Trolex has over 60 years of experience as pinoneers in safety technology and has been delivering industry-defining dust monitoring to workers around the world since 2017. Through our partnership with Trolex, Reactec offers teams an unprecedented level of insight into their risk environment with regard to dust. By connecting personal dust monitors from Trolex with our ecosystem of workplace wearables and powerful analytics, teams gain access to the information they need to make decisions that drive better outcomes for workers and organisations.

Recently, we sat down with Adrian Eccles – Technical Product Manager at Trolex – to discuss how organisations can better protect their workers from harmful respirable dusts in the workplace. During our conversation, Adrian explained the importance of personalised dust monitoring, and highlighted the benefits that this technology delivers for teams.

How effective is Respiratory Protective Equipment?

First, we spoke with Adrian about Respiratory Protective Equipment (RPE) and how teams are currently approaching dust monitoring and management at work.

What PPE are teams typically using when it comes to occupational dust?

Adrian: Often, teams are using disposable FFP3 masks for occupational dust. From my experience, companies will go down this route for one of two main reasons: 1) they believe that this is the best protection available because it's P3 (meaning it offers the highest particulate filter protection level according to EU standards), or 2) because it's a low-cost option compared to powered respirators.

And how effective are different types of PPE - such as FFP3 masks - at actually protecting workers from exposure to potentially dangerous levels of dust?

Adrian: Firstly, the hierarchy of controls shows that PPE is the last option when protecting workers from risk, meaning all other options – including elimination, substitution, and the introduction of administrative or engineering controls – should be investigated first. Said otherwise: PPE is a last resort.

When you then look at the effectiveness of RPE you have to look at two key things: whether the RPE is suitable and adequate. Suitability relates to many things, including fit, interaction with other PPE, and duration:

• Fit: keep in mind that all wearers of tight fitting respiratory protective equipment should be fit tested by a fit2fit registered tester
• Interaction with other PPE: this is particularly key for goggles and other eyewear, as goggles might alter the position of the mask and impact the quality of the seal, and a mask might alter the position of goggles and impact eye protection.
• Duration: guidance states that negative pressure RPE (not fan-assisted RPE) should not be used for periods longer than one hour.

When we consider if RPE is adequate, we need to assess if it offers enough protection for the task at hand. Here, we’re looking to make sure that the Assigned Protection Factor (APF) of the mask or respirator being worn effectively reduces the concentration of dust in the air.

The amount of dust that’s in the air at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including the materials being used, the skill of the operator, and the environment where the task is being carried out. To understand exactly how much dust is in a given work area, you rely on air monitoring.

Once you have the data from your air monitoring efforts, you check the EH40: the EH40 is a guide produced by the HSE that lists workplace exposure levels (WEL) for dust and gas. For example, the WEL for silica is 0.1mg/m3. If your air monitoring showed that a worker cutting a kitchen counter had an exposure level of 2.6 mg/m3, you’d know that the worker was being exposed to approximately 27 times more silica dust than recommended, which means they would need RPE with an APF of 27 or greater. But remember, the goal isn’t to reduce exposure so that it’s just below the WEL, the goal is to reduce exposure to the hazard as much as reasonably practicable.

All RPE have a different Assigned Protection Factor (APF). For example, a disposable FFP1 mask has an APF of 4, a disposable FFP3 mask has an APF of 20, and powered respirators can have an APF of 40 (this information will be clear on the equipment packaging). In the example above, the worker should use a powered respirator to ensure that they’re adequately protected.

What is the ideal approach to occupational dust monitoring and management?

Next, we spoke with Adrian about the ideal approach to dust monitoring and management at work.

How can organisations understand whether their teams are being adequately protected when it comes to dust?

Adrian: A great place to start is utilising the services of a registered occupational hygienist. Have air monitoring undertaken on the premises to get a baseline idea of your risk environment with regard to dust, and implement the recommendations of the hygienist to start reducing your levels of exposure. To support this approach and get the most from your investment in the hygienist, teams can use real-time dust monitoring technology to collect data about their workers’ exposure to risk. Real-time monitoring will also notify them instantly if any alarm points are breached, which would indicate a failure in a control, or alert to a non-prescribed operating method being used by a worker.

