Special Report: Instrumentation Roundtable

Industrial Hygienists Focus On Analysis

Understanding and operating gas detection equipment and other instrumentation has become an important part of the industrial hygienist's (IH) job. Our panel discusses how equipment has freed IHs to take on strategic analysis of safety conditions and what improvements in instrumentation are coming down the road.

Moderator,
Betty Hintch, Editor,
Compliance Magazine

Kent A. Candee, CIH
Director, American Board of Industrial Hygiene and Environmental Services Manager, EMC Insurance Cos.

The evolution of gas detection equipment has provided the industrial hygienist with a greater opportunity to provide real-time on-site measurements. Gas detection equipment has become more advanced through many improvements, including moving from bulky to compact units and from detecting single gases to detecting multiple gases. The equipment has also added refinements, such as sensor technology that offers a small button size, vibrating alarms, longer battery life and datalogging for future retrieval. There have even been advancements in the calibration, maintenance and testing of the equipment with the use of calibration stations, built-in diagnostics, and internal memory storage of calibration and sensor data. All these advancements have been made with the intent to make the equipment more user friendly, easier to calibrate and maintain, and probably most important to the industrial hygienist, more precise and accurate in its measurements. A significant advantage for the industrial hygienist has been the equipment's ability to store real-time data in memory for subsequent PC interfacing. This provides graphical representation of data over a period of time, allowing the industrial hygienist to examine the operation or process in more refinement and offering the opportunity to introduce control measures at specific point sources of exposure.

With all these advancements in gas detection, customer expectations have increased. They have come to expect immediate answers right along with immediate solutions. The industrial hygienist has to be well-versed in the capabilities and limitations of the equipment with respect to the operation and the gas being monitored. What are the possible gas interferences? Are those interferences present? It is always gratifying to be able to deliver immediate results and solutions, but caution should be exercised, as there are times when immediate solutions may not be the best course of action. Scientific principles and laws must be understood and applied by the industrial hygienist in rendering the best course of action. Communicating this to the customer still remains a challenge.

Patrick Hogan
Vice President of Marketing, Honeywell Analytics

Tomorrow's gas detectors will take advantage of smaller, more intelligent sensors. These sensors will be capable of attaching to almost any surface, performing self-tests and self-checks, and communicating with other sensors in a wireless format. Wireless systems will become a preferred detection method as battery life is extended; a 10-year “fit and forget” installation/maintenance cycle will become standard.

We are at the cusp of a generation where various sensors could be deployed in large numbers around buildings almost like “sprinkled dust.” As a result, many more gases, chemicals and other parameters, such as temperature and humidity, will be measurable from one affordable sensor platform.

Remote sensor installations are expanding their application by taking advantage of developments in communication technologies such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and Power over Ethernet (PoE), which will reduce cabling costs and simplify power supply distribution. Sensor communications, power and diagnostics will be operating over universal architecture schemes, whether wired or wireless, which will further reduce installation, programming and maintenance costs and provide real-time spatial and data readings to building controls used to conserve energy, manage environmental pollution and enhance the physical security of strategic buildings. Field operators will be better connected to one another, to nearby annunciation/evacuation equipment and to remote SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, thereby ensuring greater real-time safety of people, plant and the environment. The asset manager can be more proactive in preventing a worst-case scenario; for example, in the event of a gradual corrosion effect of an acidic vapor on a pump or value fitting.

Gas detection systems will become integrated with programs and initiatives throughout homeland security and infrastructure protection. Technologies that employ a laser-light source in their sensor system, such as multiple

-angle laser-light scattering (MALLS), will increase detection of a wider range of hazardous gases, biological contaminants and chemicals, including chemical warfare, nerve and blister agents.

Increasingly, we are moving from chemical-based sensors to solid-state sensors. The benefits are longer sensor life and greater fail-to-safe diagnostics.

Shane McEwen, B.Sc. EET
Product Manager, BW Technologies by Honeywell

Advancements in plastics, gas sensor design and electronic components will allow portable gas detectors to be almost unnoticeable by the wearer until an alarm condition exists.

