Ventilation Archives - Extract All

Combustible Dust, An Unseen Explosive Threat

Triggers for workplace explosions fall into two categories: fumes and dust. While fumes can often be detected by smell, dust is much more insidious. Dust particles can hide in workshop and factory nooks and crannies and can ignite with only the smallest of sparks.

The Importance of Cleanrooms in Semiconductor Manufacturing

The only way to manage contamination is to control the total environment. Airflow and pressure, temperature and humidity, and specialized filtration all must be tightly monitored. While cleanrooms are planned and fabricated, in order to maintain quality, strict protocol and methods need to be enacted.

For Worker Health Foundries Need Clean Indoor Air Quality

Metal casting has been an essential necessity since iron was first discovered around 2000 BC. As individual and community need for metal parts grew, commercial manufacturing emerged. America’s first iron foundry was established near Lynn, Massachusetts in 1642

Indoor Air Quality and the Aerospace / Cadmium Relationship

Workers can inhale cadmium dust, fumes, or mists but cadmium can also settle on skin and contaminate food and clothing. Elimination, avoidance, or containment of this noxious substance is imperative as contact with cadmium can damage the body’s cardiovascular, renal, gastrointestinal, neurological, reproductive, and respiratory systems. Cadmium is a known carcinogen.

Workplace Indoor Air Quality and OSHA State Plans

Remedying poor workplace indoor air quality is more of a modern notion, one that did not become a driving force within the medical, environmental, and clean air policy communities until many years after pollution as a healthcare concern became a nationwide talking point.

Nail Care Workers: Leave Your Surgical Masks At Home

Hair and nail salon employees have long suffered the effects of VOC emissions in their places of work.

Working With Styrene

When most people hear the word “styrene”, they think first about the consumer scare in recent years of chemical leaching into our food and drink via plastic cups and containers. But the real threat – one that affects millions of people on a daily basis – is found at work, not in the kitchen

When a Rose is not Just a Rose: The Importance of Environmentally Clean Air

Environmentally clean air is important. A co-worker’s woodsy perfume, the lavender-infused washroom soap, and the lemon-scented floor cleaner may smell heavenly to some people but to persons with fragrance allergies or chemical sensitivities, such indoor odors can leave them feeling ill.

Surgical Lasers: Operating Room Smoking Guns

Hospitals and health centers across the United States have long been conscientious in maintaining sterile environments in their operating rooms and surgical centers. Generally speaking, the indoor air quality (IAQ) in medical and clinical establishments is as clean as it gets.