Working for a safety supply company in an advisory role, it is common for me to be consulting with customers regarding the purchase of a new air monitor or the troubleshooting of one they already own. It astounds me to find out just how many employers own confined space (or other) air monitors and do not have any cal gas of their own (for bump testing and calibration).
Simply put, a bump test is only a quick verification of functionality of the monitor. It is designed to set off the alarms of the various sensors (not to “recalibrate” the instrument).
Here are some of the excuses for not owning a bump test/calibration kit:
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Too expensive – and besides, it already comes calibrated
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Didn’t know I needed it
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I have a local service come calibrate my instrument every 6 months
Here are my responses to each of these excuses:
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Are your employees’ lives worth the few hundred dollar risk? One of our vendors, Industrial Scientific, had collected and monitored data from tens of thousands of gas detectors over the last 7 years. They found that 3 gas detectors out of every 1,000 will fail to respond properly to gas during a bump test on any given day. That can potentially endanger employees going into a given confined space.
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Sometimes when employees order directly from our web site or from a customer service rep, they don’t realize all the equipment they need to purchase (don’t ask questions). Manufacturers rely on customers reading the user instructions to remind them that it is recommended that bump tests be performed daily on the instrument, with calibration to follow at certain increments (have seen everywhere from daily to every 6 months).
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While having a “service” stop by periodically to calibrate your monitor seems awfully convenient, that doesn’t eliminate the fact that you still need cal gas equipment to perform your daily bump tests.
Feel free to review the entire report from Industrial Scientific.
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