In 2019, OSHA published a respiratory protection guide for Roofing Contractors, but since I do not work in the construction field I did not pay much attention to it. But today I found some never published guidance from OSHA regarding how an employer can establish a “change-out schedule”. I may have missed this in all the other OSHA/NIOSH documents regarding respirators or my memory may not be what it used to be, but this was new to me and I found it interesting; so I thought you may find it helpful as well. I ALWAYS use computer software to establish my “change-out schedules” and I ALWAYS print the report and make it an Appendix to the written program, but these suggestions were interesting and may explain how some of the schedules are calculated in the software.
For example… did you know that Humidity will reduce the service life of a cartridge by a considerable margin%?
Here is what OSHA said…