24 Containment Performance (CP): a risk-based, SF6-free method for evaluating fume cupboards as part of an overall facility management

Introduction At the EPFL Campus there are 1,150 fume cupboards, among the main engineering controls of occupational exposure in laboratories. Ensuring that cupboards provide the required user safety and level of containment demands a special risk-based management strategy from the logistics department. Robot-Aided On-site Testing of Fume Cupboard (2022, M. Bittner, C. Moirandat, Annals of Work Exposures and Health) has assisted EPFL in developing its CP risk-based methodology. Protection goals According to the American Chemical Society (ACS) the hazard level in research laboratories belongs typically to Chemicals Safety Level 3 (CSL3) (2015, ACS, Identifying and evaluating hazards in research laboratories). The CP considers a limit of 1 ppm of isopropanol (IPA) as the maximum acceptable exposure value given most solvent’s occupational exposure limits. Method Signals from multiple IPA sensors on a robot go through several tests (chronic and acute risk, containment) elaborated based on expert judgments and statistics. The CP combines these results to determine if a hood can be qualified for a CSL3. Rapid on-site tests can be performed with the normal sash opening at 50 (QCSL3-50) or 40 cm (QCSL3-40) in case of limited aeraulic capacity. Outcomes Installation qualification, periodic checks (5 years), data management, user instruction, and labelling were introduced at EPFL. After two years, this approach demonstrated its ability to identify poor laboratory aeraulic design, defective cupboards, and perturbing currants. The CP showed a better discriminatory ability than the robustness test in the old European standard EN14175 “Fume cupboards and could become the new tool for fume cupboard installation, maintenance programs, and performance qualification without SF6.