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Posted By Paul Darren Joseph
My company uses EuroGrit and Black Beauty to blast pipes before painting. There is insufficient measures being taken to adequately control the dust from reaching the atmosphere, workers and surrounding businesses. The company uses a three sided net system to trap the dust but much of it goes over the net or through spaces where the nets meet. They provide dust masks and respirators for the employees on site but i believe that better can be done. I checked the MSDS on both substances and they claim to contain only 1% silica and 99% sand, making the substances free of health efects, besides minor skin and respiratory irritations. How can i verify this? I tried cross checking with COSHH schedule for these substances but made little progress.
Help/advise needed please to convince management to take action to control this hazard.
Paul
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Posted By Tim
Paul,
Respirable dust is a health hazard, even without the silca issue. I suggest you get a specialist occupational hygienist to come and do some personal monitoring and provide some solutions. They should be able to let you know the silica contel, the WEL was lowered last year I seem to remember.
Is the dust being water surpressed at all?
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Posted By Mitch
Paul,
If you need "back up" for your arguments on control measures, a company I used to work for contaminated vehicles and buildings of surrounding neighbours. This resulted in claims for repairs to cars and re-roofing a complete warehouse because the dust had "eaten" through the plastic coating on the roof sheets. The costs ran into 10's of 1000's of pound!
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Posted By Exdeeps
Paul,
Classic case of an MSDS NOT being sufficient for the COSHH assessment - The product may be to all intents and purposes be benign, but, it is being used to remove something (What?) from the surface prior to painting. That other something may not be very pleasant at all.
Jim
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Posted By Mitch
Exdeeps is right it was the content of ferrous metal in the dust that caused all the problems with the paint and plastic coating in the case I mentioned previously. There are specialist extraction companies that deal in this industry who could advise you on the specific requirements.
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Posted By peter gotch
Paul
I would like to hope that whatever you are using does NOT contain sand. Usually grit blasting is done with fragmented slag.
Use of sand was prohibited for most applications several decades ago. One of the exceptions is for dry sandblasting buildings, where the process will generate sand particles from the buildings themselves.
Regards, Peter
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