Many hazardous industrial environments require personnel to wear breathing air masks or suits for protection, relying totally for their security on the connection to the breathing air circuit. Craig Forrester reviews some of the life threatening hazards that can potentially arise during use and how these can be eliminated. Breathing air lines have to perform perfectly with total reliability. Any chance of accidental disconnection or connection to the wrong circuit must be avoided. Dangerous incidents resulting from accidental disconnection or connecting to unsuitable gases still occur. The cause of most accidents could be avoided by using connectors specifically designed for the job and not an adaptation of standard compressed air connectors. Breathing air connectors should be readily identifiable, require at least two distinct and separate actions to disconnect and be incapable of connection to any other circuits. Otherwise it has been said that breathing air connectors are accidents waiting to happen.
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