What is the benefit of personalised, real-time data for dust monitoring? Specifically, how does it drive better health and safety outcomes for individual workers, and how does it deliver value for organisations on a broader level?

Adrian: Personalised real time data for dust monitoring has many benefits in the workplace. Not only should it be used in a multi-pronged approach to safety, it can also be used as an educational and training tool. For example, by demonstrating best practices to workers, they can better understand how a subtle change in the way they complete a task can have a major impact on their exposure to risk from dust. Moreover, real-time monitoring can highlight a worker who isn't following the assigned procedure and is putting themselves and any others in the area at risk from dangerous levels of dust. And when information or alerts are displayed immediately on a screen, this adds real power to training efforts.

Additionally, personalised, real-time monitoring gives confidence to workers that they're being protected and that their employer is taking their health seriously. An organisations’ staff are their biggest asset, and this technology helps ensure that they're being kept safe from harmful dust levels.

Plus, by keeping your staff safer, you’re also helping to protect your organisation by reducing the likelihood of negligence claims or breaches of safety legislation (and the fines and bad press that often come along with it). Finally, this technology has been proven to lower costs for the businesses who implement it: at a car manufacturing plant in Europe, for example, real-time dust monitoring technology revealed that extractors were running too fast. When they lowered the speed of the extraction units, they lowered their energy usage and costs. And at a large construction project, real-time dust monitoring technology helped regulate water suppression efforts, resulting in lower water and diesel usage, and reduced costs.

What is the real-world impact of dust monitoring technology?

Finally, we talked with Adrian about a real-world example that shows the impact of personalised, real-time dust monitoring technology.

What kind of impact can teams expect to see immediately after they adopt dust monitoring technology?

Adrian: A recent example springs to mind. At a quarry in Cumbria, the team knew they had a dust issue – this was due to the processes that occurred on site. They had regular visits from an occupational hygienist and annual ‘back to work’ talks about dust from the safety manager, but their issues persisted.

Ultimately, they introduced real time dust monitoring on site: the safety advisor gave two workers a monitor to wear while they each carried out the same task between the start of their shift until break time. The safety advisor downloaded their data over their break and printed off graphs showing each workers’ results. He showed the workers (both of whom had been doing the job for years) that one of them was being exposed to double the amount of risk, which prompted the workers to immediately begin sharing how each of them were approaching the task. From this conversation, they realised how they could reduce their exposure further.

According to the health and safety manager, because they could see the data, it really lit a fire within them to try and reduce exposure - their mindsets totally changed. In the past, these same workers had sat through countless talks on dust and looked bored and uninterested, but once they had the real-time data they became huge advocates for the technology.

Reactec + Trolex for better dust monitoring at work

The Trolex XD1+ is designed to be the lightest weight, most practical personal dust monitoring technology on the market. With no filters, pumps, tubes, or replaceable parts, the XD1+ is incredibly compact and easy to use. Workers only need to switch it on and secure it in place, and they’re ready to get to work.

By pairing their XD1+ with the R-Link smartwatch, workers can view their own dust exposure levels right on their watch face. This enables incredibly fast decision-making, making it possible for workers to respond more immediately to real-time exposure data.

Additionally, through this partnership, individual workers’ exposure data is stored and analysed in Reactec’s ultra-secure, powerful Analytics platform. With this unprecedented level of insight, teams can easily identify patterns, trends, and hotspots, and respond by adjusting their ways of working, or by improving controls.

When it comes to protecting your workers from dangerous occupational dust, it’s not as simple as just wearing PPE. Workers need the right kind of protection for different tasks and environments, and even then, some workers might still be exposed to unnecessarily high levels of risk. The only way to ensure that your workers are well and truly protected from the dangers of workplace dust is to supplement your existing approach with personalised, real-time dust monitoring technology. And not only does this technology improve health and safety outcomes for workers, it can reduce costs and liability for businesses, as well.

To learn more about real-time dust monitoring technology with Reactec + Trolex, please contact us to set up a conversation.