Safety and Protection
Spats are still used today in certain industries for safety reasons. In foundries molten metal pourers often wear leather spats to keep splashes of molten metal from burning their feet. Even a small splash that lodges in a shoe or between the shoe and ankle could cause a severe burn. Many welders also wear leather spats for protection from sparks and metal splash. Some chainsaw operators wear protective leather spats, often combined with chainsaw boots to prevent injury from accidental chainsaw contact with the foot or ankle.
Spats are also used for extreme weather conditions and are usually made from Goretex materials (See Gaiters). The Argentine Army use brown leather spats laced over combat boots as ankle supports for parachute jumping.
Read more about this topic: Spats (footwear)
Famous quotes containing the words safety and, safety and/or protection:
“There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people’s safety and greatness.”
—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)
“Can we not teach children, even as we protect them from victimization, that for them to become victimizers constitutes the greatest peril of all, specifically the sacrifice—physical or psychological—of the well-being of other people? And that destroying the life or safety of other people, through teasing, bullying, hitting or otherwise, “putting them down,” is as destructive to themselves as to their victims.”
—Lewis P. Lipsitt (20th century)
“We all cry out that the world is corrupt,—and I fear too justly,—but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that it is our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)