Protecting Young Lungs with Dust Extraction
Protecting Young Lungs with Dust Extraction
And safeguarding specifiers, mechanical services consultants, and installers at the same time!
Protecting children from air pollution is critical. The UNSW Sydney’s School of Built Environment reports that ‘Pollutant exposure during developmental stages may produce lifelong issues such as respiratory infections and upper and lower airways disorders’, and ‘low ventilation rates raise the concentration contaminants in a classroom environment, such as emissions from the building materials and furniture and particulate matter from indoor/outdoor sources.’
Ventilation is not enough: dust extraction in schools needs to be efficient and safe.
However, Dust Extraction Systems come with their own dangers and concerns:
- Incorrectly sized dust collectors: (which maybe 75% of school filters are), causes rapid deterioration in the efficiency of the filter sock media. This results in reduced extraction and cleanliness of the air in the classroom environment.
- Explosive nature of wood dust: Dust collectors, apart from perhaps heating boilers, are one of the few things in a school site that can explode. Dust explosions are fortunately rare, but when they do occur it can be devastating, causing damage, secondary fires and possible injury.
- Wrongly positioned in plant rooms: To overcome explosion danger, architects place them in plant rooms. But an explosion/fire in a plant room can still produce damage to surrounding rooms, including anyone who’s unlucky enough to be inside the plant room at the time. Smoke damage and water damage (if the fire brigade attend), adds to the resultant clean up time and repair costs.
So, it makes sense to place a dust collector outside. But there is still the risk that pupils/staff may be injured by a dust explosion. Even dust collectors fitted with explosion release membranes in their wall will still emit a fireball horizontally across the surrounding area. Most schools don’t realise this.
From Scandinavia, the birthplace of safety, comes the SuperSafe school filter unit from Ebcam.
This unit is simply the world’s safest dust extraction filter. They have been fitted in Europe for 20 years and are increasingly fitted in over 70% of New Zealand schools in the last 5 years.
Why?
Because uniquely they capture the dust explosion inside the filter, forcing it up to the top of the unit where it’s then emitted safely to the sky.
NO flame leaves the filter, only the shockwave. No fireball explodes across the school grounds. A unique feature.
If you’re involved in designing, specifying or installing school dust extraction systems, are you selecting the safest solution? Or do you choose the cheapest and quickest to install? Or do you follow what was specified on all the school projects for the last 30 years by a nameless consultant/architect, who has now retired?
Meeting European ATEX Equipment Directive 2014/34/EU, the unique VFV™ (Vertical Flameless Venting) Supersafe Filters for schools are the safest money can buy - and may be no more expensive than what’s being used currently.
Protect your clients, your company, your reputation and your school’s pupils and select the World’s Safest Dust Extraction Collector for your school dust extraction.
To check our SuperSafe Modular Dust extraction for schools from Ebcam Dust & Fume CLICK here
