From: Monona Rossol <0000030664c37427-dmarc-request**At_Symbol_Here**LISTS.PRINCETON.EDU>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] laboratory located next to cafeteria
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2017 21:41:47 -0500
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Message-ID: 15a9731cd83-35b1-e623**At_Symbol_Here**webprd-a46.mail.aol.com
In-Reply-To <0CA6C15A-0EA1-44DF-B9B7-F817B8419CFB**At_Symbol_Here**me.com>


Oh, I KNOW they do.  My problem is they don't do it well. And it is not their area of expertise. I don't care about the refrigeration areas or the utility rooms associated with them.  That's something they can do. 


But the way they've written the IAQ stuff it is misleading and I am constantly running into issues on building planning where the wrong standards are applied.  This clearly has been deliberate because they made it very clear in writing in the 1990s that as soon as there are airborne contaminants of health significance in the air, that the ACGIH manual was where to go.  That working got shorter and shorter.  And as I said, it is now a vaguely worded footnote under a table.

And they've NEVER gotten it.  One of the slides in my ventilation power point is taken from an old ASHRAE presentation on ventilation where they show an illustration of dilution ventilation for the wrong application..  

I've also got a problem with their doing the same thing they did in the 1980s in response to an energy crisis:  they cut the amount of fresh air.  Not smart people. And just when research reported in the ASHRAE Journal has now shown adverse effects on mental function in both kids and adults at levels that meet 62.   My reports always recommend following the 2001  ASHRAE 62 for fresh air requirements while considering the better placement of supply and exhaust in later standards.  

You all know, of course, that when the air comes in at the ceiling and is returned at the ceiling, the best air is at the ceiling.

I shouldn't start on this.  I could do a whole book on what I don't like about those standards. 


Monona Rossol, M.S., M.F.A., Industrial Hygienist
President:  Arts, Crafts & Theater Safety, Inc.
Safety Officer: Local USA829, IATSE
181 Thompson St., #23
New York, NY 10012     212-777-0062
actsnyc**At_Symbol_Here**cs.com   www.artscraftstheatersafety.org

 


-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Kuespert <dankuespert**At_Symbol_Here**ME.COM>
To: DCHAS-L <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Sent: Fri, Mar 3, 2017 3:56 pm
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] laboratory located next to cafeteria

Actually, ASHRAE does address certain types of industrial systems. I spent a dozen years on ASHRAE Standards Project Committee 15, which writes the Safety Code for Refrigeration, adopted into law by reference through the International Mechanical Code. It contains requirements for ventilation in refrigeration machinery rooms (I wrote a few parts). Most of ASHRAE's industrial focus is on the industrial refrigeration side, and it sometimes takes a back seat to trendy things like IAQ.

Standard 62 has a committee about the same size as Congress and approximately as contentious. I'm not surprised '62 is useless in the lab. I agree that the ACGIH manual is likely to be more useful than '62. The Handbook, which is produced through a completely different peer-review process, does have some useful information on down washing and short-circuiting of outlet to inlet, as I mentioned.

regards,
dan


On Mar 2, 2017, at 07:41, Monona Rossol <0000030664c37427-dmarc-request**At_Symbol_Here**LISTS.PRINCETON.EDU> wrote:

These are industrial stacks.  ASHRAE, bless it's heart, does have all kinds of lab standards for off the shelf fume hoods and grease hood stuff.  But if you want the straight poop, the reference for stack design should be from the ACGIH's Industrial Ventilation: A Manual of Recommended Practice.  See section 5.23.  Use the 29th Edition now, 2013.

I didn't weigh in before, because we don't know enough to say much.  The whole picture of where those two sets of stacks are located with respect to all the building's roof line structures as well as buildings it is near are part of that calculation.   I've been on many jobs where we've had to do expensive smoke chamber modeling to determine the height of the stacks.  The stuff has to get into moving air space and depending on prevailing winds and the buildings nearby, that can be a problem.

In one of the cases we were building 3 stories and there were 4 and 5 story buildings on either side of us.  The stack design had to become an architectural feature to meet the rules.

And while I'm at it, another pet peeve (you knew I had one, right?) is the way ASHRAE's Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality (ASHRAE 62)  has changed it's references to ACGIH's standards.  Back in the 1990s they made it clear in the text itself that their standards are not for ventilation of Class 4 air (air that can cause health damage) and that the ACGIH manual had those standards. That paragraph got smaller and smaller until now it is a footnote in a table in all the standards after 2001.  But I can tell you for sure, both air quality in labss and stack height are industrial issues.  And stack height and placement will regulated by EPA and your local DEP/Fire Dept/etc.  Should it end up in court, it is the ACGIH manual that will be Exhibit 1.  Been there.

