Industrial substances such as fumes, gases and mists can be dangerous in the workplace. Having the appropriate safety equipment to correctly extract any contaminants produced will reduce employees' exposure to hazardous substances and lower the risk of any short and long-term illnesses due to your business activities.
At Auto Extract Systems, we offer a wide variety of different fume extraction systems solutions for a wide variety of industries and sectors. We're experts at capturing fumes in the workplace and safely removing them to help your business provide a pollution-free workplace. Our solutions include portable solutions to small bag filters and even complex cyclone filtration systems.
Depending on your business's requirements, we'll help specify the right fume extractor for your needs. So whether you require a small bag filter and even complex cyclone filtration systems, we'll provide you with effective extraction and filtration solutions. We can protect workers' from fume from any material, including wood, rubber, metal, plastic, composites and many more.
Our industrial fume extraction systems can help free your working environment from dangerous fumes. By utilising the latest extraction technologies to increase production efficiencies, profitability and even create energy-saving efficiencies.
What is Fume Extraction?
As described in the Control of Substances Hazard to Health (COSHH) Regulations 2002,hazardous substances can occur in many forms, including solids, liquids, vapours, gases and fumes. Fume is produced in a variety of working processes, so it can be hard to define the explicit processes where fumes are produced from, however, some processes include:
Dust and fume (combined in one process)
Chemical fume
Paint shop fume
Soldering fume
Plasma cutting fume
Diesel fume
Rubber fume
It's important to remember that fume can derive from a number of working processes.
Solder Fume
According to the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) INDG248: Solder Fume And You - An Employee’s Guide, there are different types of solder fume and working with rosin-based solder fluxes requires you to take action. Solder flux fume can make employees ill and the health effects will get progressively worse if you carry on breathing in the fume.
The COSHH Regulations requires employers to prevent or control exposure to rosin-based fume; to prevent employees from developing health issues.
A combination of different measures should be utilised by employers and duty holders to reduce exposure to solder fume. For example, with the use of engineering controls, such as local exhaust ventilation (LEV) like a fume extraction system, good general ventilation in the work area and temperature-controlled hand soldering irons.
Both the manufacturing and cooling processes can produce high levels of rubber fume. Fume from hot vulcanised, articles can make a substantial contribution to personal exposure, as well as contributing to general fume level in the workplace.
Rubber Dust
A number of processes that involve rubber can produce high levels of dust in the workplace, these may include: bag opening and weighing, mixing ingredients, milling, or trimming and finishing products with buffing activities etc.
As stated on HSE's IACL - Safe to Breathe webpage, the current Workplace Exposure Limits (WELs) for rubber fume and dust is:
The current WEL for rubber process dust is 6mg/m3 8 hour time-weighted average.
The current WEL for rubber fume is 0.6mg/m3 8 hour time-weighted average.
However, WELs are constantly being reviewed to ensure employees provide safe working environments for their employees. To find out more about WELs, scroll down to the Workplace Exposure Limit paragraph.
Rubber Fume and Dust Health Risks
HSE's RB1 guidance states that: "Chronic exposure to rubber fume and dust in factories can cause a higher-than-normal incidence of some types of cancers, whilst skin exposure to rubber fume may cause dermatitis and skin allergies."
The HSE advise in their COSHH Rubber [RB] guidance, that employers should keep exposure to rubber fume as low as reasonably practicable. A combination of different measures should be utilised by employers and duty holders to reduce exposure to rubber fume and dust, for example, with the use of engineering controls, such as local exhaust ventilation (LEV), good general ventilation in the work and RPE.
A suite of guidance sheets have been assembled to help employers, managers and duty-holders implement the safest control approaches when manufacturing, processing and handling rubber products. These include:
RB0 - Advice for Managers
RB1 - Fume - General Ventilation
RB2 - Bag Opening and Weighing
RB3 - Mixing Ingredients
RB4 - Milling Rubber
RB5 - Rubber Press (small articles)
RB6 - Trimming and Finishing (small articles)
RB7 - Cooling Rack (small finished articles)
Welding Fume
In 2019, welding fume was reclassified as a carcinogen after new scientific research came to light from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). HSE changed their enforcement expectations to state that: "There is no known level of safe exposure" in their STSU1 – 2019 bulletin Change in Enforcement Expectations for Mild Steel Welding Fume. Exposure to hazardous substances, such as welding fume can result in lung cancer or even kidney cancer.
We have assembled lots of useful and helpful guidance for employers and duty-holders on the Welding Fume Extraction page.
Diesel Engine Exhaust Fume (DEEES)
Diesel engine Exhaust Emissions (DEEEs) are a mixture of particulates, gases and vapours, which are produced when diesel-fuelled engines are running. In 2012, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reclassified DEEEs as carcinogenic to humans.
We have assembled lots of useful and helpful guidance for employers and duty-holders on our Vehicle Exhaust Extraction page.
