Critical environment monitoring improves employee safety

By Paul Machacek, International Sales Manager, Winland Electronics Inc.

In today's work environment employee safety and wellbeing is of primary concern to the employer. With the increase of various chemicals and gases produced and used in product development, hazards for employees within the work environment intensify. Often these chemicals and gases can be at dangerous levels and not be noticed by the human senses until there are noticeable adverse physical effects.

“The objective for any industrial facility is to minimize or prevent accidents which result in injury to humans, damage to the environment, loss of production, damage to equipment or loss of inventory”
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Many industrial chemicals are highly toxic and may rapidly affect exposed individuals. Toxic industrial chemicals (whether as a gas, aerosol, or liquid) enter the body through inhalation, skin contact, or through ingestion. The time that it takes for a toxic industrial chemical to begin working is primarily dependent on the route that the agent enters the body. Generally poisoning occurs more quickly if a chemical enters through the lungs due to the ability of the agent to rapidly diffuse throughout the body. Information related to how the chemicals affect humans and symptoms of exposure to specific chemicals can be found in material safety data sheets (MSDS) or chemical information cards.

The obvious measure of personal protection from toxic industrial chemicals is to wear suitable chemical protective clothing and respiratory protection. However, it must be stressed that this protective equipment does not always work against toxic industrial chemicals. Protective equipment effectiveness is determined by the materials of construction, the type and level of exposure, and duration of exposure.

The majority of catastrophic situations can be prevented if personnel are informed of malfunctioning equipment before there is a failure. Utilizing available sensing technology to monitor a wide range of variables such as excessive pressure, flow, or presence of up to 40 different types of gases, can provide early warnings to prevent many catastrophic situations.

These sensors provide a 4-20 milliamp output allowing them to be integrated into monitoring systems that will communicate with any alarm system providing immediate warning to employees of unsafe levels of airborne toxins. These monitoring systems can also be connected to a PLC system to shut down equipment. The systems can be programmed to monitor any unit of measure, i.e.: parts per million, psi, cfm, etc. Upon deviation from the programmed high or low limits, dry contact output relays activate to provide a signal to any security system or various local warning devices such as a strobe or siren. It can also provide data logging of all sensor data and alarms for maintaining proper documentation for facility management. Field applications for these types of sensors are petroleum refineries, chemical plants, manufacturing facilities, etc.

There are other environmental conditions that can cause significant damage to facilities and inventory. The Insurance Information Institute has documented that statistically there are more insurance claims due to temperature and water damage than burglary and fire combined. Whether it is a chiller for serum and plasma storage or a chemical storage warehouse, monitoring technology will significantly educe costly losses or damage.

Whatever the application there is a critical environment that requires monitoring to help protect people, the environment and assets.

For more information about environmental monitoring systems visit www.EA800.net or contact Paul Machacek at .