Hi Emm
I've watched this thread with interesting but without making comment, until you upped the ante with this line:
"you may even have to wear them constantly as you walk around the site sometimes simply because of the dust on the floor."
I've been puzzling as to what you want to get out of this research in a context where you understand that the "General Principles of Prevention" aks "hierarchy of control measures" is to be followed and hence that any PPE is very low down on what to do.
So, is your interest in attempting to establish how much increase in exposure is likely to result from a user of RPE not shaving OR the reasons why they decide not to do this?
If the former then the research has been done decades ago, the HSE's Health and Safety Laboratory ('HSL') amongst others.
I was going to suggest that you trawl through the HSE publications in the RR (Research Report) series but a quick check says that reports RR001 and RR002 were published in 2002 and the research I am thinking of predates those by at least a decade.
I'm SOOO old that when I started, RPE came with a Nominal Protection Factor (NPF).
Some of the research concluded that for some RPE, particularly half and full mask respirators (other than air fed) the ACTUAL protection afforded was a fraction of fthe NPF, often only 10% or even less.
The early cheap and cheerful filtering facepiece respirators had a much lower NPF but actual performance was close to what it said on the proverbial tin.
So, if you are looking at how much less protection is attained by someone who has not shaved then you probably won't find the research online but you should be able to find early HSL reports in a reference library.
One of the research findings was that some users need to shave not only before starting work but during shift as their stubble grows so quickly!
If your research focuses on the WHY the users are reluctant to come in clean shaven, perhaps this would be a first. I think in general it has probably been simply recognised as an ongoing supervisory issue.
Is there actually much benefit in identifying the WHY or could you spend your time more productively doing something else? If this is something you have signed up for as e.g. part of academic training then may be you don't have much option to change direction!
However, whatever the perceived benefits of this research, if some of these people are using RPE simply due to the dust on the floor then I think you need to revisit the General Principles of Prevention.
In some sectors that dust may be of an explosible nature and dust on the floor (and other surfaces) may equal a secondary dust explosion waiting to happen.
Finally, as regards your comment about different exposure limits in different countries, the UK was a global leader in the late 19th and most of the 20th Century when it came to industrial safety, but very late to the table on matters of occupational health risks, including, in particular, airborne risks.
So we largely borrowed limits from ACGIH (American Conference of Government Industrial Hygieniests) before going along with whatever the EU agreed until Brexit. Now, of course, HM Government seems reluctant to follow other countries' moves to lower some exposure limits and might even be thinking of parading not doing so as a potential Brexit benefit!
You will appreciate that sometimes one gets a light bulb moment a decade or more into a career. For me one of those came during a week spent as part of a team auditing a steelworks in Ukraine - a project manager, looking at environmental issues, someone from Tata Steel to consider energy efficiency and me to consider the H&S. All done to report to the World Bank on what investments might be made in advance of potential EU accession negotiations.
I had been prewarned. The same project manager had been out with one of our H&S people looking at a pharmaceutical works a couple of weeks earlier. This H&S person told me how poor the safety standards were but how good the occupational health measures were.
So, I am sat down with my interpreter and the Medical Director of the facility supposedly as the outside "expert" (well I had inspected steelworks in my time with HSE!) and I asked him to describe the medical surveillance that they did.
"Well, of course, we monitor all those welding stainless steel for manganese exposure". OH, I thought "this is news" whilst trying to not look surprised.
Got back home and on the internet. Manganism aka Parkinson's Syndrome - lots of litigation in the USA. Hardly on the radar in the UK. Coke oven fumes, other contaminants YES, manganese NO.
Edited by user 26 April 2023 14:09:28(UTC)
| Reason: Additional text re geographic differences in exposure limits