Occupational Hygiene Within the Food Industry

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As well as services we provide for industry monitoring involving the use of heavy machinery or chemical monitoring, the occupational hygiene team has a regular annual client who is based within the food industry.

The client provides products for well known leading fast food franchises, by completing a three stage production within their various premises. The annual monitoring consists of three visits to monitor each of the production processes to check for inhalable dust and bio-aerosols.

The first stage of primary production led us to monitor for bioaersols and inhalable dust which involves the machinery processes of slaughtering, to indicate the levels of which the employees are exposed to throughout the chain of process.

The secondary production covers the creation of various raw poultry products, in which the team monitored for inhalable dust. This monitoring set up was then repeated on the final visit during the further processing stage which involved making the final product ready to be, exported to the fast food chains. For each of these both static and personal monitors were set up to measure the average dust concentration around the area of the machine, and to measure the time weighed dust average concentration for the employees operating the machinery.

As an additional service we have booked in to test for noise levels from their various pieces of machinery. This is monitored through static monitoring around the equipment during the process to measure the decibels for equivalent continuous level (LAeq) and max level.

These services within this fast food industry business, along with the previous site visits can be used to determine if employees are exposed to levels of dust, noise or bio-aerosols above the EH40/2005 rev. 2011 limits and whether extra measures need to be put in place to prevent exposure.

If you would like to contact Envirochem regarding our occupational hygiene services, please fill out the attached form

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Silica Dust – A Health Risk to Employees

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Industries that use sand as part of the manufacturing procedure could expose employees to respirable crystalline silica (quartz, cristobalite, and/or tridymite). Of particular concern are industries where foundries utilize sand as part of the metal casting operation and blasting operations that make use of sand as the blast media. Fortunately, Envirochem are a UKAS accredited laboratory who can sample and analyse respirable dust and give an indication of the percentage of silica present and so determine whether dust levels exceed the workplace exposure limit of 4mg/m3 (Taken from HSE EH40/2005 Revised in 2011).

To enquire about our occupational hygiene services, please fill in the attached form:

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Envirochem’s Occupational Hygiene Service

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Envirochem have recently visited a client based in Portsmouth to complete ammonia, amines and VOC emission analysis on three sets of air filters. They approached Envirochem because of occupational hygiene concerns from their colleagues complaining of headaches through the odour the filters were producing when in use. For the sampling, airbox pumps were set up for charcoal filter tubes to capture any VOC emissions and silica gel sorbent tube for amines. Any ammonia gas produced was captured using an impinger. The sampling took place during a normal run time for the filters and taken back to the lab to be analysed through IC and GC-MS.

The results from this study, along with the results from a previous emissions test can be used to determine if employees are exposed to high levels of harmful gases and whether extra measures need to be put in place to prevent exposure.

To contact Envirochem regarding our occupational Hygiene services, please fill in the attached form

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General Motors sentenced following asbestos contamination

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A company has been fined a large sum of money following prosecution from the HSE due to asbestos exposure during  refurbishment work.

For more information follow the link bellow:

http://www.shponline.co.uk/general-motors-sentenced-following-asbestos-contamination/

Envirochem offers a wide array of asbestos services as well as other occupational hygiene services. If you would like to contact us please fill in the for bellow

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New Ion Chromatograph

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Envirochem has completed the installation of our new Ion Chromatograph. This is part of our rolling scheme of improvement of analytical equipment. This allows us to maintain our high standards and quality of analysis.

The new Metrohm IC883 has already been subjected to and passed a mini validation and so can be used for UKAS testing of water samples for fluoride, chloride, bromide, nitrate and sulphate. It can also test for nitrite and phosphate. The ion chromatograph is also for Mcerts accredited work for chloride and sulphate in soils.

The ion chromatograph can be used in swab analyses to test surface contamination before and after cleaning works, as well as analysis of samples from occupational hygiene work for acid fumes such a s nitric acid, sulphuric acid and hydrochloric acid in the workplace.

Leachate samples from Landfill Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) samples, will also run through this instrument.

The old ion chromatograph (on the left in the photo) will be utilised to run speciated phenols in waters and soil extracts. The two instruments are linked so that the same sample can be analysed for anions and phenols. We will be able to speciate and quantify common environmental phenol compounds such a creosols and chlorinated phenols.

The new software also allows the direct transfer of analysis data into our Laboratory Information Management system reducing the time taken and the chance of transcription errors.

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