PEROSH’s joint research project indIR-UV aims to evaluate more rigorously indirect exposure to ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) radiation. The main focus is put on welding activities. While it is obvious that the welder needs personal protective equipment (PPE), it’s not easy to assess the exposure of bystanders and consequently the need to use PPEs for them as well or think of more rigorous mitigating measures to reduce the risks of indirect exposure. Therefore, the project’s aim is the development of a procedure for exposure assessment, which has been realized in 3 steps:
- Checking the quality of today’s used measurement equipment by carrying out a so called ‘round robin test’; i.e. an inter-laboratory test (measurement, analysis, or experiment) performed independently several times
- Obtain measurement techniques for strongly flickering welding arcs
- Develop a model in accordance to the measurements
This model then can be used by safety engineers, employers and organizations in the OSH field to assess the exposure risks to indirect UV and IR radiation more professionally and decide on risk mitigating measures accordingly.
Current status of the project:
- The measurement equipment of the project partners is compared and shows surprisingly good accordance (regarding the strong flickering). Not only spectrometers, but also the more handsome radiometers can be used for a rough estimation of the radiation exposure.
- The model for UV and IR radiation is nearly finished and needs only a basic set of parameters, e.g. welding process, current, room dimensions and surfaces, to be completed
The project terminates mid of 2017. The results will be published and the final release of the models and all measured data will be available through PEROSH as well.