Many workplace protection factor studies have demonstrated the fact that the laboratory performance is not indicative of the respirators performance on actual wearers in the workplace. The laboratory tests for the measurement of inward leakage is very different from the conditions, (i.e. job, work rate, environment), under which actual wearers use the Respiratory Protective Devices – in short, the exercises carried out by the subjects during the inward leakage test do not reflect the actual conditions of use. The resulting workplace fit factors within Europe show partially extreme variations depending on the approach how they have been derived (e.g from TIL lab test, WPF-studies, etc…).
The goal of the project is to determine European wide accepted workplace protection factors for different type of respiratory protective devices (RPD) as a basis for an improved risk assessment.
Dr. Peter Paszkiewicz, IFA, peter.paszkiewicz@dguv.de
