Welcome to Fume Hood Design for the 21 st Century:A Cross-Disciplinary Workshop

Welcome to Fume Hood Design for the 21st Century:A Cross-Disciplinary Workshop

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHOChemical Hygiene OfficerKeene State [email protected]

Secretary, Division of Chemical Health and Safety, American Chemical Society

Why (Part 1)? In 2013, Cornell’s Facilities

Engineering, Energy Management, and Environmental Health and Safety offices partnered to update the Cornell Laboratory Design Standards and Details for general ventilation.

You can find these by Googling “Cornell laboratory design standards”

This document describes the institution’s expectations for general laboratory ventilation design, but does not address fume hood design issues specifically.

http://cds.fs.cornell.edu/file/15020_Laboratories.pdf

Why (Part 2)?After reviewing laboratory design projects

at Cornell, standards from international organizations, and attending I2SL’s national conferences, we knew there are emerging design questions about fume hoods that were not answered by the existing Cornell standard.

These include acceptable face velocity specifications, air turnover rates within the hood, innovative sash designs, and testing protocols for novel designs, among others.

We canvassed peers at other campus to see if they had developed a design standard that addressed these issues. They were facing similar challenges.

Why (Part 3)?We also felt that there were

many stakeholders involved in the lab design process that did not necessarily hear each other’s perspectives during a typical design project due to deadline pressures.

After meeting with EHS staff at MIT to discuss this need (and opportunity), we pulled together the organizing groups to make today’s workshop possible.

Why (Part 4)?The Goal:

Provide a guide to developing description for lab designers of the institution’s expectations for fume hoods (a design standard).

The standard documents acceptable design elements and performance criteria for fume hoods in a way that allows the introduction of new technology that meets these criteria

The goal of this document is to: Identify current national standards and

other best practice documents Understand aspects of these standards

that the new technologies may surpass

So what are we talking about specifically today?We want to identify Specific Questions, the

relative priorities of those questions and options for answering those questions, related to Fume Hood Design during construction, renovation and operation of lab space.

General lab ventilation questions are not on the table; there are a variety of standards available to address standard questions and emerging issues were addressed by a conference at UCLA last fall; a report of which will be coming soon.

We are very interested in hearing questions from the audience about fume hood design and project management

Who: the Organizing Groups

Four organizations with a common interest in laboratory design and use:I2SL, New England ChapterThe Division of Chemical Health

and Safety of the American Chemical Society

The Campus Consortium for Environmental Excellence

Campus Safety, Health and Environmental Management Association

Who: the Sponsors

ACS DCHAS

Safety Stratus

Kewaunee

Lab Crafters

New England Lab

Who: The ParticipantsIntroductions in the room

Distance participants

How?

The Technical ReportersWoodard & Curran

Our Logistical ConnectionCSHEMA

Content questions that arise during the event should be sent to [email protected]

Administrative questions that arise should be sent to Brian Magee <[email protected]>

When?Morning plenary available over the Webinar

platform: 10 to 11 AM Eastern time

Small group discussions, in Norwood and at distance locations, from 11 to 2 PM (no web connection)

Reports from small groups and discussions available via the web connection at 2 PM Eastern Time

Final report will be available in a few months from the Organizing Groups

A Word about TerminologyWe know that many EHS professionals

feel that “fume hood” is not the correct technical term for laboratory chemical hoods. They are right.

However, “fume hoods” are the traditional term of choice for engineered devices that are placed in laboratories to contain and remove gasses from specific processes, and we’re not going to try to change that today.