Hood alarms do need calibration and many fail after a few years. Have you taken face velocities on the hoods? Joseph R. Passante, CIH, CHO Associate Director Chemical Hygiene Officer Environmental Health & Radiation Safety University of Pennsylvania 215.746.6550 On Nov 19, 2009, at 4:12 PM, Edward Senkbeil wrote: > 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
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