The American Industrial Hygiene Association® (AIHA), in collaboration with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), has released two new fundamental consensus standards which promote conformity among assessment systems.

Portable Ventilation Systems

According to an AIHA press release, the new standard ANSI/AIHA Z9.9-2010 describes fundamental good practices related to the design, manufacture, labeling, use and application, and maintenance and testing of portable ventilation systems used for the control of airborne contaminants or environmental conditions. Intended users of this Standard include owners of facilities, designers and manufacturers of portable ventilation equipment, employers, industrial hygienists and safety professionals, maintenance personnel, and end-users. This Standard is compatible with other recognized standards of good practice.

ANSI/AIHA Z9.9 intends to address a long-standing need in the ventilation arena. Portable ventilation is a broad and complex subject. Much of what applies to portable ventilation systems does not apply to fixed systems, and vice versa. This equipment is usually unobtrusive, often just another piece of clutter in surroundings crowded with other portable and mobile equipment and tools.

Portable equipment comes in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the home-built to the shop-built to the factory-built, and the utilitarian to the elegant. Very little, if anything, exists in standard textbooks on ventilation about this subject. Yet, the subject is considerably more complicated than meets the eye of the casual observer.

Dilution Ventilation Systems in Industrial Occupancies

The revised ANSI/AIHA Z9.10-2010 standard establishes minimum requirements for the commissioning, design, specification, construction, installation, management, operation, maintenance and testing of dilution ventilation systems (including demand dilution ventilation) used for the reduction, prevention and control of employee exposure to harmful airborne substances in the industrial environment. The Standard establishes minimum requirements to provide safe and healthful working conditions in industrial employee occupancies.

Copies of ANSI/AIHA standards can be purchased at www.aiha.org. For more information, contact Mili Mavely, Manager, Standards and Guidelines at mmavely@aiha.org or (703) 846-0794.