Workers in various industries can be exposed to dangerous airborne contaminants. Those contaminants can be as different from each other as construction is to manufacturing and mining is to firefighting. The dangers range from nuisance level dusts to serious, life-threatening exposure, each requiring respiratory products at various levels of protection. Whether you are reviewing a well-established respiratory program or starting completely from scratch, sometimes going back to the basics is exactly what we need!
Before we identify the solution, we must first identify the problem. Therefore, the questions we ask when we begin the process of selecting a respirator should focus around the contaminant. It is imperative to educate ourselves about the contaminants we are exposed to, but more importantly, we must know the concentration of that contaminant that is present in the air.