Respiratory Protection

1910.134(c)(3) requires employers to designate a person as the respiratory protection “program administrator” and to ensure that this person is qualified to perform the responsibilities of this position. The person can be qualified either by appropriate training or experience or both. The administrator is also the person responsible for evaluating the program, as stated in…...

Does your safety program have any safe work practices or does your Process Safety Management system have procedures with this requirement? It seems to be the fairly commonplace to require personnel to “have PPE available” for some critical tasks that can turn into an IDLH environment rather quickly. For those not familiar with this “practice”,…...

  NIOSH issues certificates of approval for specific and complete respirator assemblies. The approval is granted after the respirator has been evaluated and found to be in compliance with all of the requirements of the NIOSH regulations in Title 42, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 84.The requirements include the presence of a viable quality assurance…...

The short answer is YES.  This can be a hotly contested debate as there are both paid and volunteer departments that believe they are somehow exempt from basic safety programs.  In the state of Ohio (OH) professional firefighters are NOT covered by OSHA since OH is a federal OSHA plan; and volunteers do not fall…...

This week OSHA announced they issued a WILLFUL citation in the amount of $49,500 to a project general contractor of a power plant construction project.  The citation was for allowing a worker to wear a tight-fitting respirator over facial hair while the worker removed lead-containing paint. Facial hair can encumber a respirator from being properly sealed,…...

The guidance in this fact sheet will help respiratory protection program administrators, managers, and powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) wearers understand the importance of a PAPR’s battery in assuring effective respiratory protection. The respiratory protection program administrator should assure that PAPR manufacturer recommendations for battery storage, care, usage, and disposal are addressed. However, an understanding of…...

Question:  Can an employer use “mouthpiece respirators” as escape respirators when working in/around chlorine?  OSHA’s answer may surprise you!  These types of ESCAPE ONLY respirators are widely used still today.  Although I am not a big fan of these respirators, they can be used safely and play a critical role in emergency situations.  OSHA makes…...

In the last several weeks I have been writing about respirators and how they should be managed when NOT in use.  In this article, I will be discussing respirators when we use them in emergency conditions or potentially emergency conditions. In my world of process safety management, I see a lot of misguided logic in…...

OSHA’s “official” definition is… Fit factor: A quantitative estimate of the fit of a particular respirator to a specific individual and typically estimates the ratio of the concentration of a substance in ambient air to its concentration inside the respirator when worn…. Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready...

Recently, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) received numerous reports of issues concerning SCBA respirators suspected of not meeting the necessary NIOSH performance requirements. We have observed that SCBA problems often can be attributed to a lack of, or improperly performed, preventative maintenance. Correct inspection, maintenance, and service procedures are all vital…...

Earlier this year, I wrote an article titled “What type of respirator do I need?” in which I explained how respirator users and administrators can use data to determine the proper type of respiratory protection that would be needed.  But this article was written under the assumption that the user/administrator had the most essential piece…...