During turnaround season when plants go offline for maintenance, inspection and modernization projects, the need to incorporate best safety practices in an effort to ensure compliance is particularly acute with such heightened activity and an increase in on-site personnel.
Designed to protect workers from dangerous toxic and combustible gases or oxygen deficiency, portable gas monitoring instruments are often utilized to measure, monitor and indicate the concentration of certain gases in the atmosphere. It is vital to worker safety these instruments are maintained and calibrated properly. Performance of a daily bump test prior to operation of gas detectors is a best practice because it is the only method by which the entire system — instrument, sensors, flow path, power source, alarms and all electronics — can be checked to ensure it is functioning properly. Best practices also include robust compliance and recordkeeping programs.
According to OSHA, potential failure modes that can be identified during a bump test are as follows:
1. Gradual chemical degradation of sensors and drift in electronic components
2. Chronic exposures to, and use in, extreme environmental conditions
3. Exposure to high (over-range) concentrations of the target gases and vapors
4. Chronic or acute exposure of catalytic hot-bead LEL sensors to poisons and inhibitors
5. Chronic or acute exposure of electrochemical toxic gas sensors to solvent vapors and highly corrosive gases
6. Harsh storage and operating conditions
7. Any general component failure
In addition to good maintenance methods, safety practices must be reinforced regularly. Far too often, gas alarms are viewed as a nuisance or an error and are ignored by workers. Following safety protocol when alarms are triggered is a vital safety practice and could prove to be lifesaving.
Many detectors include built-in recordkeeping of bump, calibration and event recording, plus data logging capabilities and can be individually downloaded for recordkeeping purposes. There are also more advanced solutions that allow for calibration and bump stations to download and store records as part of normal maintenance activities. Many of these solutions allow for further networking of multiple stations across operating units, several plant locations or even global systems, into a single database that can be used as a business tool for proactive safety.
As turnarounds are being planned, it is important to assess your gas detection program in regards to simple worksite compliance and traceability, to system-wide proactive safety and compliance systems.
For more information on MSA’s safety products, including the ALTAIR® Family of Multigas Detectors and Galaxy GX2 calibration platform, please visit www.MSAsafety.com or call (800) 672-9010.
