New workplace exposure limits

3M Gas & Flame Detec­tion is advis­ing busi­ness­es or pub­lic ser­vices that do not com­ply with updat­ed work­place / occu­pa­tion­al expo­sure lim­its to chem­i­cal agents, could poten­tial­ly face stern con­se­quences, includ­ing pros­e­cu­tion. August 2018 saw the dead­line pass for com­pli­ance with the revised EU Direc­tive 2017/164/EU. How­ev­er, for busi­ness­es that remain con­cerned, 3M Gas & Flame Detec­tion is offer­ing guid­ance to ensure the reg­u­la­tions are met.

Indica­tive occu­pa­tion­al expo­sure lim­it val­ues (IOELV) are health-based, non-bind­ing val­ues which are derived from recent sci­en­tif­ic data and take into account the avail­abil­i­ty of reli­able mea­sure­ment tech­niques. For any chem­i­cal agent with an IOELV set at EU lev­el, Mem­ber States are required to estab­lish a nation­al occu­pa­tion­al expo­sure lim­it. In the UK, for exam­ple, EH40 Work­place expo­sure lim­its from the Health and Safe­ty Exec­u­tive (HSE) have been updat­ed direct­ly in line with EU Direc­tive 2017/164/EU. In the lat­est revi­sion of EH40, which was intro­duced in August 2018, new lim­its have been intro­duced for 31 substances.

“The updat­ed reg­u­la­tions set out the lat­est IOELV lim­its. These have been estab­lished in rela­tion to a ref­er­ence peri­od of 8 hours and are referred to as long-term expo­sure lim­it val­ues. In addi­tion, for cer­tain chem­i­cal agents, short­er ref­er­ence peri­ods exist, typ­i­cal­ly 15 min­utes, and these are referred to as short-term expo­sure lim­it val­ues. In line with the ongo­ing desire to cre­ate safer work­places, IOELV lim­its have con­se­quent­ly been reduced in the updat­ed reg­u­la­tions. This means any busi­ness that believes it was work­ing safe­ly to pre­vi­ous lim­its, may now be exceed­ing them.”

Neil Gwin­nutt, UK & Ire­land Sales Man­ag­er, 3M Per­son­al Safe­ty Divi­sion — Portable Gas Detection

By way of exam­ple, con­sid­er car­bon monox­ide (CO), which is an extreme­ly com­mon by-prod­uct of many indus­tri­al process­es such as waste­water treat­ment, steel­mak­ing, forg­ing, chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion, and oil and gas extrac­tion. The 8‑hour expo­sure lim­it for CO has been reduced from 30ppm to 20ppm while the 15-minute expo­sure lim­it has been tight­ened from 200ppm to 100ppm.

Anoth­er com­mon gas, hydro­gen cyanide (HCN), which is found wide­ly in the plas­tics man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try, has seen a new 8‑hour expo­sure lim­it intro­duced at 0.9ppm while its 15-minute expo­sure lim­it has been reduced from 10ppm to 4.5ppm.

“New lim­its have also been intro­duced for nitro­gen diox­ide (NO2) and nitric oxide (NO), which are com­mon­place in the rail indus­try and gen­er­at­ed by diesel loco­mo­tives,” says Mr Gwin­nutt. “As a result, rail com­pa­nies need to ensure that engi­neers work­ing in main­te­nance depots or in tun­nels are not exposed to lev­els beyond those stated.”

The long-term effects on health result­ing from expo­sure to chem­i­cal agents are well doc­u­ment­ed. Employ­ers con­tra­ven­ing the new expo­sure lim­its could not only be risk­ing the health and safe­ty of their team, but find them­selves sub­ject to pros­e­cu­tion. To help avoid this sit­u­a­tion, any con­cerned employ­er is urged to con­tact 3M. The Appli­ca­tion Engi­neer­ing group offers com­plete end-to-end con­sult­ing, from design, through to equip­ment spec­i­fi­ca­tion, instal­la­tion rec­om­men­da­tions, main­te­nance and service.