2020 Volume 11 Issue 2 Pages 23-25
A fume hood is a local ventilation device equipped in experimental laboratories which is designed to limit exposure to hazardous or toxic fumes, vapors, and dusts. Although periodic checkups by users are important for maintaining and securing safety functions of fume hoods, there are currently no checkup tool available to assist users’ self-inspection. The authors, members of an NPO corporation; the “Research for Environment, Health, and Safety Education (REHSE)”, have summarized practical checkup methods for fume hood users and developed an on-line application by cooperating with fume hood users and manufacturers. This application provides users information on the importance of periodical checkups, warning signs of troubles that can be found on a daily basis, examples of possible problems that may occur if checkups are not performed, tips for efficient and reasonable checkups, technical terms of checkups, and related laws in regards to checkups. To take advantage of this feature, this application is designed to be accessible on smartphones or PCs so that it can be easily checked on the spot when users need to solve problems or to know how to perform a check on fume hoods.
The expected importance of this application is that, in addition to directly helping to solve the FH problems in laboratories, it also has an educational effect of raising interest in the device and to cultivate the user’s active attitude for its proper use. This application is also expected to contribute to the internationalization of the university by offering a multilingual interface that is currently being developed.
