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Posted By Fraser Dalziel
I work for a medium sized printing company which uses oil based inks and cleaning solvents on a regular basis. We have never monitored air quality formally. Is there a standard for the quality of air that can be followed or have we only the general requirements of HASAWA and the Management regs to follow?
So, at a minimum, all we would require would be to ensure OES or MEL are below those stated in the safety data sheets?
Thanks for any advice,
Fraser Dalziel
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Posted By Paul Leadbetter
Fraser
COSHH governs your use of inks and solvents. Although you may need to carry out air monitoring where solvents are used, don't forget to consider other routes of exposure (such as skin contact) in your risk assessments for all substances covered by the Regs.
Paul
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Posted By Gillian Irons
Fraser
We are a printing company and measure levels of dust and ink fly on a regular basis. Your best bet would be to have a look at EH40 which sets out the OELs.
We use, or rather the Occupational Hygienist, uses an OEL of 10mg-3 (8hr TWA) for total inhalable dust for our dust measurements and an OES of 5mg-3 (8hr TWA) for ink fly (as an oil mist). Both levels are set out in EH 40. For the last solvent monitoring we did we used the manufacturer's derived occupational exposure limit published in their MSDS.
Hope this helps in some way. Gillian
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Posted By CHRISTOPHER HAYWARD Hello The test methods are also annotated in EH40. The HSE have a special guide to COSHH for printers at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/pu...e/coshhprintersguide.pdfYou could also try the following: The printers guide to health and safety. Publisher HSE Books 2002 Length 191 pages ISBN 0717622673 Price Exc. VAT £12.50 Edition 2nd ed. If you haven't got it, I suggest it might be £12.50 well spent. Also, as mentioned previously in this forum, OEL and MEL are replaced next year by WELs and will cover a much smaller range of chemicals. PS To anyone trying to reach me, I'm not in work at the moment, as I have Chicken Pox. Very very very annoying. Chris
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