Buy Second Hand Body Armour At Your Peril

Would you buy a second hand parachute that you didn’t know the history of, strap it to your back, jump out of a plane and hope for the best? Us neither. But people who buy second hand body armour, which could be well past its shelf life, could have been tampered with, and could have been subjected to trauma in the past that may impede its future performance, are doing exactly that.

We would liken it to “ringer” cars, that have been in a crash and superficially repaired, but may not meet even minimum safety standards and may crumple in a crash when it really matters.

If you’re a local authority, university, part of the NHS, or a blue chip company, we would strongly recommend only buying Home Office certified body armour, manufactured in a UKAS ISO 9001 accredited factory. This is the minimum standard for adequately fulfilling your duty of care for employees that could be exposed to stab, spike or ballistic risks.

Well, we hope that’s food for thought – have a great Bank Holiday weekend, and do click back for more body armour blogs next week!