Well if you have residual risk that you are unwilling (probably for cost purposes) to control, and employees who have never been tasked with wearing RPE appropriately before then be prepared for the flood of negligence, employment discrimination and constructed dismissal claims.

In some of the previous posts you would see there are comments that even someone arriving at the start of a shift "clean shaven" could have significant stubble growth within a few hours negating the protection issued.

And as to your last statement - we are not talking about upgrading DSE or safety specs from standard to designer frames where a contribution would be acceptable - we are talking the health of the individual which should be at NO CHARGE to the employee.

Originally Posted by: Oxford

We have a similar situation with guys working in confined spaces, so we have just supplied a forced air face mask that covers the entire face - because the air is force fed into the mask, it creates overpressure so no fumes etc can get into the mask.

The air pack/pump is battery powered and has a life of around 8 hours - it is worn on a belt around the waist

So the mask is supplied with air from the confined space....which doubtless contains contaminants (gases) that the filters will not remove?

And from experience with such units, the filters need changing fairly regularly...and they are not cheap...

I have been involved in this previously, where a company I worked for had around 40 field based employees who periodically had to cut concrete with a cut off saw (silica dust). Wet cutting was used, however the hazard still remained.

Due to this cutting only being required a few times per week, and the cost of 40 x air fed hooded respirators being very expensive, we decided on issuing each employee with a half face respirator and aranged fit testing for all employees. This obviously threw up the clean shaven issue, and to be honest we had a bit of a nightmare sorting this out!

Eventually, all new employees were made aware of the clean shaven requirement at interview stage, and reminded of it at induction stage. Existing employees had their contracts altered (with two months' notice if I remember correctly) and they were required to sign a copy of the company clean shaven policy. If an employee simply refused to be clean shaven, they signed a refusal form and were excluded from the work tasks which required respirators. They were also reminded of their duties under section 7 of HASAWA.

Where an employee had a beard for reasons such as religion, confidence, to hide scars etc. we provided an air fed respirator. We actually found that employees were finding the hoods uncomfortable, especially when working on a hot summer day - although this was rare!

It isn't an easy thing to impliment, however in our scenario it did work in the end following an initial period of resistance.

Hope this helps.

There seem to be some crossed wires here.

There are four ways of supplying air through respirators.

1.  The surrounding air can be drawn through a filter by the process of breathing.

2. The surrounding air can be pulled through a filter by a powered pump (positive pressure).

3.  The respirator can be attached to a hose which supplies air from an external source (air-fed).

4.  The respirator can be attached to an air cylinder which is worn on the user's back (breathing apparatus).

It sounds like we are talking about a positive pressure respirator here..  In that case the contaminated air is indeed being used; it is being filtered to (hopefully)  remove the contaminants. The air isn't provided from elsewhere and isn't clean to start with.   In the alternatives of air-fed repirators and breathing apparatus the contaminated air isn't used at all.  That is necessary in some cases such as when the contamination is very high or unknown, or when oxygen is depleted. 

So there is some merit in johnmurray's points.

We switched from full and half face masks for that very reason. People have to be cleanly shaven all the time and we found it was hard to police. Not only that you could end up discriminating on religious grounds regarding shaving, take in the fact people lose weight, gain weight and can sweat when working, it is difficult to get a proper seal on a full face mask.

We found the belt fed hoods with filters a much better solution, they are comfortable to wear and we use a wide range of filters from dust to vapour depending on the task. As stated they take the air from around you and feed it through the filters, similar to what a full face mask does. We have had no issues reported with contamination on the inside of the hood, the masks use have a neoprene seal around them to fit snuggly on the skin and dust should not pass the filters.

Another benefit of the full hood type inhalation protection is that this also covers the sensitive skin on the head. I have seen situations where half- or full-face masks have been worn where the airborn contamination included chemicals that could be absorbed into, and through, the skin with harmful effects. In many cases the hazard due to skin exposure had been recognised as chemical protective gloves were being worn. It was just that the airborn exposure had not been recognised. It is also worth noting that at least one study has shown that with some chemicals airborn exposure of the facial skin at well below the WEL has been capable of causing health effects.

And please do not rely on the sk notation in EH40. There are many chemicals that will not be included in EH40 that can penetrate the skin, particularly when in combination with other chemicals or where the skin is already damaged, even though this damage may still be sub-clinical.

Chris

Hopefully compressed-air and not oxygen!

I noted that filters are rated by how much of various sizes of particle they filter out...if 95%, then that leaves 5% getting through....

Fortunately for employers, by the time the employee is seriously affected he/she has usually moved-on...bearing in mind that 15%-30% of COPD cases are caused by workplace air pollution...