How clean is the air in your manufacturing facility?

Photo: Before and after proper ventilation of welding fumes.

Jim Reid, General Manager of RoboVent, recently penned an article for The Fabricator® titled "How clean is the air in your manufacturing facility? Understanding air quality and how to clean it up."

In the article, Jim discusses the sources and effects of indoor air quality problems at metalworking plants, the federal guidelines that facilities must abide by, and strategies for long-term management of their indoor air quality.

From the article:

Anyone who has been in a metalworking plant knows it can be a dirty place. Welding and other metalworking operations generate not just nuisance debris, but also dangerous pollutants that can pose serious health threats to workers. These pollutants include oil mist, dust, and fumes containing manganese, lead, hexavalent chromium, and other toxic elements.

Those health threats are the primary reason the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) monitors metalworking plants and, as the agency does with other industrial workplaces, regulates the quality of indoor air. Like all workplaces, plants must comply with OSHA's General Duty Clause, which states that each employer “shall furnish to each of his employees … a place of employment which [is] free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to … employees.”

Read the full article on TheFabricator.com.