This article provides information on personal protective equipment (PPE), consistent with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Personal Protective Equipment Standard (29 CFR 1910.132-138). This standard is intended to protect individuals from the risk of injury by creating a barrier against workplace hazards. This article provides guidelines for establishing PPE programs with an overview of the responsibilities for employers, supervisors, and employees, assessing hazards associated with thermal spray operations, and training workers about PPE, as well as guidelines for selecting, using, and maintaining PPE. It presents an overview of eye, face, head, hand, foot, hearing, fall, and respiratory protection. Respiratory and hearing protection should be used in conjunction with industrial hygiene monitoring.

This article presents an overview of the rules, regulations, and techniques implemented to minimize the safety hazards associated with welding, cutting, and allied processes. Safety management, protection of the work area, process-specific safety considerations, and robotic and electrical safety are discussed. The article explains the use of personal protective equipment and provides information on protection against fumes, gases, and electromagnetic radiation. It concludes with a discussion on safe handling of compressed gases as well as the prevention and protection of fire and explosion.

This article describes the safety precautions required for using laboratory equipment. It reviews the various personal protective equipment specified on the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for laboratory chemicals and products. The article provides information on the storage and handling of etchants, solvents, acids, bases, and other chemicals. It describes the safety precautions and procedures for handling concentrated and dilute hydrofluoric acid. The article concludes with a discussion on the precautions to be followed in the event of spills and cleanup.

The hazards associated with thermal spray deposition processes include ultraviolet and infrared radiation; acoustical noise; and by-product production in the forms of nitrous oxides, ozone, fumes, and dust. The most important consideration in health and safety is to use the engineered controls of hazards. This article provides a brief description of the spray booth, the most commonly used engineering tool to separate the operator from the thermal spray process and confine the associated hazards. It also presents guidelines on the proper and safe handling of industrial gases and ventilation and heat exhaust. The article provides information on the personal protective equipment for eyes and skin from radiation, and ears from noise. It also discusses other potential safety hazards associated with thermal spraying, namely, magnetic fields and infrasound.

This article discusses the safety issues associated with the design and operation of thermal spray booths and spray box structures and the equipment or systems required for operating thermal spray processes. It describes the design elements necessary to mitigate sound, dust and fume, ultraviolet light, and mechanical hazards. The means selected for safeguarding personnel must be based on a formal risk assessment that meets ANSI/RIA standards. The safeguards include sensing devices, barriers, awareness signals, procedures, and training. It also provides guidelines that are intended to increase the safety awareness and the use of safety practices for gas and liquid piping and electrical equipment within thermal spray installations.

Risk assessments (RAs) must be customized to the specific workplaces and to the actual work being performed. It is performed to make the workers and their management aware of the hazards in the work environment, identify each risk in a methodical manner, and put in place a plan to mitigate the hazards. Information on risk assessment presented in this article provides a logical approach that can be taken to minimize risk and maximize thermal spray practitioners' safety. There are basically four steps to improving operational safety by using RAs: identifying the risks for each activity, rating the risk, putting in place the actions required to minimize risk, and reviewing and updating the RAs on a regular basis. The article presents two case studies to illustrate the concepts involved in RAs.

This article discusses the occupational health hazards related to industrial protective coating application and removal. It explains the health hazards associated with coating constituents such as lead, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, silica, and asbestos. The article also discusses hazard evaluation, hazard controls, Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, and industry consensus standards. It concludes with a description of containment systems to prevent environmental exposures from industrial paint removal projects.

During metal powder production, powder and/or dust handling, compaction, and part finishing operations, many safety and environmental risks exist. This article is a detailed account of the types of safety hazards that can exist and the issues that occur during metal powder handling, as well as recommendations and strategies that can be employed to both prevent and protect against damaging effects from powder exposure, fire and/or explosions, or environmental impact events.

Polyaspartic coating technology has found utility in a variety of coating applications, including corrosion protection and flooring topcoats, as these coatings are based on aliphatic polyisocyanates and aliphatic diamines. This article describes the chemistry of polyaspartic esters and curing characteristics and performance properties of polyaspartic coatings. It also provides information on curing corrosion protection coating systems, polyaspartic floor coatings, and safe-use recommendations for handling isocyanates.

This article presents an overview of the different types of coating and lining materials available. It provides information on the various means of surface preparation and the equipment and techniques of coating application. The article discusses the coatings industry's response to the enacted as well as proposed legislation of limiting the use of potentially harmful or toxic raw materials or surface preparation and/or application techniques. The article summarizes the existing federal regulations affecting the coatings industry categorized according to the requirements of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as well as the corresponding Code of Federal Regulation numbers.

