Is anyone aware of a university whose respiratory protection plan specifically includes students?  My employer (a small, liberal arts university with a highly active theater department) has a lot of student shops, where ventilation is inadequate or whose dust collectors can’t keep up.  There’s also a lot of spray paint use.  I’m working to develop a respiratory protection plan that addresses the need for student respirator use (N95’s, mainly).  I’ve received pushback from a few deans, asking for evidence that other universities require their students to wear respirators in theater/fine arts/communications  contexts, particularly in wood shops. 

I’ve found a few institutions where the RPP explicitly permits students to *voluntarily* wear a respirator, but are there any that have rules governing *required* student use of respirators in the face of actual hazardous air contaminants?  These are situations where an employee would absolutely be required to wear an N95 or P100.  It seems like best practice would be to have students follow the same rules for wearing respirators as employees, if they’re doing the same tasks in the same atmosphere…but I can’t seem to find anything that explicitly addresses this issue.

The administration is unwilling to move forward and approve student respirator use without evidence that other schools do it too.  Asking the students to leave the shop and have W2 employees take over when the wood dust levels get too high is both impractical and rude to the students, who are supposed to be learning by doing.  Long term, the answer would be to improve ventilation, etc., but that’s not in the cards financially at this point.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks for your time!

Nora Dunkel, CHMM

Chemical Safety Officer

Webster University

Office:  Browning Hall/ISB 314

314-246-2244 (desk)

noradunkel51**At_Symbol_Here**webster.edu