Innovation isn’t just transforming consumer products—it’s also driving major improvements in workplace safety. Today’s chemical storage facilities are benefiting from smarter, more effective safety equipment designed to reduce risk and improve compliance.

At Safety Storage, we have the pleasure of working with clients across the UK, all of whom are taking custom approaches to building the latest generation of safety equipment into their chemical risk management programmes.

In this post, we’ve outlined some of the most practical and innovative safety equipment for hazardous materials that we’ve seen in leading warehouses and manufacturing facilities around the country.

Latest Advancements in Safety Gear

Personal protective equipment has been on the move for around a decade: new entrants to the market have focused on virtually every area where PPE for chemicals has traditionally fallen short. PPE is now more comfortable with lightweight and breathable fabrics. It’s also better fitting and fits more body shapes.

It’s important not to underestimate the value of these new qualities. Both workers and safety professionals will tell you that when safety equipment is difficult to wear, it’s a new hazard at best and will be left on the shelf at worst. So, a pair of gloves built with technologies that allow them to be 30% thinner and just as effective is a serious leap for PPE all on its own.

PPE is also increasingly equipped with all kinds of continuously improving technologies. The same wearable technologies that you see in your day-to-day life are now being repurposed for high-hazard environments.

Recent examples include:

• Personal air monitoring: The concept of wearable exposure badges is nearly 100 years old, but these are becoming far more advanced with real-time data sharing and specialised with the ability to monitor the air and test for toxic vapours, like formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, ethylene oxide, and xylene.
• Smart textiles: Chemical protective clothing is now being enhanced with sensors woven into or stamped on the fabrics to alert the wearer to the presence of harmful chemical liquids or gases. Simply put, if exposed to a specific set of chemicals, the fabric changes colour. We’re seeing these textiles appear in jackets and gloves.
• Highly customisable fits and settings: PPE that fits is the safest PPE because it is PPE that is worn correctly. More and more manufacturers are supporting employers in digital measuring for PPE so that every worker gets the right size and can even have PPE moulded to their body, for maximum comfort. You can even scan a worker’s foot with an app and get them the perfect safety shoe.

Smarter PPE increases compliance and provides essential protection in the event of a spill or leak. However, new technologies are also available to help keep humans further away from these risks in industrial settings.

Innovations and adaptations in robotics can handle chemicals, pick and pack in storage, clean tanks, and support in carrying out inspections in industrial settings. Robotics can even tackle even finer processes like spectroscopy or sample preparation, and at pharma giant GSK, robots prepare samples for quality assurance.

These advances mean reduced risk by allowing the most dangerous or repetitive tasks to be closely monitored with technology, but at a safe distance for humans.

Spill Containment and Emergency Equipment

Advancements in PPE and other manufacturing technology offer real benefits, but they require investment and behaviour changes, which take time. Improvements in chemical spill containment, however, can offer simpler wins that are far easier to build into risk management plans and deploy.

Key updates to essential equipment include:

• Spill pallets: Sensors and remote monitoring allow spill pallets to do more than mitigate the impact of a spill. With integrated sensors, they can automatically alert your team if a spill occurs. You don’t need to replace your spill pallets to upgrade either: these products can be retrofitted into your existing set-up.
• Chemical spill kits: Chemical spill kits always contain absorbent pads designed to mop up spills, which still leaves risk to those cleaning the spill and further contamination risks. When dealing with high-hazard chemicals, new-generation spill kits go a step further with neutralising properties. Neutralising a chemical before clean-up reduces the risk of injury and further contamination.
• Fluorine-free foams: Aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) added additional risks for emergency personnel and all who encounter them, as PFAS are proven harmful to both human health and the environment. While not all AFFF were banned in the UK in 2025, it’s still worthwhile to begin a transition plan to fluorine-free foams.

How New Safety Tools Enhance Risk Management

Many of these new solutions offer real-time compliance tracking that brings together data from across your facility. The issue, as always, lies in integrating that disparate data so that you can take corrective actions in real-time and move towards a culture of continuous improvement.

The opportunities are many: you can identify hazards earlier, mitigate incidents, and have more robust incident or near-miss reporting data. All of these help support COSHH compliance.

However, a transition to a system like this requires more than an IoT-enabled spill tray: it requires process redesign, digital governance, and most importantly, a robust risk management programme that is already engineering out as many hazards as possible with strong chemical safety training.

Strong risk management programmes are still the foundation for safe workplaces and COSHH compliance. Chemical storage systems are a cornerstone of those programmes.

By working with Safety Storage, you benefit from our team’s extensive experience in building custom chemical solutions for every industry. To learn more, call, email, or request a quote from our team of experts. Click here to get in touch with our team of experts today.