Plasma Cutting Fume
In HSE's OC 668/22: Plasma Cutting: Control of fume, Gases and Noise guidance, it states that plasma cutting generates fume, gases, noise and ultraviolet radiation (UV) hazards. The fume produced from the cutting process depends on the metal and its coatings. Stainless steel is potentially the most hazardous to cut; as the fumes will contain chromium and nickel. Whilst copper and its alloys are also commonly cut and can also produce a significant fume hazard.
According to the HSE WL15: Plasma Arc Cutting (Fixed Equipment) guidance, there are two primary methods of controlling plasma cutter fume. These are measures that can be used at cutting machines and are either water baths or local exhaust ventilation (LEV).
With such a variety of different products and processes, there isn't a set health effect that derives from fume, explicitly. Each material type of process come with its own risk; so you must research what the health effects are from the specific task you or your business is undertaking. With this knowledge, you can then implement effective measures to mitigate the risk of health effects. Industrial fume extraction systems can help keep you and your employees safe.
What Does the Law State?
Under the COSHH regulations, employers should regard fume as a substance hazardous to health, these can include a mixture of constituents. The substance being used, or being generated as part of the working process should be controlled as per the HSE's Workplace Exposure Limit guidance. Learn more about Workplace Exposure Limits in the paragraph below.
Workplace Exposure Limits
In EH40 guidance categorises important information about harmful substances, including whether substances are skin sensitisers, carcinogenic, or whether biological monitoring guidance is required. Click here to read our article, What are Substance WELs (Workplace Exposure Limits)?In the article, you'll find which hazardous substances have exposure limits and how their concentrations are measured over simulated working day periods.
Essential Elements of COSHH
The legal requirements require employers to complete regular COSHH risk assessments. Regulation 7 first requires employers to make all conscious efforts to follow the COSHH hierarchical approach. The hierarchal approach recommends that substances should be substituted from the process to either eliminate or reduce the risk of exposure. However, if elimination or substitutions can't be avoided, control measures, such as engineering controls should be implemented to control the risk.
COSHH Regulations place the duty of care on employers to ensure employees (and other people in a workplace) who may be exposed to specific substances are protected. To find out more about the necessary steps to take to ensure your workplace complies with the COSHH Regulations, read our article, The 7 Essential Elements of COSHH [Infographic].
How to Control Fume Exposure
Once a formal risk COSHH assessment has been completed, prevention of fume exposure should be the first objective. Fume can easily be eliminated from the workplace with personal protective equipment and suitable engineering controls like fume extraction systems.
In the majority of cases, the most effective method of extracting airborne substances, such as fume is to capture at-source. We always recommended at-source extraction and depending on the working processes undertaken. This prevents fume and gases from dispersing into the broader working environment because of cross draughts and air movements, which can reduce the LEV system's efficiency.
The HSE request you to only employ competent experienced specialist LEV trained companies when making these important decisions. Specifying an appropriate system has many facets including, the products encountered, the quantity and allowed exposure to that contaminant, airflow rates required against WELs (Workplace Exposure Limits).
Checklist to Help You Choose the Right LEV Supplier
If you’re in the market for a new Local Exhaust Ventilation (LEV) system, it can be a tough decision to decide which is the best LEV solutions provider to choose. We want to help, so we’ve assembled a checklist (and article) to help guide you to select the right LEV supplier for your business and requirements. Visit our article on How to Choose a Local Exhaust Ventilation (LEV) Supplier and download the checklist.
Learn How We Helped Businesses Like Yours
To find out more about the latest dust extraction LEV installations we've been working on, check out our Case Studies section.
Request Your FREE LEV Site Assessment Today!
We'll call to arrange a convenient time and date to visit your site. We'll analyse your working processes, assess the substances used and the contaminants generated. We'll work out how best to control the dust and fume in a way that's in line with your COSHH risk assessment. Next, we'll design you a comprehensive LEV system that adheres to HSG258 guidance and send this you to via email.
We'll do all this to ensure we fully understand your dust and fume extraction requirements and help you to provide a pollution-free workplace!
This is an amazing service we do for thousands of businesses throughout the UK and Ireland every year. We work with such a wide variety of industries, from manufacturing, industrial, woodworking, pharmaceutical and automotive workshops to schools, colleges and military establishments.
Request your FREE, no-obligation LEV site assessment today!
Auto Extract Systems is the UK’s leading Local Exhaust Ventilation (LEV) company. Over the last 20 years, we've helped thousands of businesses create dust and fume free workplaces.
As experts in all things LEV, we can help your business become COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health) Regulation 2002 compliant with a tailored LEV solution. We provide comprehensive design, installation, maintenance and certification services across a range of industry sectors. Find out more about us here.
Industry processes we can add value to:
Welding fume
Brazing fume
Solder fume
Industrial fume
Battery fume
General ventilation fume and heat
Chemical process
Oil mist
Laser and printing fume
Solvent fume
Paint fume
Nail and beauty fume
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We'll call to arrange a convenient time and date to visit your site. We'll analyse your working processes, assess the substances used and the contaminants generated. We'll work out how best to control the dust and fume in a way that's in line with your COSHH risk assessment.