Currently, setting the obligation to use respiratory protective equipment with a level of protection of at least FFP2 in public transport and commercial and shopping centers are considered within the European Union. Many new products appeared on the European market within these specifications, and many symbols have been used. The paper deals with the meaning of selected respiratory protection based on respirators symbols and markings (which appeared massively, especially after the pandemic situation in the spring of 2020), these symbols not being uniformly understood and well communicated. We also mention and discuss some of the problems related to setting the conditions of public procurement, which affect respirators. Thus, this review is an “informative guide” in facilitating the understanding and use of full knowledge of the most appropriate respiratory protective devices in various situations.

The Czech Armed Forces' soldiers of all specializations and mainly the chemical corps'specialist are prepared for task fulfillment in military and non-military operations within those a real threat of weapons of mass destruction employment and, occasionally, the real danger of toxic industrial materials leakage is present. They can solve problems caused by acids leakage in contaminated areas mainly during task fulfillment in non-military operations on the Czech Republic territory in cooperation with Fire Rescue Brigades' chemical specialists. Individual protective equipment which is established in the Czech Armed Forces were neither design for this purpose and, moreover, nor tested and thus there is no real data concerning their chemical resistivity. In recent time, some methods have been introduced into the Czech Armed Forces environment. They are useful for determination of chemical resistivity of barrier materials against toxic compounds detectable with acid-basic (colorimetric) methods and conductometric ones. The paper deals with the possibility of using the presented methods and compares the suitability of their application in relation to the protective garments designated for the Czech Armed Forces members' body surface.

The influences of hypochlorite DM with oil ingredient and without it, which is introduced into the armament not only by the Czech Armed Forces Chemical Corps, but also by the chemical services specialists of the Czech Republic Fire Rescue Service, on a substrate consisting of a barrier material based on isobutylene-isoprene rubber (butyl rubber) were presented in this paper. Based on the repeated exposure of the substrate formed by the barrier layer material selected by this decontamination mixture and its subsequent rinsing, a change of the breakthrough time has been studied using the MIKROTEST method employing the chemical warfare agent of sulfur mustard and Congo red as a detecting agent.

Providing effective isolative protection of the Czech Armed Forces Chemical Corps’ specialist is long-term, developed and perspective problems. In current time established protective garments designated for hermetical body surface protection of the Czech Armed Forces Chemical Corps’ specialist are constructively solved with the employment of a mixture based on a butyl-rubber polymeric mixture both-sided coated on a polymeric fabric. Effective protection of a body surface has to be guaranteed for the whole time of usage of a protective garment, thus after performed repeated decontamination. The paper deals with influences of decontamination mixtures ODS-4 on the isolative protective foil used for production of anti-gas protective garment marked as OPCH-05 which is established as the garment for specialists’ body surface protection.

In our research, both theoretical and practical approaches to the assessment of permeability of barrier materials used to produce protective garments of an isolative type designed for body surface protection have been studied. The main goal of this paper is to study the thermal resistance for a barrier material of the ventilated anti-gas isolative garment OPCH-05 which is used in the conditions of the Czech Armed Forces for the Chemical Corps specialists� protection against the effects of toxic compounds. The thermal analysis of samples was performed using the differential scanning calorimetry, the surface structural changes were determined via the 3D optical profilometer and the gas permeation measurements were performed by means of the integral permeation method. Based on permeation results, the appropriate time limits and the temperatures of the exposure, during which the chemical protective garment could be securely used, were evaluated.