Toxic fumes: a risk for your health but also from a legal perspective

The first step to a healthy work environment is to be informed about the regulations concerning clean air at the workspace.

We have identified four categories with different legislations; welding & cutting fumes, oil mist, vehicle exhaust and vehicle exhaust in fire stations. But these legislations have one thing in common, a maximum allowable concentration.

Every country has its own laws and regulations, which means that the a maximum allowable concentrations can also differ per country. This is inconvenient for multinational companies, so they use a corporate limit value. The reason for doing this is to make sure that air quality is kept at the best possible level, making sure that production can follow the quality standards in every country where the company is active.

Exposure to welding fumes and vehicle exhaust emissions can cause serious health problems for your employees.

At Plymovent, we know what the danger of exposure to hazardous fumes can be. We continuously review safety management guidelines and listen to what the independent experts have to say.

Welding fumes

• IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) has recently categorized welding fume as a Group 1 carcinogen. This category is used when there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans

Vehicle exhaust extraction:

• The EPA has classified benzene as a Group A carcinogen.
• OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) in the USA has set a permissible exposure limit of 1 part of benzene per million parts of air (1 ppm) in the workplace during an 8-hour workday, 40-hour workweek.

Plymovent systems are designed to meet or exceed the standards of the most exacting health and safety codes –worldwide!