Hanford Site workers next week will switch to some highly limited use of air purifying respirators in place of supplied air respirators at the Department of Energy facility’s waste storage tank farms.
A joint statement Thursday informed workers that starting March 14 some entries into the AP Tank Farm would involve use of air-purified respirators. The message was signed by Mark Lindholm, president of tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), and Dave Molnaa, president of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council (HAMTC), an umbrella group for 15 Hanford unions.
Initially, air purifying respirators will only be used in the AP Tank Farm when waste is not being disturbed and when there is no intrusion into waste tanks. Tasks could include operator rounds, routine radiological surveys, preventive maintenance, visual inspections, equipment calibrations, and job setup and take down. AP Tank Farm, which contains double-shell tanks, is the site of a pilot project for state-of-the-art monitoring and chemical vapor detection equipment.
Workers have used supplied air respirators to enter the fence line of all tank farms since June 2016, when HAMTC issued a stop work order unless personnel were using supplied air. WRPS complied and in August WRPS and HAMTC reached a formal understanding requiring supplied air respirators unless air-purifying respirators could be shown to protect against chemical vapors associated with waste stored in underground tanks. Union officials and workers are concerned that inhaling the vapors could cause serious illnesses.
“The joint decision between WRPS and HAMTC to allow workers to select these air-purifying filter cartridges is based on scientific evidence, with the desire to provide protective options that are less cumbersome than SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) or other supplied-air systems and reduce physical strain on our most valuable resource – our workforce,” Lindholm and Molnaa said in their message.
Laboratory analysis was done on air before it went through cartridges used on air purifying respirators and afterward to assess how well the cartridges performed in worst-case scenarios in the tank farms and for how long they performed well. The nearby Pacific Northwest National Laboratory analyzed the data, with the results assessed by a team of independent experts selected by HAMTC. The independent experts agreed that air-purifying respirators could be used under limited conditions at the AP Tank Farm.
“Evaluation of filter cartridge data from other tank farms is underway,” Lindholm and Molnaa told workers. Decisions on whether air-purifying respirators could be used elsewhere will be made individually for each tank farm. Individual workers will continue to have the option of choosing supplied air respirators over air purifying respirators, as is Hanford policy.