Bitumen for coating usage can best be categorized as two fundamental but very different types: asphalts and coal tars. This article provides a detailed discussion on asphalt and coal tar hot-melt applications; asphalt and coal tar emulsions; asphalt and coal tar cutbacks; and coal tar epoxies. It reviews the similarities between asphaltic and coal tar coatings and discusses the health and environmental concerns of these materials.

Health and safety are critically important issues, and there are numerous aspects of the production and use of metal powders that may entail exposure to hazardous conditions. This article provides a discussion on the issues associated with the safe production and handling of metal powders and the safe operation of continuous mesh belt sintering furnaces with combustible atmospheres. It also provides a comprehensive high-level overview of the safety-related issues and concerns related to the use of compacting presses in the manufacturing sector.

This article discusses the standard conduct of coating failure investigation. As each failure is different, a specific coating failure may require increased emphasis on a given step, or additional work and/or steps may be required. This article covers the following topics: obtaining and analyzing background information, preliminary determination of site conditions, inspection equipment requirements, coating failure site investigation, sampling techniques, sample chain of custody, coordination with the coatings laboratory, report preparation, and sample retention.

Hybrid laser arc welding (HLAW) is a metal joining process that combines laser beam welding (LBW) and arc welding in the same weld pool. This article provides a discussion on the major process variables for two modes of operation of HLAW, namely, stabilization mode and penetration mode. The major process variables for either mode of operation include three sets of welding parameters: the variables for the independent LBW and gas metal arc welding processes and welding variables that are specific to the HLAW process. The article discusses the advantages, limitations, and applications of the HLAW and describes the major components and consumables used for HLAW. The components include the laser source, gas metal arc welding source, hybrid welding head, and motion system. The article also describes the typical sources of defects and safety concerns of HLAW.

Failure analysis is generally defined as the investigation and analysis of parts or structures that have failed or appeared to have failed to perform their intended duty. Methods of field inspection and initial examination are also critical factors for both reconstruction analysts and materials failure analysts. This article focuses on the general methods and approaches from the perspective of a reconstruction analyst. It describes the elements of accident reconstruction, which have conceptual similarity with the principles for failure analysis of material incidents that are less complex than a large-scale accident. The approach presented is that the analysis and reconstruction is based on the physical evidence. The article provides a brief review of some general concepts on the use and limitations of advanced data acquisition tools and computer modeling. Legal implications of destructive testing are discussed in detail.

Metallographic analysis is primarily a collection of visual and imaging techniques that provide an insight into the background of a material or part and its behavior. Metallic specimens, both porous and pore-free, are opaque, and as a result, an optical examination must be performed on carefully prepared planar (two-dimensional) surfaces. This article discusses the preparation sequence of ferrous powders, which is normally separated into several well-defined steps: sample selection, sectioning, mounting, grinding, polishing, drying, and chemical etching and/or coating. It provides several suggestions to promote and encourage the safety of those performing metallographic preparation and analysis.

Safety is an important consideration in all welding, cutting, and related work. This article discusses the basic elements of safety general to all welding, cutting, and related processes. It includes safety procedures common to a variety of applications. The most important component of an effective safety and health program is management support and direction. The article reviews the role of management, training, housekeeping, and public demonstrations in welding safety to minimize personal injury and property damage. It provides information on the safety measures for eye and face protection in various welding and cutting operations. Injuries and fatalities from electric shock in welding and cutting operations can occur if proper precautionary measures are not followed. The article discusses the electrical safety aspects to be considered for various welding and cutting operations.

This article discusses the three legal theories on which a products liability lawsuit is based and the issues of hazard, risk, and danger in the context of liability. It describes manufacturing and design defects of various products. The article explains a design that is analyzed from the human factors viewpoint and details the preventive measures of the defects, with examples. It presents four paramount questions relating to the probability of injury which are asked even when one executes all possible preventive measures carefully and thoroughly.

Any threat to personal safety should be regarded as a hazard and treated as such. This article discusses threats from several sources, such as kinematic/mechanical hazards, electrical hazards, energy hazards, human factors/ergonomic hazards, and environmental hazards. It describes hazard analysis in terms of failure modes and effects analysis, failure modes and criticality analysis, fault tree analysis, fault hazard analysis, and operating hazards analysis. The article examines fail-safe designs, such as fail-passive designs, fail-active designs, and fail-operational designs. It also provides information on various types of warnings, such as visual warning, auditory warnings, olfactory warnings, tactile warnings, and tastable warnings.