Brian The following link may be of some use (I have no commercial interest in the company) http://aadver.net/legal-regulations.html HTH smitch

Thank you both BrianC

What a coincidence - I have been teaching lab safety all morning. Emergency showers will be used in the most extreme of circumstances, not for general hygiene purposes. Modesty should not be an issue. Indeed, in circumstances where contamination is severe it may be necessary to hold someone under the shower, and help them - remove contaminated clothing; physically supporting the individual; holding down the pull handle to keep water flowing; restraining the individual to prevent them from making things worse, even if all of this risks some contamination of yourself in the process. Obviously, that needs to be instantly risk assessed, since if the contaminant is so harmful you may have to stand back until other means of protection are available. This situation is common for serious acid or alkali splashes to the face, where reaching for a 1 litre eyewash bottle may be inadequate. It will help preserve the sight of a screaming victim who is holding hands to their face and running blindly around a lab to restrain them and forcibly push their head into a sink and hold them under a running tap for 5 or 10 minutes. Not nice, but later they may thank you for such decisive action. It hardly seems like a time to think about modesty.

Ian, I agree with you that modesty should not be an issue, but nevertheless, it was done! Fortunately, for us the retrofit was not overly expensive. One of the factors that is not coomon for older labs is that our labs have glass partitions from floor to ceiling that seperates the office areas, and the safety station (the safety station has handwash-basin, eye wash & safety shower, hand wash/care units, safety glasses) is situated in full sight of the office personnel via the glass partition.

Any emergency showers I have came across with curtains have been on internal areas where the contaminated water is retained within the enclosure to avoid any more contamination and they are close to the risk area, external showers for layout are generally in area`s with good visibilty for emergency response to the incident alarms can also be fitted to the base plate for faster response to any activations. Do you know what the plant will be processing as that could help a lot with layout of showers in relation to high risk areas. Perhaps a search through comah may help ?

Jay That's the type of shower I see regularly, though often with a great big diffuser on the top to give a wide deluge. They often have a system whereby the handle activates the flow but release of the handle doesn't immediately turn off the supply. It's just that this concept of requiring modesty screens hints at the use of the emergency shower for less critical and perhaps general hygiene purposes. Most emergency showers will have a longer or lower lever or chain pull, perhaps to ensure that it can be reached even if you are on your knees in agony? And surprisingly, never is their a raised shower tray - I guess it would need to be very wide and thus cause obstruction - and very rarely is there even a nearby drain. Perhaps because of retrofitting with limited expenditure, but a life is more important that damage to the floor. However, we should think about safely draining away contaminated wash water, and lastly about Legionella testing of the outlet which will be rarely used (hopefully) but regularly tested.

Or you could contain the contaminant and leave someone inside a cubicle, go inside to help them but contaminate yourself, or stand back, stay safe and leave them to it. Not an easy decision, and one nobody will wish to have to make.

** NB link removed from post #3 at request of website owner** Regards Nick Web Team