Meet Your OSHA and Clean-Air Compliance Requirements With Flexible Hazard-Containment Solutions
From aerospace manufacturing to metal fabrication, industrial processes and MRO produce a host of indoor air quality (IAQ) challenges. Grinding, CNC machining, and welding produce oil mist and dust that pose serious health hazards. Finishing and coating aircraft components and jet engines produce airborne hex chromates, isocyanates, and VOCs that are highly toxic and invite OSHA scrutiny. And granite and engineered stone (countertop) workers are at particularly high risk for exposure to airborne silica dust, identified as a significant health hazard by OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
Safely containing these airborne hazards is challenging for High-Mix Low-Volume (HMLV) workflows and assemblies that are continuously changing. Moving large workpieces into a permanent clean room for finishing and painting can help with IAQ compliance, but then workflow flexibility is limited. Fortunately, Duroair™ engineers flexible hazard-containment solutions that move with changing workflows and are tailored to a variety of manufacturing plant layouts.
In this blog, we’ll share examples of how Duroair’s portable clean-air enclosures and patented industrial air filtration technology work together to address IAQ threats, without sacrificing workflow flexibility. First, let’s clear the air a bit on your responsibilities under OSHA.
What OSHA Compliance Really Means for IAQ
If you’re an environmental health and safety (EHS) officer or you manage any industrial operation, you’re probably already aware that OSHA and other environmental agencies don’t officially regulate IAQ. However, while OSHA does not currently enforce IAQ standards, all employers, including manufacturers, are expected to identify and eliminate potential indoor air quality hazards that could lead to serious injury per the OSHAct.
While OSHA does offer guidelines for addressing common IAQ hazards (improperly operated heating, ventilation, and HVAC systems, etc.), OSHA does not offer a single test to identify poor indoor air quality. Ultimately, it’s up to the manufacturer to set their own standards for how they improve IAQ in manufacturing operations.
This is why Duroair engineers custom clean-air solutions to help eliminate IAQ threats to workplace safety and ensure compliance with key OSHA and environmental regulations surrounding fabrication and MRO.
Going Beyond OSHA to Contain Airborne Hazards
From rapid-deploy paint booths to retractable sanding and coating workstations to fixed, modular ISO clean rooms, Duroair clean-air solutions exceed OSHA standards while moving with each workflow to reduce workflow interruptions, save costs, and improve the bottom line.
This includes eliminating IAQ threats such as:
- Chrome VI compounds
- Gaseous substances, such as hexavalent chromium, phosgene, ozone, carbon monoxide/dioxide, nitrogen oxide, formaldehyde, and prussic acid
Below is a quick overview of how these solutions work. For an in-depth look at how some of these patented technologies mitigate airborne hazards, see our white paper, How a Retractable Clean Air System Meets Compliance Requirements.
Fixed IAQ Hazard Mitigation
Duroair created the modular DuroRoom™ Hardwall enclosure for the hazard containment you need to protect people and processes for large-capacity manufacturing and assemblies (spans up to and greater than 60 feet). Unlike prefab clean rooms, each DuroRoom Hardwall is completely reconfigurable without sacrificing the durability of a permanent enclosure.
Like our hardwall solution, DuroRoom softwall can accommodate spans up to 60 feet. Both the hardwall and the fixed, softwall DuroRoom solutions can meet ISO clean room requirements for isolating sensitive aircraft components from airborne dirt or particulates in the same facility.
Each DuroRoom Hardwall is combined with patented industrial filtration such as DuroPure™, DuroCap™, DuroDust™, or DuroClean™ to accommodate a wide variety of manufacturing operations and MRO tasks.
These applications include:
- Recirculating Filtration for Coatings: DuroPure’s six-stage filtration system captures all particulate and cleans the air of VOCs, isocyanates, and hexavalent chromium well below OSHA standards. Duroair provides a manometer to measure the filter load for the particulate filters and a VOC monitor to measure the air quality being exhausted from the DuroPure system.
- Recirculating Filtration for Dust and Weld Smoke: DuroDust’s four-stage filtration system filters fine particulate generated during sanding, grinding, and other surface preparation processes. The system captures all particulate to 1 micron and 95% of particulate to .4 micron. Also captures 100% of Hexavalent Chromium particles generated during surface prep, far exceeding NESHAP 319 requirements.
- Recirculating Filtration for ISO Clean Rooms: DuroClean uses recirculating positive pressure, temperature and humidity control, and HEPA filtration for meeting ISO clean room requirements. It can be designed with negative pressure (environmental isolation rooms), where hazardous processes are contained, and contaminated particulate and gases are captured and filtered. Both positive and negative pressure cleanrooms can use MERV 15, MERV 16, or HEPA-rated filters.
- Vented Filtration for Painting: The DuroCap vented solution consists of two or three stages of filtration. The standard two-stage system captures 99.4% of airborne particulate. An enhanced third stage can be added to meet the NESHAP 319 standard.
Portable, Retractable IAQ Hazard Mitigation
For hazard containment during on-the-move MRO, you may need a portable controlled environment for sudden changes in job schedules and materials. Fixed workstations are also not ideal if they need to be accessible by overhead cranes.
This is why Duroair engineered the DuroRoom softwall enclosure, which is available as a portable solution. It retracts to 20% of its extended length to accommodate overhead cranes and to save space when not in use. This softwall clean-air solution can meet your safety and industry-specific requirements for painting and coating, ISO clean rooms, isolation rooms, anterooms or gowning rooms, and non-destructive testing environments. It also minimizes overspray and improves drying times with Taper Draft Airflow Technology, which moves air through the enclosure in a cross-draft design.
Increase Efficiency While Meeting Compliance Initiatives
Cost is always a factor when it comes to investing in new clean-air technologies. However, clean-air solutions like the ones listed above can lower the total cost of ownership by removing production inefficiencies and reducing up-front capital expenditures through downstream improvements. All while meeting your OSHA, NFPA, and NESHAP compliance standards.
For example, controlled airflow technology can dramatically increase painting and coating efficiency. Duroair’s retractable spray booths use our patented Taper-Draft airflow technology to create an airflow envelope around the workpiece rather than directing air into or across the paint.
This increases throughput by accelerating drying, so each unit spends less time in the booth. The more controlled airflow also ensures more paint reaches the surface rather than being drawn away by turbulence. Consequently, overspray, rework, and paint consumption are reduced while quality improves.
Duroair technologies can also reduce material handling costs; a portable flexible, paint booth can reduce and even eliminate the need to move large workpieces into and out of dedicated areas. Large fabrications and assemblies often need paint or other coatings after welding. Locating a retractable booth off to one side in a fabrication shop avoids the need to move a workpiece into a dedicated facility. Instead, an enclosure is placed around the workpiece, creating an atmospherically-controlled work environment that adapts to the process and reduces material handling time, disruption, and risk.
Duroair Can Help You Meet Your OSHA and IAQ Responsibilities
Duroair clean-air systems are regularly deployed by EHS officers and facility production managers from the military, defense, and aviation and aerospace sectors. Why? These technologies meet and exceed IAQ challenges encountered when working on large, oversized components in a manufacturing and corrosion prevention environments. Duroair designs its equipment around the core belief that “Everyone deserves a clean and safe work environment.”
Our clean-air experts can engineer a customized solution for improving your facility’s indoor air quality to ensure you’re meeting your EHS compliance obligations while achieving bottom-line improvements.
Contact Duroair today for a free consultation with one of our clean air experts. Our team is available to work with your local regulatory body and discuss your facility’s unique indoor air quality requirements to ensure EHS compliance leads to bottom-line benefits.