Eliminating silica dust from your workplace might be very hard, especially when silica dust occurs naturally or is used to make your end product or deliver the services. If that’s the case, you’ll need to establish dust control measures at your workplace to ensure you reduce the silica dust to levels on your site.
You’ll likely have to use different control measures such as those available from bosstek.com to keep your workers safe from silica dust exposure. You also will need health and air monitoring programs to ensure your dust control measures are effective and your teams are protected. That you will not only help improve your employee motivation but also boost your business productivity. To achieve this, some control measures you can use to ensure a safe work environment for your workers include;
Trap Silica Dust using Atomized Misting systems
One great approach to controlling silica dust is the use of atomized mist droplets that have sizes ranging between 50 to 200 microns. These tiny water drops stay in the air and form little slipstreams. The fine-engineered atomized mist is dispersed through a powerful fan-driven unit or a strategically set misting bar/ring. The nucleating nozzles break pressurized water into tiny droplets and should preferably be implemented at the source of emission. These tiny water droplets increase the humidity of your targeted area, thus floating on air currents, capturing dust particles, and dropping them onto the ground. The settling water droplets are effective in surface dust suppression and use less water, hence reducing the runoff volume with lowered chances of pooling.
Substitution
This is where you replace the harmful product or chemical with a less harmful substance that has a lower risk. Effective substitution of silica products and silica depends on the nature of your workplace and the work tasks you carry out. It might not be practical to replace silica when it is naturally occurring or when you cannot make the end product or deliver a service without it. Even then, substitution can be an effective way of managing silica. Some ways you can do this is to use products that have less silica in them or ones that do not contain silica. Also, use silica products that do not need to be cut, ground, or polished.
Isolate your workers from the silica dust
To do this, you’ll need to place barriers or distance between your workers and the source of silica dust. Isolation is one of the most effective ways of protecting your workers from exposure to silica dust. Some isolation controls include isolating high dust generation work processes with a highly protected room with restricted access. Also, provide exclusion zones and physical barriers between different work sites and workers to prevent the dust and water, or mist from moving into the work area. Ensure you have designated rooms for tasks such as eating or changing away from the area with the silica dust. Employees working with silica products should wear the appropriate PPE to keep them safe.
Exposure to silica dust can cause health concerns among your employees. To avoid this, always ensure you have the required controls to reduce exposure and the amount of silica dust in your work area.