However, there are a handful of substances (Table I) that specifically require that air sampling be performed. Although the most practical way of making this determination is to perform air sampling, sampling is not mandated for the vast majority of the substances that OSHA regulates. Instead, it simply requires that employee exposures to the regulated chemicals remain below the PEL. Although OSHA has airborne limits for these substances, the agency does not specifically require that air sampling be performed to evaluate employee exposures to most of these substances. The OSHA standards list permissible exposure limits (PELs) for about 600 chemicals, such as acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, toluene and ethyl alcohol, that are commonly found in the industrial environment. Perhaps the best example of this is the periodic routine sampling required by OSHA's substance-specific health standards such as lead, methylene chloride and cadmium. Some sampling, however, can be adequately performed by a trained technician.
#Breathing zone concentration professional
I tried to demystify industrial hygiene sampling process in a logical step-by-step manner, while demonstrating typical industrial hygiene sampling equipment and providing a caveat that air sampling that required a lot of professional judgments should be left to the CIHs. Still others thought that they would incur the wrath of industrial hygienists if they encroached on their sacred turf. Others were bewildered by the seemingly endless array of gadgets and gizmos that industrial hygienists used to perform their magic and felt that they lacked the requisite skills to use such arcane hardware. Some participants seemed to view industrial hygiene as wizardry practiced by magicians who did mystical things to test workplace air. Discussions with participants in these courses revealed that many otherwise (apparently) competent safety practitioners were intimidated by the very thought of doing any type of industrial hygiene air sampling other than perhaps evaluating a confined space prior to entry. The difference in the transient and continuous effects of the manikin movement on the STBM's exposure shows the importance of considering these effects separately in different scenarios.You don't have to be a certified industrial hygienist to do personal air sampling." That's what I've told hundreds of participants in introductory industrial hygiene courses I have taught since 1994. This finding may be explained by the fuller mix of indoor air and nanoparticles caused by manikin movement, as well as the increase of nanoparticle suspension time. On the other hand, the exposure of the STBM increased 2.88 (☑.24) % when there was a continuously moving manikin compared with the stable state in a 10-min observation.
This finding reflected the fact that the transient inhalation (over several seconds) of the STBM may be reduced by manikin movement. The average concentration in the STBM's breathing zone during influence periods was 5.18 (☐.99) % less than that during non-influence Periods (NP). The results showed that when a manikin moved (at 1 m/s) past the STBM, the nanoparticle concentration in the STBM's breathing zone decreased and reached its lowest after the standing manikin had passed, decreasing 37.6 (±5.7) % compared with the peak value. The transient fluctuation of the nanoparticle concentration was recorded continuously and analyzed. In this study, a set of full-scale experiments was conducted to sample the nanoparticle concentration in the breathing zone of a sitting thermal breathing manikin (STBM). Particle concentration in a sitting person's breathing zone can be influenced by human movement around the person, and the transient and continuous effects may differ.