Maintenance & systems
Buying a new machine can quietly change your LEV duties. A new or altered process means your COSHH assessment must be reviewed, any extraction it needs designed and fitted, and that new LEV commissioned to establish its baseline before it joins the fourteen-month examination cycle. New plant is a new control problem, not just a new asset.
The short answer
Buying a new machine can quietly change your LEV duties. A new or altered process means your COSHH assessment must be reviewed, any extraction it needs designed and fitted, and that new LEV commissioned to establish its baseline before it joins the fourteen-month examination cycle. New plant is a new control problem, not just a new asset.
The detail
A new machine rarely arrives alone. If it emits dust, fume, mist or vapour, it brings a new exposure - and COSHH requires that your risk assessment be reviewed whenever a new substance is introduced or a process changes. So the first obligation a purchase triggers is not mechanical but assessive: work out what the new plant releases, who is exposed, and whether existing controls cope or new ones are needed. Skipping that review is how a business ends up running uncontrolled emissions from equipment that looked like a straight productivity upgrade.
Where control is needed, extraction usually has to be designed for the specific emission, not borrowed from a hood that happened to be nearby. A capture arrangement that suits welding fume will not suit a fine dry dust or a solvent vapour; the hood type, the capture velocity, the ductwork and the filtration all follow from what the machine actually produces. Tacking a new machine onto an existing system without checking the fan can still move enough air can also quietly starve the older hoods it already served.
Any new or modified LEV must then be commissioned. Commissioning measures and records the system's performance when new and correct - the airflow and capture velocities that become the baseline every future thorough examination is judged against. Without that datum there is no reference point, and later tests can only guess whether the system has fallen off from where it started. Commissioning is the moment that baseline is captured, and it cannot be recovered later.
From there the new system joins the routine: it enters the fourteen-month thorough examination and test cycle under COSHH Regulation 9, gets its place in the maintenance schedule and its own logbook, and its design information is filed for the life of the equipment. A new machine, in other words, does not just add a hood - it adds a fresh control obligation with its own assessment, commissioning, testing and record-keeping.
What it means for you
The time to deal with all this is before the machine is bought, not after it is running. Factoring the exposure it creates, the extraction it needs and the commissioning it requires into the purchase decision means the control arrives with the plant, rather than being retrofitted once someone notices a haze over the new line. It is also far cheaper to specify extraction alongside the machine than to bolt it on afterwards.
Modifications count too, not just new purchases. Changing a process, moving a machine, increasing throughput or altering what a system handles can all shift the exposure and the extraction that controls it, and each is a trigger to review the assessment and re-check the LEV. The obligation follows the change, whatever form it takes.
Treated properly, a new machine slots cleanly into an existing LEV programme: assessed, controlled, commissioned to a baseline, tested on cycle and documented from day one. Treated as just an asset on the floor, it becomes an uncontrolled exposure and a gap in your compliance that the next examination - or the next inspection - will find.
The service behind the guide
Sibling guides
Where face-fit testing and RPE fit in · Keeping LEV working all year between tests · Budgeting LEV for many machines
Questions
It can. If the machine creates a new emission, COSHH requires your risk assessment to be reviewed, any extraction it needs to be designed and fitted, and that LEV commissioned before it joins the test cycle.
Because COSHH requires the assessment to be reviewed whenever a new substance is introduced or a process changes. New machinery usually does one or both, so the existing controls must be re-checked.
Only after checking the system can handle it. Adding a hood without confirming the fan still moves enough air can starve the existing hoods and leave both the new and old sources under-controlled.
Commissioning records the system's airflow and capture performance when new and correct. That baseline is what every future thorough examination is measured against, and it cannot be captured later.
Modifications count too. Moving a machine, changing a process or increasing throughput can shift the exposure and the extraction that controls it, and each is a trigger to review the assessment and re-check the LEV.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Phoenix carries out LEV testing to HSG258, with clear reports, honest remedial advice and records your insurer and inspector will accept. Call or email for a quote.