Typical respirators used in the painting industry remove organic or other vapors with a chemical cartridge. Workers can't rely on warning signs such as odor, taste, or irritation alone to determine when to change chemical cartridges. Employers must now be responsible for implementing a change-out schedule that will ensure cartridges are changed before the end of their service life. Two companies have recently introduced service life programs to support their respiratory product lines. 3M now offers users free downloads of its Service Life Software 2.0 from its website.
Users can enter mixtures of organics, inorganics, or both.
New covered gases include ammonia, hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen sulfide, methylamine, and sulfur dioxide. You can select specific correction factors to account for uncertainties and also access humidity effect information. Similarly, Survivair now offers its Cartridge Service Life Program on CD-ROM for users of its respirator products. Users follow eight steps, including selecting the contaminant and concentration, selecting the Survivair cartridge that will be used, and entering site-specific data. The program then generates a customized report for that specific cartridge.