Clothing Definitions — definitions of garments and clothing terms from Apparel Search
An environmental suit is a suit designed specifically for a particular environment, usually one otherwise hostile to humans. An environment suit is typically a one-piece garment, and many types also feature a helmet or other covering for the head. Where the surrounding environment is especially dangerous, the suit is completely sealed. The first environmental suits were diving suits, designed to protect a diver from the surrounding water. Later developments protected the wearer from cold, in wetsuits and other ambient pressure suits, from undersea high pressure and decompression sickness, in atmospheric diving suits, and from contamination, in hazmat suits.
The first environmental suits were diving suits designed to protect a diver from the surrounding water (see timeline of underwater technology). Later developments were designed to protect the wearer from the cold (for example wetsuits and other ambient pressure suits) or from undersea high pressure and the resulting decompression sickness (for example atmospheric diving suits). Protecting the wearer from cold is also a feature of ski suits.
In aviation, pressure suits protect fighter pilots from hypoxia / altitude sickness, and g-suits from the adverse effects of acceleration (gravity-induced loss of consciousness, or G-LOC). The most extreme environmental suits are used by astronauts to protect them during ascent and while in the vacuum of space: space suits and space activity suits. Such suits are self-supporting, and include a supply of oxygen for the wearer.
Environmental suits are also used to protect the wearer from contamination (for example hazmat suits), or conversely to protect the environment from contamination by the wearer (see cleanroom suits). The concept of an environmental suit protecting someone from contamination is a feature of the boy in the bubble trope: both David Vetter and Ted DeVita at some point used such suits.
| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/extreme_environment_clothing ). Apparel Industry definition modified by Apparel Search 1/31/07 |
The environmental suit is the general category behind a shelf of specialised garments, and the special suits section of this glossary is its catalogue. The organising principle is the hazard. Water brings cold and pressure, answered by wetsuits, drysuits and atmospheric diving suits. Altitude brings thin air, answered by the pressure suit, and acceleration, answered by the g-suit. Contamination works in both directions: hazmat suits keep hazardous material off the wearer, cleanroom suits keep the wearer's shedding off the product. Vacuum combines every hazard at once, and the space suit answers all of them. Protecting the wearer from cold is also a feature of the ski suit, the most familiar environmental suit in ordinary life.
The concept is strong enough to have entered fiction and public memory beyond engineering: the boy in the bubble trope, drawn from David Vetter and Ted DeVita, who lived in sterile isolation, made the environmental suit a symbol of a person kept alive by a barrier against the world. In real engineering the barrier keeps improving in the same directions, lighter materials, better joints and seals, longer life support, but the definition does not change: a suit designed for a particular environment that would otherwise harm or kill the person inside it.
Any suit built for one specific hostile environment. The family includes diving suits for water, ski suits for cold, pressure suits against hypoxia at altitude, g-suits against acceleration, space suits and space activity suits for vacuum, hazmat suits against contamination, and cleanroom suits, which run the protection in reverse, shielding the environment from contamination by the wearer.
Because a gap is a failure point. A one-piece garment has no waist opening where water, cold air, chemicals or vacuum can reach the body, and where the environment is especially dangerous the suit is completely sealed, with its own supply of breathing gas or oxygen, as in a space suit, which is fully self-supporting.
The space suit. Suits worn during ascent and in the vacuum of space must supply oxygen, hold pressure against nothing, control temperature in extremes of sun and shadow, and protect against micrometeorites, all while letting the astronaut work. They are the endpoint of the line that begins with the diving suit.