Air Quality Monitoring

AusSafety has experience providing air monitoring services across a multitude of industries Australia-wide, including manufacturing, construction, mining, maritime, education industries and government.

We are an approved provider of dust monitoring and dust management services suitable to meet the QGL02 Management of respirable dust in Queensland Mineral Mines and Quarries Guideline.

Air Quality Monitoring

We are an approved provider of dust monitoring and dust management services suitable to meet the QGL02 Management of respirable dust in Queensland Mineral Mines and Quarries Guideline.

Our Approach to Air Monitoring

Air monitoring is undertaken to determine the concentration of whichever airborne hazard that is present in the workplace. The results of the air monitoring are then typically compared against exposure standards as a means measuring of determining whether the individual (or group of workers) is at risk.
Our occupational hygienists all follow the ARECC decision-making framework when considering what hazards may exist and who may be exposed to them within various workplaces.

Some common airborne hazards that may require air monitoring include:

Respirable dust and crystalline silica (quartz)

Inhalable dust and metals

Diesel particulate matter (DPM)

Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)

Asbestos

Welding fumes

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) e.g., formaldehyde, solvents, etc.

Isocyanates

Ammonia

Sewer gases

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We only use Australian Standard, AIOH, and NIOSH methods and techniques to provide all air monitoring services. We also only use National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) accredited laboratories for the sample analysis.

We fully customise large scale exposure monitoring programs or one-off assessments that are appropriate to your situation. Every situation is different, from the objective of the monitoring, to the budget. We always aim to ensure any assessment is designed to ensure efficient and effective use of both time and money.

Our occupational hygienists utilise the AIOH’s Occupational Hygiene Monitoring and Compliance Strategies guidebook to help design any monitoring program. A referenced tool from the guidebook is the Occupational Exposure Sampling Strategy Manual DHEW (NIOSH) Publication No. 77- 173, which is commonly used for large scale monitoring programs. Smaller one-off assessments may require any number of approaches mentioned within the AIOH guidebook. All monitoring approaches are agreed to prior to undertaking any on-site assessment.

Our Occupational Hygienists can:

Conduct personal monitoring to assess your employees' individual or Similar Exposure Groups (SEGs) exposure

Conduct static (fixed) monitoring at strategic locations to assess how well control measures are working, or determine specific locations that may require additional control.

Conduct real time (process specific) measurements to determine how specific processes or movements within the workplace contribute to worker exposure.

The Air Monitoring Process

We understand that having your workers away from their duties for any period of time costs money. Therefore, we aim to ensure the setup of air monitors occurs seamlessly. Our occupational hygienists will arrive on site and setup all the equipment, ready to run. From there, workers only need to attend the setup area for a few minutes to have equipment attached and have their details collected.

We utilise a process taken from the mining industry, whereby every worker monitored is provided with a feedback diary. The diary is a way for each worker to record the tasks that they undertook throughout the monitoring period. This helps us keep a record from the worker’s perspective of what they did throughout their shift. Of course, the Occupational Hygienist will also make observations of the workplace separate to those notes made by the workers themselves, which will include notes on each worker.

Workers may be checked upon throughout the monitoring period with additional informal conversations to understand what their roles are and how they may be exposed to the hazard in question. Monitoring must be undertaken across a minimum of half the shift, but preferably 75-80% is what our Hygienists aim to achieve.

At the completion of the monitoring period, the equipment is collected as well as a debrief with each worker about the monitoring period. Any information that may be relevant to result is noted.

It is important to understand that a workplace environment is highly variable, from wind strength and direction, to how busy the workplace is, or simply the time of year. Differences may even exist in how individual workers perform the same task. It must be recognised that it is virtually impossible to monitor all possible scenarios within the workplace. Because of this, any monitoring data recorded can typically only be related to the tasks and environment being assessed at the time. However, we do have tools that can help extrapolate the likelihood that workers may or may not be excessively exposed into the future.

We know there will be a number of audiences for our reports, from workers on the ground, to supervisors, managers or C-suite and members of the board. Our Executive Summary helps explain very quickly, what was assessed, what the results were and what needs to be done. The remainder of the report contains a more in-depth view at the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.

Within our reporting we can utilise modern exposure assessment software including IHSTAT or IHMOD 2.0, etc. when analysing data for the purposes of determining compliance with exposures standards for various workgroups. Every report shall provide recommendations (both short and long term) for control measures that may be allocated to various stakeholders in your organisation to help provide a safer work environment.