Composites and resin exposure, chemical processing lines, hexavalent chromium, confined space in structures, and a customer and regulatory audit load that arrives continuously.
Epoxy and isocyanate exposure produces sensitization that ends careers, and it develops quietly over years. Ventilation, skin protection and exposure assessment are the controls, and they are frequently sized to odor rather than to a standard.
These carry specific substance standards with permissible limits, exposure assessment, medical surveillance, regulated areas and recordkeeping. Legacy plating and coating operations often predate any of that being implemented properly.
Tank lines with heated acids and caustics create burn, splash and inhalation exposure, plus confined space entry for maintenance and a significant wastewater obligation.
Fuel tanks, wing boxes and fuselage sections are confined spaces with genuinely difficult rescue. Entry programs written around vessels and pits do not transfer cleanly.
Long-standing facilities carry processes qualified decades ago and difficult to change because the qualification is customer-controlled. Substitution is slow, so controls carry the whole burden.
Customer audits, AS9100 surveillance, regulatory inspections and government facility requirements arrive on separate schedules, and EHS documentation is requested by all of them.
We start where the chronic exposure is: what employees are actually exposed to, at what levels, with what controls, and whether the substance-specific requirements are being met. Exposure assessment and medical surveillance are the elements most commonly deficient in this industry.
Then the program work — confined space written for the structures you actually enter, ventilation adequacy, chemical processing line controls, and an audit-ready documentation structure that serves customer, registrar and regulator from one source.
If you have hex chrome, cadmium, isocyanates or similar, the substance standards require exposure assessment, and assuming exposures are low without data is not a defensible position. We define what needs sampling and coordinate accredited industrial hygiene providers to perform it.
Sometimes, and it is worth pursuing, but process qualification is usually customer-controlled and slow. Plan for controls to carry the exposure for years while substitution proceeds.
The same way they apply anywhere, with the added difficulty that rescue is genuinely hard. Entry procedures and rescue capability need to be written for the actual geometry rather than adapted from a tank entry program.
No. It is a quality management standard and contains no occupational health and safety requirements. The discipline transfers; the content does not.
Access constraints are workable — we scope what can be assessed with the access available and structure the engagement around it rather than assuming full site access.
Twenty minutes to identify which substance standards apply to you and where the assessment gaps are.
Exposure assessment and surveillance for specialty processes.
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