The hoods (about 5 years old) in all our undergraduate chemistry labs are equipped with alarms which supposedly should go off with improper air flow. However many will continually alarm if the sash is pulled up by more than one third the way (below where sash has a normal catch about half way up). Is there any law / regulation which states that we must have the alarms working if they are part of the original equipment? All the hoods have flow gauges on them which are functioning, but we have been unable to get all the alarms to work properly. We are told it would be very expensive to get them all functioning. They become a problem in large student labs since they continually go off, and are distracting both faculty and students. We have considered disarming the alarm, but are concerned about any regulations we might be violating. Students are beginning to not pay attention to the flow gauges, but just automatically hit the mute button on the alarms. We believe the flow gauges are a more accurate reflection of any problems. Any comments or suggestions welcome. Ed Senkbeil, Ph.D. Chemistry Department Salisbury University
Previous post | Top of Page | Next post