Safety & Maintenance
Industrial Production: Eliminate Indoor Airborne Contaminants to Protect Worker Safety, Productivity
Air purification systems can capture smoke, exhaust gasses, and pollutants from welding, plasma cutting, combustion, and other sources
By: Del Williams
I
n industrial settings, noxious airborne contaminants from a variety of sources can jeopardize indoor air quality, compromising worker health, productivity, and even regulatory compliance unless the air is sufficiently purified when ventilation alone will not solve the problem. Welding, plasma cutting, or combustion processes including engines and generators can produce noxious smoke and exhaust gasses. Fugitive emissions can include fumes in chemical processing as well as dust and trace metals in metallurgy. Industrial solvents can contain chemical aromatics like benzene, toluene, or xylene. Spraying paint or other substances can leave chemical mists suspended in the air. Various processes
18 | IMD
JULY 2022
and cleaning routines can release a complete spectrum of often harmful VOCs. Regulatory agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) set permissible exposure limits for many toxic substances and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) also sets indoor environmental quality standards, which includes air quality. To effectively protect industrial workers, productivity, and compliance, one solution is to install “smoke eaters,” advanced air purification systems that filter large volumes of air quietly to remove smoke, air contaminants, and even odors. In doing so, the contaminated indoor air is passed through a series of sophisticated filtration media
