Objective
The monitoring of working atmospheres is necessary, particularly in confined spaces, to gain a precise knowledge of the risks to the health of workers.
We felt that it would be useful to study the feasibility of monitoring the introduction of new potentially harmful products or the start-up of new workings using transportable multigas instruments on site. This method would be considerably less time-consuming than the conventional method of sampling and analysis.
Many gas sensors would be required to monitor workplace atmospheres properly, in view of the number of substances liable to give rise to accidents when present in high doses, or to occupational illnesses at lower doses.
For reasons of cost, it is generally not possible to monitor all noxious gases with selective static samplers nor to provide all exposed workers with portable selective instruments.
Nonetheless, it is necessary to maintain surveillance of these environments, particularly in enclosed spaces, i.e. to have a precise knowledge of the health hazards.
In order to achieve this, it is useful to conduct measurement campaigns to identify these risks when work begins in a new location or on a new product.
The most widely used method at present consists in taking samples of respirable atmospheres and subsequently analysing them in the laboratory to find what noxious products they contain. The reaction time is usually long and may give rise to immediate danger to the workers exposed in the meantime to unknown quantities of toxic products in the air they breathe.
Such toxic products include formaldehyde or hydrocyanic acid during the use of foams, oxides of nitrogen, sulphur and carbon during the use of diesel-powered plant, etc.
The purpose of this project is therefore to investigate the feasibility of in-situ measurement using transportable multigas instruments.
A toxic product quite often does not act in isolation but in combination with others. Synergic effects, of which little is yet known, could be studied in greater detail.
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60550 Verneuil-en-Halatte
France