps.

Now that your gloves are on and the straps are tight, you need to reattach the straps on your hood under your arms and to the Velcro on the front of the hood. You need to remember to attach these because they help keep the hood from blowing up in a gust of wind. Also remember to zip the hood and tighten the drawstring on the hood if your mask has that type of hood. The older, one-piece hood/second skin have the zipper and drawstring while the newer model "Quick-Doff" hoods have elastic at about the same level that the drawstring is on the older hoods.

Now that you’ve done all this, you are as protected as MOPP Gear can make you. All that’s left is for the county police to drive by and wonder what the Heck you’re doing out there. Yup, he drove by twice VERY slowly while we were taking these pictures, too bad we didn’t get a picture of him staring, he never did stop either. But anyway, all that’s left now is to carry on with what you were doing, or depending on the situation, get the heck out of Dodge. Be Safe.

Skid600