(638b) Respirator Cartridge Performance Testing for Chemicals of Potential Concern (COPC’s)

To accurately assess the performance of respiratory protection cartridges under varying environmental conditions, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) have jointly developed a laboratory test system to test respirator cartridges commonly used at Hanford tank farms in Richland, Washington, USA. The goal of this program is to understand respirator effectiveness across a wide range of vapors/gases and concentrations at wide range of humidities (50-80 RH) and high temperature (100 F). The Hanford Tank Farms has over 170 nuclear waste tanks that have varying vapor mixtures. For workers operating around those tanks, cartridge respirators are used to reduce potential health risks associated with chemicals of potential concern (COPC) in complex vapor mixtures. Laboratory testing will provide industrial hygiene professionals an understanding of the performance of respirator cartridges with these varying mixtures of COPC vapors under a range of environmental conditions. We will present our recent results on the experiments where the performance of the MSA OptiFilter TL multipurpose respirator cartridge was tested against a gas mixture containing tank waste representative gases that include furans, nitrosamines, aldehydes, ammonia, mercury, and nitrous oxide with varying chemical vapor concentrations. The tank waste representative breakthrough time can be used for establishing improved cartridge change out schedules and are improve worker safety and operating conditions. Laboratory results will be compared with the field results obtained through testing with actual tank vapors to benchmark the laboratory methodology.