When the editors of ISHN asked me to write an article concerning changes to gas detection in this decade, the second decade of the twenty-first century, I welcomed the opportunity to look back and explore whether or not the rules that govern gas monitoring in industry really have changed over the years.
The modern era of gas detection, as I like to refer to it, began nearly 20 years ago when OSHA adopted the most significant piece of legislation to ever impact gas detection: The Confined Space Act of 1993, 29CFR1910.146. For the first time, workers were required, by law, to use a real-time, “direct reading” instrument to determine if the atmospheric conditions were safe prior to entering a permit-required confined space. Similar laws quickly followed in Canada and other countries around the world. These acts, which were designed to prevent injury and death in confined space accidents, resulted in the proliferation of the use of portable gas monitoring instruments. They established the rules of the game that has evolved very slowly throughout the past two decades.
Over the years there have been several changes to accepted standards for limiting worker exposures to hazardous gases on the job such as the reductions in the ACGIH TLV recommendations for sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide exposure in 2009 and 2010. But these rule changes, like other similar guidelines for limiting a worker’s exposure to hazardous conditions, are designed to eliminate the long-term health effects of gas exposure and do not carry a requirement for anyone to use a portable gas detector.