Recently, gas sensor manufacturers have been reducing the size of the sensors that fit in portable gas detectors, and the difference is dramatic. These new sensors operate on the same detection principles and contain the same internal components as previous sensors, but improvements in plastic design have allowed these sensors to be decreased by up to 75 percent in size and 95 percent in weight.

The miniaturization and minimization of electronic components also helps to decrease the overall size of the detector. Today's electronic components complete more functions at a higher rate of speed while being reduced to a third of their previous size. Many of these components now also perform multiple tasks. One component can now take the place of four. Quality is not sacrificed in the effort to minimize electronic component size. Gas detection manufacturers understand that their products save lives and they cannot afford to produce products that offer any less than the highest level of quality.

Steady improvements in the plastics industry have allowed the housing of the gas detector to become smaller. The housing can now wrap itself around the electronic printed circuit board like a durable layer of skin. Electronic parts can now be molded directly into the plastic, which decreases the amount of space used in the design.

Due to these advancements, the average portable multigas detector will evolve from weighing 15 to 30 ounces to weighing approximately 5 ounces. Instead of being the size of a brick, a portable detector will be approximately the size of a cellular telephone.

The biggest benefit of this reduction in weight and size is that workers can more easily do their jobs without having to deal with a bulky, cumbersome detector. When a gas detector is no longer thought of as a troublesome device that a worker is forced to wear, the industrial workplace will become much safer.

Bill Sawka
Marketing Manager, Biosystems

In the marketplace, competition drives technological advances. In our industry, manufacturers stay competitive by building gas detectors that are smaller, more reliable, easier to use and less expensive than their predecessors. Industrial hygienists benefit from this type of competition because when a gas detector is reliable and easy to use, it allows the layman to operate it with little instruction.

Ease of use has become increasingly important in the gas detection industry. Over the past few years a number of manufacturers, including Biosystems, have directed a great deal of time and effort into the creation of instrument docking stations that can automatically test and calibrate gas detectors and even maintain records of the results. These calibration stations offer hands-free operation and automatically verify that the critical components in the detector, including sensor(s), alarms and batteries, are functioning according to the manufacturer's specifications.

Most calibration stations can be used as stand-alone devices or connected directly to PCs with simple USB connections or, for more complex applications, Ethernet network connections. With Ethernet capability, a calibration station can be programmed from any PC that has network access to the station. The Ethernet option allows a large number of instruments and docks to be controlled from a single PC that may or may not even be located in the same building. Following initial setup, the docks can operate independently for long periods of time and can even be programmed to e-mail the industrial hygienist if a problem is detected in one of the instruments. The industrial hygienist can view the downloaded records from his or her PC and be assured that the detectors are being both used and calibrated.

Industrial hygienists don't go to school to learn how to maintain gas detectors. They go to school to learn how to recognize health hazards and how to institute controls in order to reduce or eliminate them. Technological advances in the gas detection industry are letting industrial hygienists get back to the work they were trained to do.

David D. Wagner
Director, Portable Products, Industrial Scientific Corp.

On a daily basis, industrial hygienists face increasingly complex problems as new workplace hazards develop. For example, the second half of 2006 required new attention to hexavalent-chromium levels after OSHA issued its final rule on this contaminant.

To a large extent, advancements in air monitoring equipment have gone a long way toward reducing the industrial hygienist's daily burden. New technologies have made it possible to detect and monitor more substances. Datalogging has become easier than in the past, making the everyday IH surveys routine. Instruments are equipped with better ways to download data, and analysis software has become more powerful and user-friendly. Docking systems have automated the processes and removed the burden of instrument calibration and record keeping.

At the same time, while air-monitoring instruments are doing more, the technologies are not as elementary as they may have once been. New capabilities and new technologies have introduced a higher level of complexity to the industry. Instruments using PIDs, IMS (ion mobility spectroscopy) sensors, SAW (surface acoustic wave) devices and other advanced technologies do not function with the simple understanding of the electrochemical hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide sensors of the past. Recognizing the roles and limitations of these technologies has replaced the difficulties that industrial hygienists faced with air-monitoring equipment previously. The industrial hygienist's job certainly is more complex today than simply determining whether “the canary is dead” to conclude the air is bad.

CM