September/October 2006
Airborne hazards might not be immediately apparent, but chronic exposure to dangerous inhalants can cause serious health problems years down the road. Breathe easier by creating a respiratory protection program for your scrapyard.
By Laura Gajewski
With every breath you take, you expose 1,500 square feet of lung tissue—the area of a house—to whatever is in the air. Some chemicals, when inhaled, create an immediate, acute reaction, like coughing or a burning sensation. But most often, respiratory damage is noticeable only in the long run, after it’s too late to protect yourself. Something you inhale today might create health problems decades later. Even though it’s simple to protect yourself against harmful inhalants, many people who work in scrap don’t think they need to. But a respiratory protection system is something every scrapyard should have.
What’s at Risk
It is important to know what you’re protecting to better understand how to protect it. The lungs consist of millions of tiny air sacs. Blood cells pick up oxygen from those sacs when you inhale and drop off carbon dioxide as you exhale. When you inhale a contaminant, it attaches to the pick-up blood cell and travels with it through the body. Different organ systems attract different chemicals, so the contaminant will detach from the blood cell at its target organ via a chemical transfer. Most contaminants are not harmful when you inhale relatively small amounts of them once or only a few times, but when you inhale them regularly, they can build up in an organ system and prevent it from functioning normally. Repeated exposure over a long period of time can cause irreversible damage, sometimes resulting in deadly cancers.
Because it usually takes repeated exposure for long-term or chronic effects to manifest themselves, it’s a mistake to assume that the lack of immediate discomfort or damage means you’re not in any danger. You might not know you’ve been breathing in toxins, but if you have chronic exposure—day after day, for months to years—your body starts to become impaired.
Scrapyard Hazards
According to the American Lung Association, a respiratory hazard exists when a toxic contaminant is present in the air at a level high enough to cause harm when someone inhales it. For each of hundreds of separate chemicals, OSHA has defined specific permissible exposure limits, which reflect the maximum safe concentrations of chemical contaminants over an eight-hour workday, five days a week. Scrapyards rarely create acute respiratory hazards, notes Barney Boynton, ISRI’s director of safety outreach. More likely, he says, are chronic hazards: fumes or bad air quality that can go unnoticed for long periods of time. In a scrapyard, the most common substances that pose an airborne hazard are heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, manganese, and chromium. The objects that come into the yard might not be made of these metals, but they might still contain small quantities of them. To avoid these hazards, know where your scrap comes from and what has come into contact with it. Torchcutting is the processing method that’s most likely to release such toxins into the air. Less common respiratory hazards include machines that produce fumes or liquid chemicals that produce vapors.
When possible, scrapyards should put administrative or engineering controls in place to prevent workplace air contamination and keep employee exposure below OSHA’s permissible exposure limits. When these controls are not possible, the yard must provide employees with the appropriate type of respirator for the hazards they face. There is no chemical too dangerous to work with safely, so long as you wear the right equipment.
Protection Programs
Unless it can prove its employees face no airborne hazards, a scrapyard must have a respiratory protection program, says John Gilstrap, ISRI’s director of safety. The best place to start is the OSHA requirements, which can be found at www.osha.gov. The agency has standards for administering a program, selecting respirators, training, fit testing, and using and maintaining a respirator. The ReMA Safety Reference Manual also outlines a respiratory protection program and gives detailed descriptions of each step. OSHA’s permissible exposure limits for different chemicals are listed as well as suggested respirator types for each.
Once a yard has a written safety standard that follows the OSHA requirements, the next step is air-quality testing to determine which hazards are present—essential information for selecting the correct respirators. A certified industrial hygienist can perform this service, and some workers’ compensation insurance companies will do it for free or for a reduced fee, Boynton notes. The testing company uses an air monitor, which collects the approximate volume of contaminants in the air a person would inhale over a specific time period. After leaving the air monitor exposed for eight hours in the yard, the company sends it to a lab to determine what toxins are in the air and at what level.
Though it’s uncommon, a scrapyard could test so low on airborne toxins that it doesn’t need a respiratory protection program, says Brian Mayer, safety manager at Commercial Metals Co. (Lexington, S.C.). It’s important to continuously retest as the work site changes, however, Boynton says, to ensure that no new toxins become present.
