Respiratory Protection

Nationwide, approximately 1.3 million workplaces provide at least a portion of their employees with respiratory protection. One of the most common types of respiratory protection is the filtering facepiece respirator (FFR), which is designed to be discarded when it becomes unsuitable for further use due to considerations of hygiene, excessive resistance, or physical damage. However,…...

On February 3, 2017, at approximately 5:57 p.m. an employee was working in the crawl space of Tower B to unclog food sink drains underneath the facility’s kitchen. Workers were working in a confined space in Mechanical Room Number 5. They were tasked to unclog four food drains, which were located 50 to 60 feet…...

Escape respirators have a SINGLE function: to allow a person working in a normally safe environment sufficient time to escape from suddenly occurring respiratory hazards. Given this function, selection does not rely on assigned protection factors.  Instead, these respirators are selected based on: a consideration of the time needed to escape, and the likelihood of IDLH or oxygen…...

Employers may provide ESCAPE-ONLY respirators to those whose ONLY action is to leave the area immediately and take NO part in the response. Escape-only respirators MUST be NIOSH-approved and appropriate for the potential airborne concentration and class of substances specified in the employer’s hazard determination (1910.134(d)). Emergency escape-only respirators must be inspected BEFORE being carried…...

A fairly common mistake we see at facilities that have their own emergency response teams is that the responders are NOT receiving a fitness-for-duty evaluation and only receiving the same medical evaluation as those who wear respirators in non-emergency settings.  This is a problem, as OSHA has stated that emergency responders need more than the…...

Over the past several years we have seen an increase in the use of mobile test units for respiratory medical clearances and fit testing.  Most safety professionals have seen these type of mobile units.  When done correctly, these mobile units can save a lot of time and thus save the employer a lot of money;…...

One of the sad trends we continue to see in OSH centers around the use of respirators and facial hair.  OSHA has stated more times that I can count on two hands that facial hair is NOT allowed in the face-to-mask seal area.  In fact, personnel are NOT even permitted to be fit-tested if they have…...

This week I was more than surprised to learn that not everyone uses the most up-to-date NIOSH IDLH values when deciding on their respiratory protection needs. This was brought to my attention after a SAFTENG member contacted me about my 2012 article “What type of respirator do I need?”. This safety professional had downloaded a…...

Back in March 2016, the Incident Alerts reported an incident at a refinery where workers were overcome while wearing air-line respirators.  The facility, media, and OSHA were silent on details, but now OSHA has posted their accident summary: At approximately 8:45 a.m. on March 2, 2016, Employee #1 and Employee #2 were removing bolts from a…...

For those of us that are parents, we know the game of “keeping asking mom and dad in the hopes they’ll change their minds” and sometimes I think our profession acts like teenagers and OSHA has to play the role of “mom and dad”.  Case in point, this OSHA LOI which was posted @ OSHA’s…...