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Hi, I'm currently working with a H&S Team and we seem to have come across an obstacle. The company activities involve huge quantities of dust. Although there are engineering controls in place to reduce it does not fully eliminate the risk. The Teams Risk assessment stipulates that all persons entering the area will wear positive flow air feed masks. The obstacle we are currently hitting is that is difficult for opertives to communicate between each other, and with yellow plant movements and occassions of poor visability, its vital that operatives are able to communciate. This is leading to operatives lifting their masks to talk to each other and when tryign to use radios Has anyone come across anything on the market to potentially overcome this issue?
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Yes, 3M make products with built-in communications to overcome just this. I haven't seen them in use though.
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 1 user thanked Kate for this useful post.
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Hi Kristal While I am sure that there are products that do what you are looking for my professional instinct is that they would have as their target market mainly people doing out of normal operations such as a firefigher foing into a burning building or the rescue team in a factory, construction site etc going to evacuate people from a confined space. With 40 years of experience across a multitude of sectors I can't remember a single occasion where it was considered appropriate to ROUTINELY put everyone into air-fed masks. You say that this is for protection against dust and in some sectors this would not be the solution as if it were then the chances are that some of the workforce would be killed or seriously injured long before they suffered from chronic respiratory diseases as the workplace would be liable to go bang e.g. in a flour mill or coal processing plant. The idea of lots of operators of fork lift trucks, ear moving equipment and other "yellow" plant all driving around in spacesuits sounds like something from a sci-fi movie! So, perhaps the first step should be to reevaluate your engineering controls. If the workplace is say a quarry, then are your water suppression systems sufficiently effective? If it's a factory is the e.g. LEV doing what it should?
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1 user thanked peter gotch for this useful post.
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Originally Posted by: Kristal.scotton@hotmail.co.uk  The Teams Risk assessment stipulates that all persons entering the area will wear positive flow air feed masks. The obstacle we are currently hitting is that is difficult for opertives to communicate between each other, and with yellow plant movements and occassions of poor visability
Plant movements and poor visibility - think the "team" may have overlooked the obvious in their rush to PPE.
Someone needs to take a holistic approach and avoid sticking plasters upon sticking plasters.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Originally Posted by: Kristal.scotton@hotmail.co.uk The Teams Risk assessment stipulates that all persons entering the area will wear positive flow air feed masks. The obstacle we are currently hitting is that is difficult for opertives to communicate between each other, and with yellow plant movements and occassions of poor visability
Plant movements and poor visibility - think the "team" may have overlooked the obvious in their rush to PPE.
Someone needs to take a holistic approach and avoid sticking plasters upon sticking plasters.
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Rank: New forum user
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Thank you very much Peter and Roundtuit
As you said you have no experience of this, so for your development there are multiple industries where people are required to routinely use air fed masks, when there is a residual risk despite controls being implemented, to name a few: aggregates, steel fabrication/ welding, paint spraying.
Yes, engineering controls are in place, yes LEV is in place, the hierarchy of controls has been considered, and there is continual investigation into alternatives methods to control the dust. However, there is a residual risk, of exposure to potentially harmful dust so the masks will need to be worn when in certain work areas. As you may be aware large quantities of anything will still be heavy so yes forklift truck and yellow plant are required in this area. - a ton of feathers still weighs a ton. Also, i should add that there are tight controls in place around the plant.
Despite this there are circumstances where visibility can be poor, and controls measures can fail including engineering ones. Even if this were not the case, Workers are people and are likely to try and talk to each other give each other instruction or just find out what each other had for breakfast. so just behaviourally wise they are likely to lift their mask to say or hear something clearer, it’s just normal behaviour.
Hence the request for a recommendation for something to aid with communication while using the masks. To reduce this one risk - although it is part of a much larger risk assessment.
Thank you Kate for pointing me in the right direction
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Rank: Super forum user
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the only point I would add to the good advice shared already.. is that if you are not routinely having hygiene monitoring of the employee dust exposure to better inform the engineering controls, then how do you know its right?...recently had a client who had a 'optioneering exercise' and reduced the LEV flow rate which gave them an energy saving (b**dy net zero again)which increased the residency time of the dust..back to the decisions made in isolation...
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1 user thanked stevedm for this useful post.
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