Innovative Technologies

For decades, 3M’s approach to safety innovation has involved you: the business owners, safety managers and/or workers out in the field.

What is the 3M Science of Safety?

Science of Safety Overview

Innovation involving you.

Some use the term loosely to create impact, but for us, it’s how we approach helping keep your workers both safe and comfortable. We know that the most groundbreaking occupational health and safety innovations are rarely developed in a “vacuum.” They require a collaborative effort.

That’s why, for decades, 3M’s approach to safety innovation has involved you: the business owners, safety managers and/or workers out in the field. We work with you to identify and understand the pain points—oftentimes literal ones—of your existing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Then we direct our global resources, our vast network of research specialists and our many core technologies towards creating a better solution.

When combined with our large footprint of labs and manufacturing sites worldwide, we are able to help produce product to help you solve specific health and safety challenges at a local or regional level—helping you keep your workers safe and comfortable while also staying compliant.

A history of advancing the science of safety.

Developing better safety solutions.

However, we know that ideas often come from a variety of sources, so we also have a strong outward focus to develop better safety solutions. On a large scale, this takes the form of our numerous corporate research organizations that identify trends in technological advancements that we may be able to integrate into 3M’s capabilities and products. We also partner with leading universities and external technology groups in an effort to support and advance a wide variety of technology platforms that we can translate into real-world solutions.

Ultimately, the greatest fuel that drives our innovation is our ability to find necessary as well as uncommon connections between our technology and the many hazards that workers face every day.

For example, over four decades ago in 1972, 3M had identified a need for a simple and effective respirator to help reduce workers’ exposure to certain airborne particles. We subsequently developed the first NIOSH-approved filtering facepiece respirator. This introduction not only launched an entirely new category of PPE, but it also served as a catalyst for more worker-inspired innovations in the decades to follow.

Take Action

Advancing the science of safety means exploring new opportunities to create solutions that help you keep your workers healthy and safe. Talk to a 3M technical specialist today to learn more about our latest PPE innovations and explore how they might help you on your critical mission to protect workers and keep them healthy and safe.