It is possible to catch COVID-19 either by breathing in droplets coughed out or exhaled by a person with COVID-19 or by touching eyes, nose or mouth after handling a contaminated object. All sections of society, including businesses and employees must play a role if we are to stop the spread of this disease. Compliance LEV therefore identify the business activities that could expose workers or others and follow the practical steps suggested below by the World Health Organisation to prevent spread of COVID-19.  Our fleet has underwent a deep clean and sanitisation and our LEV Engineers are fully briefed on safety when testing LEV systems in all industries such as aviation, welding. wood dust, RCS (Respirable Crystalline Silica), Titanium, flour and bakery dust, paint fume, & metalisation.

Practical steps will vary dependent on nature and location of industry, exposure to infection, supply chains, etc.  The following steps and measures are far from exhaustive and will constantly be reviewed and updated.

The following basic infection prevention measures, drawn from the WHO, can protect individuals from getting sick and spreading sickness:

-Promote and enforce frequent handwashing and respiratory hygiene.

-Wear a facial covering and/or face visor.

-Discourage touching eyes, nose, mouth.

-Ensure workplace is clean and hygienic, and regularly disinfect surfaces and objects, use of hand santistizer.

-Advise employees to stay at home when sick and to seek medical advice if they have fever, cough and difficulty breathing, loss of taste or smell.

-Practice social distancing where recommended.

-Stay informed and follow advice from international health organisations such as the WHO and your national health organisationand government.

A firing range where the contaminent was lead dust and unburnt propellant. failed its insurance inspections.  They contacted Compliance LEV to assess the system.  

We found that  there was more air being pushed into the range than was being drawn out, this meant that the room became charged with a positive pressure and the result was very turbulent air which actually flowed backwards in the room instead of the desired direction.

Our P604 design engineers worked on a LEV solution meeting HSG254 guidance and COSHH regulations.

Result – LEV system designed, installed and fully compliant.

We are often approached by new clients  where the client has new equipment or processes and are not sure if LEV is required and if it is, what type.

At Compliance LEV we are always happy to talk things through with existing and new clients and even carry out a site visit if required.

COSHH (Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health) are government regulations and are criminal law. The first stage you must follow is to carry out a “suitable and sufficient risk assessment” of your process, we can help regard your LEV.  Local Exhaust Ventilation systems are classed as an “Engineering control” under COSHH.

This particular application involved small chemical cleaning tanks where the emitted fumes were minimal.

We reviewed the MSDS (Materal Safety Data Sheet) for the chemicals and followed relevant guidance.

The process was taking place inside a small room with general ventilation linking various offices and rooms.
General ventilation is not suitable to carry fume as it is possible that it can carry and spread the fumes into other parts of the building exposing other staff to breathing it in.  In addition, exposure to the fume can take place before general ventilation takes place, whereas LEV captures the contaminant at source before the operator breathes it in.

Compliance LEV designed bespoke enclosing hoods using stainless steel material to resist chemical corrosion, further enclosed using rubber strip curtains.
We specified the fume collectors with activated carbon filters making the returned air clean and free from contaminant and safe to breath.

Result – a fully compliant client, who will now be confident that if HSE turn up to audit that all their legal obligations have been met, all the way from initial risk assessments to installation of suitable engineering controls.

Every installation by Compliance LEV includes a hand over and full system logbook to meet HSE guidance document HSG258.

Note – Compliance LEV can supply logbooks and create SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) retrospectively where these are missing from existing LEV Systems, meaning you are fully compliant.