Good afternoon all

Just a quick question if anyone would be kind enough to help out.

If ply boards are being cut with a circular saw, for short duration, outside, with no vacuum extraction... would you consider RPE to be necessarry?

Originally Posted by: RichColl

Good afternoon all

Just a quick question if anyone would be kind enough to help out.

If ply boards are being cut with a circular saw, for short duration, outside, with no vacuum extraction... would you consider RPE to be necessarry?

You could do an in depth risk assessment, carefully monitoring the amount of dust being produced and then identifying the sort of wood that that particular plywood is made up of. Then looking at EH40 to working out what the exposure levels and comparing them to the long term and short term exposure limits OR you could say wood poses a known hazard and we don’t know of the actual levels of exposure but since this is only a short term thing let’s issue the guys with suitable RPE and leave it at that. (you will need to face fit and train them as well)

See attached HSE guidance  http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/wis30.pdf and http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/wis14.pdf

Many thanks for the responses