Air Out Problems with Your Ventilation

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Jason Pratt via a Creative Commons license]Ventilation, and proper ventilation is very important in protecting worker safety health from silent killers like fumes, gases and excessive dust from various work sites and confined spaces. But it’s not just having a system in place; it’s about having the right system, and one that works the way it’s intended.

Ignorance is Bliss

Having proper ventilation on your worksite is very important, but you can’t just install any ol’ system.

What you don’t know can’t hurt you. This is true if you know a lot. You can’t be hurt by your ventilation system or the toxic gases or dust that you have if you know everything there is to know.

In other words, if you know everything, there is nothing left to hurt you. So make sure you do your homework, because there are plenty of customized ventilation systems out there that can be set up to help your workers work in a relatively clean environment and breathe clean air.

If you are not on the floor but you are the procurement officer for your company, make sure you hear from your floor supervisors and workers everything about the environment they work in – what chemicals and gases do they use or work around? Is there a lot of dust in the area (more than average)? What is the size of the ventilation currently available, and how much of these chemicals and gases get into the air (concentration level)?

Make sure you get some regular test samples of the air to find out the concentration level even with ventilation and make sure it is compliant with health and safety guidelines. If there is too much dust and/or toxic gases, it can cause health problems for your workers and could result in some lost time.

Hidden Dangers

There is another axiom that knowledge is power. The more you know about something, the more control and power you have over whatever situation arises.

It is important that you get as much information about your ventilation system and what it is working on in terms of dust, gases and chemical vapors. If you are getting a general ventilation system, then you will need to make sure you know everything about all the airspace in your facility – maybe there is one place that works with hydrochloric acid or chloroform, and another area where copier toner dust gets in the air.

A general ventilation system should cover the lest common denominators of your worksite, and then for areas that have special needs (like those areas with toxic chemical vapors or gases), you will need to find a good local ventilation system that is powerful enough to offset the concentration you measured before and keep the air compliant as much as possible.

And remember this other axiom: What you can’t see is the most dangerous. Even after you have picked out the right system for your floor, or your specific floor area, you still need to conduct regular air quality tests and pay attention to the possibility of air from antoeher area possibly contaminating another area where the ventilation system is n’t accounting for. If you are not paying close attention to the various concentrations, a level that gets too high can create problems.

Ventilation is not just about holes in walls, fans and places for air to escape.  There is a science to this, and regulations that need to be met to ensure that your workers are in a safe environment. Clean air is perhaps more vital than anything else in your worksite. Do your homework and make sure you live up to those axioms. Keep them in mind, and your workers will be safe and productive and your company will have a growing bottom line.