ASHRAE = the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-conditioning Engineers.  Do you see any reference to industrial systems in that title?   And watch out:  Table 6-1 Minimum Ventilation Rates in Breathing Zone in ASHRAE 62 will mislead you.  When they list the ventilation rates for laboratories, training shops, photo studios and other industrial purpose areas, their assumption is that only negligible amounts of contaminants escape the ventilation systems.  So if you are talking about a conservation lab where solvents are used in the open or a chemical photo developing lab, the ASHRAE standards are NOT applicable.  The turn over of air in either a dilution or a displacement ventilation system for those spaces is totally dependent on the ACGIH calculations (Chapter 4 in the manual) for keeping the air contaminants below their TLVs. 

Now your are talking about my Bible.


Monona Rossol, M.S., M.F.A., Industrial Hygienist
President:  Arts, Crafts & Theater Safety, Inc.
Safety Officer: Local USA829, IATSE
181 Thompson St., #23
New York, NY 10012     212-777-0062

 


-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Kuespert <dankuespert**At_Symbol_Here**ME.COM>
To: DCHAS-L <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Sent: Thu, Mar 2, 2017 6:12 am
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] laboratory located next to cafeteria

Even more than the colocation of lab and cafeteria, I'm concerned about the way the discussion morphed from "how can we be safe" to "how can we comply"-as you certainly know, they're not the same. Always an alarm bell for me.

You might try refocusing the conversation a bit. The ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers) Handbook has material on stack heights, inlets, and reentrainment that you could probably use for initial support. If you have to fall back on regs, the ASHRAE material is certainly something OSHA would look at in determining that it was a "recognized hazard" and thus a General Duty Clause issue. The relevant material is probably in the volume on "HVAC Applications."

The location of the kitchen exhaust is immaterial as long as the fans stay on and it doesn't become an inlet. A low-down inlet and high stack MIGHT work if there is no factor in the area that could disturb the airflow and cause downwashing. Which could be an issue if the buildings on your site are close together (relative to the length and height of the buildings). If the downwash is strong enough, you can short-circuit the hood outlet to the main building air inlets.

If the lab is next to the cafeteria, you're going to need as few penetrations in the wall as possible and the lab kept under negative pressure; wall construction costs might become an issue as well. (Typical cafeteria walls aren't built to laboratory tightness and so might need to be rebuilt.) If you end up having to put the lab there, might want to restrict what can be used or done in there-one wouldn't want to have the A/C fail, have the lab get positively pressurized, and not be able to shut down whatever reaction they're running. Alternatively, if you can rely on the researchers to follow SOPs, including an air failure alarm with instructions to shut all chemical bottles and quench any vapor-emitting reactions would work.

I personally wouldn't do SF6 tracer work unless you'd already built the stacks, in which case you're already out X tens of thousands for construction in sunk cost and you're trying to see if it can be salvaged. If Michelin has access to fluid-dynamics software like Comsol, somebody with expertise in that could probably run some simulations of various conditions for you much more cheaply.


Regards,
dan kuespert

Fabulous Engineer


On Feb 28, 2017, at 13:46, Melissa Ballard <melissa.ballard**At_Symbol_Here**MICHELIN.COM> wrote:

I would appreciate your help again with a lab design issue.. My fabulous engineering colleagues want to locate a new lab next to a cafeteria, sharing a wall. I do not like this idea. The cafeteria is a full kitchen cafeteria where it will have its own exhaust system right next to the chemical laboratory. Their solution is to have the kitchen exhaust stacks "short" and the chemical lab exhaust stacks "high" to try & eliminate the occurrence of any chemical exhaust being drawn into the kitchen intake. I have objected to this but they want a "regulation" that says they can't do this. My professional judgment isn't enough.
 
Any ideas?
 
 
Melissa Ballard, MSPH, CIH, CCHO
Industrial Hygienist / Industrial Hygiene Chemist
Michelin North America
1401 Antioch Church Road
IH Lab - Bldg 150 - 1st Floor
Greenville, SC 29605
Internal: 787-1843
Office: (864) 458-1843
Cell: (864) 784-9883
Fax: (864) 458-0070
 
D3 - Michelin Restricted
 
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