Phoenix Journal · LEV & Air Quality
A new machine is the cheapest moment to design a risk out, and the easiest one to under-assess. PUWER makes the employer responsible for safe use whatever the machine's origin - and that means assessing the dust, fume or mist it releases as carefully as its moving parts.
A new machine or a new process is the moment a workshop's risk profile changes, and it is also the moment those risks are cheapest to design out. Once a machine is bolted down and in production, retrofitting a guard or an extraction hood is disruptive and expensive; before it arrives, it is a line in a specification. The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations, PUWER, exist to make sure work equipment is safe to use whatever its age, condition or origin, and they place the duty squarely on the employer who controls how it is used, not only on whoever made it.
Buying new does not transfer that duty away. New machinery placed on the market in Great Britain must carry a UKCA or CE mark, come with a Declaration of Conformity, and arrive with instructions in English; CE marking continues to be recognised in Great Britain. But a conformity mark is the manufacturer's statement, often self-certified, that the machine meets essential requirements. It is not a guarantee, and the buyer still has to check the basics: that the mark and declaration are present, that the instructions are in English, and that the machine is free from obvious defects such as missing or damaged guards.
So the arrival of equipment is not the end of the safety job but the start of it. Your task is to assess the machine as it will actually be used in your workshop, by your people, alongside your other work, and to write the controls into a safe system of work before anyone runs it in anger.
Two families of hazard
A machine risk assessment has to look in two directions at once. The mechanical hazards are the obvious ones: cutting and severing, crushing between moving parts, shearing, entanglement in rotating tooling, and burns from hot surfaces or emissions. These are what guards, interlocks, two-hand controls and emergency stops are for, and PUWER expects those controls to be present, effective and hard to defeat. Guarding that is awkward or easily overridden tends to be bypassed, so an inconvenient safeguard is itself a hazard worth designing out.
The half that gets forgotten is health. Many machines create airborne contaminants the moment they run: wood dust from a saw, mist from a coolant flood, fume from a weld, or fine particulate from a grinder. Those are hazardous substances, and they bring the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations into play alongside PUWER. Assessing a new machine for its mechanical dangers while ignoring the dust or mist it throws into the air is only half a job, and it is usually the half that harms people slowly rather than suddenly.
The manufacturer's manual is the bridge between the two. By law it must list the residual risks, the dangers that could not be designed out, along with the noise and vibration data and any conditions for safe use. Those residual risks are not paperwork to file; they are the specific things your safe system of work has to manage. Read them, and you know exactly what the maker is handing to you to control.
The dust the machine makes
The quickest way to under-assess a machine is to judge it by what it does and forget what it releases. A new saw or sander brings exactly the exposures set out in how to control dust in a joinery workshop, where hardwood dust carries a cancer risk and the answer is on-tool or local extraction, never a broom. Specifying the machine and the extraction as a single purchase, rather than buying the machine now and thinking about capture later, is both cheaper and far more effective, because a hood designed for that tool at source will always beat one bolted on afterwards. The time to size the LEV is while you are still negotiating the machine.
A process is more than a machine
A new process rarely arrives as a single tidy machine; it brings new substances, new interactions and sometimes new modifications to equipment you already own. Where a modification is so extensive that the item is essentially a new machine, it needs full conformity assessment again, and any new substance needs to be folded into the wider COSHH picture described in managing hazardous substances in a small engineering firm. Assessing a process means asking how its outputs mix with everything else in the building, because a fume that is harmless alone can be a problem next to the wrong neighbour, and a machine that was safe on its own can create a hazard once it shares a room and an extraction system.
Questions
It means the manufacturer states the machine meets essential requirements, often by self-certification. It is not a guarantee. As the buyer you must still check the mark and Declaration of Conformity are present, the instructions are in English, and the machine has no obvious defects such as missing guards.
Yes. PUWER and the Management Regulations make you responsible for safe use in your own workplace. Assess the machine as your people will actually use it, manage the residual risks the manufacturer lists, and control any dust, fume or mist it releases under COSHH.
Plan it as part of the purchase. A hood designed to capture at source for that specific tool beats one added afterwards, and sizing the LEV while you negotiate the machine is cheaper and more effective. Have it examined and tested under COSHH once it is running.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Size the extraction before it is installed. Phoenix advises on capture at source, then examines and tests the LEV to COSHH Regulation 9 once it runs. UK-wide.