The air-quality test will help a scrapyard determine which of the many different types of respirators to purchase. In general, air-purifying respirators use a filter, cartridge, or canister to remove hazards from the air. Some are for one-time or short-term use; others have replaceable filters. Some designs protect users from only particles or only gases, while others protect against both. Negative-pressure respirators must fit tightly against the face to work properly, whereas positive-pressure units do not. These respirators come in both half- and full-face designs that filter the air as the user inhales. Powered air-purifying respirators (PAPR), in contrast, have a blower that forces air through the filtration system into a full head-covering hood.
So long as the respirator fits and protects against the right hazards, the exact style is a matter of personal preference. John Hayworth, national director of environment, health, and safety at Metal Management Inc. (Newark, N.J.), says he prefers to use half-face respirators. They “provide the protection without being too bulky, making them a comfortable solution,” he says. Gilstrap and Boynton recommend PAPR hoods because of their comfort and their ability to supply the cleanest air. Also, the hood puts the filter behind the user, not in front, where it might block the view of the material being cut. PAPR hoods are more expensive than other types of respirators, however.
Even if the air-quality tests determine that your scrapyard is free of toxins, it might not always be free of odors, dust, or fumes that can irritate the eyes, nose, and throat. Though not required by law, disposable respirators might make employees more comfortable working around such irritants.
Having the right equipment is useless unless workers know how to use it and care for it. In training, the “do-it- because-I-say-so” mentality is very common—and often ineffective, says Boynton.
Mervis Industries Inc. (Danville, Ill.) provides “annual training for using respirators for everyone who would need to work with [one],” says Joe Bateman, corporate safety director. “This includes going over fit testing, some classroom work, and field work. We remind workers of engineering and administrative principles that require respirators.”
Fit and Fitness
When they need a respirator, people often just grab whatever they have off the shelf, Gilstrap says, not knowing if it fits or if it even filters the right contaminants. Doing so is dangerous, though, and it might even introduce a new hazard to the employee. Each respirator should be assigned and fit-tested to a specific employee, a service that a local occupational medical clinic can provide.
The fit test begins with a medical examination of the worker to make sure his or her physical health is strong enough to wear a respirator. These devices inhibit breathing somewhat, Gilstrap explains, so someone who already has a compromised respiratory system due to illness or smoking might not be able to wear one. To test fit, the employee puts on the mask in a controlled environment and then is exposed to a specially designed mist or fume. If the person inside the mask can smell or taste the testing agent, the seal is not effective. The user can adjust the mask further or try a different style or brand of respirator. It’s important to note that workers with facial hair cannot get a proper fit with negative-pressure or other masks that require a tight seal against the face. A PAPR hood might work best in such cases. Some designs even combine the hood with a hard hat and face shield into a single unit.
At the end of a long, hard workday, cleaning and storing the respirator might not be a worker’s top priority, but it’s a crucial step in respiratory protection. “Often, when people go on breaks, or at the end of the day, they’ll take off the respirator and just leave it sitting out on the work site,” Boynton says. “All of the toxin that’s still airborne gets inside the respirator and contaminates it.” A reusable respirator should be stored in an airtight bag in a cool, dry place. Using disposable respirators eliminates this obstacle, Bateman says, and makes things easier for the employees at Mervis Industries.
Motivation
Inspection is the final step in a respiratory protection program. Inspect the respirators routinely to ensure they fit workers properly and don’t need their filters replaced, inspect the work site to make sure there aren’t new toxins, and inspect the program, from plan to implementation: Is everyone doing what they should be doing? What happens if they aren’t?
If employees were found not wearing their respirators when required at a Mervis scrapyard, they “would be re-instructed as to why we wear respirators, such as [for] protecting the lungs [and] preventing disease,” Bateman says. “Ultimately they would be subject to our disciplinary procedures, but our first approach would be to drive home the reasons we want them to wear the respirator in the first place. Bottom line: We care about you as a person, and we want you to live a long, healthy life.”
Metal Management has a similar policy. “We have a progressive discipline program for employees,” Hayworth says: they get a verbal warning, then three written warnings, then termination. For more positive motivation and to keep things fresh, the firm offers a variety of safety incentives, such as naming an employee of the month and playing safety bingo.
There are many ways to motivate workers to wear their respirators. “The one thing you can’t do,” Gilstrap says, “is say, ‘Oh, the heck with it, my people don’t want to wear them.’”
Laura Gajewski is an editorial intern for Scrap.
Airborne hazards might not be immediately apparent, but chronic exposure to dangerous inhalants can cause serious health problems years down the road. Breathe easier by creating a respiratory protection program for your scrapyard.