Worker Safety on Ships Conducting Cleanup Operations or Working Within Contaminated Areas

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• Protect Cleanup Workers from Exposure to Toxic Oil Byproducts
• Monitoring Decontamination of Wildlife
• Monitoring Decontamination of People and Equipment
• Worker Safety on Oil Rigs
• Area Monitoring on Vessels
• Worker Safety on Supply Ships
• Area Monitoring of Shoreline

Vessels towing or placing containment, skimming, and sorbent booms, as well as those operating in contaminated ocean areas, can inadvertently lead to exposure of onboard workers to hazardous VOCs (volatile organic compounds).

VOC levels in these situations can easily exceed permissible exposure levels (PEL) established by the U.S. Government and followed its regulatory and safety agencies. Spilled oil can contain high concentrations of VOCs like benzene, xylene, toluene and naphthalene, as well as the chemicals employed in oil dispersants, such as 2-Butoxyethanol, which can affect the respiratory system, central nervous system, kidneys, and liver. Wherever oil is being burned off, high concentrations of benzene may be present.

As these chemicals evaporate and become airborne, they pose their greatest threat to human health. Accordingly, VOCs and related chemicals in these environments should be monitored to ensure worker safety.

Recommended RAE Systems Gas Detectors

Checking the air for contaminants produced by spilled crude oil and oil dispersants used to thin the oil can be performed with a handheld gas monitor such as a MultiRAE Plus or UltraRAE 3000, which use photoionization detectors (PID) for accurate parts-per-million broadband sensing.

OSHA. part of the U.S. Government, has established a TWA (time-weighted average over eight hours) exposure limit of 1 ppm of benzene, and a STEL (short-term exposure limit of 15 minutes) of a maximum of 5 ppm. The Action Level of 0.5 ppm can be triggered by a mixture that might include or be mostly benzene. Using a ppm-sensitive monitor like the MultiRAE Plus to check for total VOCs, you can then perform a benzene-specific test with the UltraRAE 3000, which has a special mode for specifically measuring benzene.