Industrial hygiene concerns associated with oil shale development

Health protection concerns (including industrial hygiene, safety, and occupational medicine) must be evaluated to insure that development of the oil shale industry proceeds without significant risk to the health of the workers involved. These concerns need to be identified in the early stages of developing this industry. To provide a basis for discussing potential health protection concerns related to oil shale, it is necessary to briefly discuss the magnitude and characteristics of this resource; the alternate proposed technologies; and the unit operations which make up the operating system. This subject has been detailed in many publications, among them reports prepared for the Environmental Protection Agency. This discussion will be limited to providing sufficient background to put industrial hygiene and other health protection concerns in perspective, and will include a brief description of typical technologies under consideration. It will not provide a detailed description of these technologies, or attempt to cover all the alternate technologies which may be applied to the development of oil shale. However, a basis for considering potential health protection problems associated with development of this industry will be established

Effect of particle-size variation on filtration efficiency measured by the HEPA-filter quality-assurance test

A theoretical model has been used to calculate the filtration efficiency that would be indicated by the photometer for challenge aerosols of different size distributions and HEPA filters with different efficiencies as functions of particle size. The model compares the calculated overall efficiency indicated by the photometer with efficiencies calculated with respect to particle number and mass. This calculation assumes three aerosol distributions previously measured at the Filter Test Facilities and four different filtration efficiency versus size curves. The differences in efficiency measured by the QA test procedure and the efficiencies with respect to aerosol mass and number have been calculated for a range of different size particles. The results of these calculations are discussed