Today's Holiday Hazardous Vapor is Ethyl Alcohol, also known as alcohol, ethanol, or grain alcohol. While it's festive in the form of alcoholic beverages at home, it can be deadly in the workplace. According to NIOSH, exposure to ethyl alcohol vapor should be below 1000 PPM averaged over an 8-hour workday. Ethanol is commonly used in the food and beverage industry for many purposes, including deglazing meats and general cleaning and sterilization. However, the intoxication resulting from inhalation of these vapors can lead to a variety of OSHA violations, including injury from trip and fall, laceration from cooking knives, and even workplace violence. Yikes!
To measure ethanol, we prefer using a carbon-based adsorbent and analysis by OSHA method 5001, which eliminates the humidity dependence of previous methods (OSHA 7) that gave false negative test results. Carbon adsorbents adsorb a surprising amount of water, and this water sequesters the collected ethanol interfering with the measurement. OSHA 5001 uses a desorber that dissolves both the water and all of the ethanol collected, making it available for accurate detection. Our SKC sampler has a well-validated collection rate, ensuring that our measures of exposure are as accurate as possible. It's crucial to prioritize safety in the workplace and take necessary precautions to prevent exposure to hazardous vapors like ethyl alcohol. Stay safe, everyone.
