Mexborough · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Mexborough workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Mexborough
Mexborough sits where the River Don meets the Dearne in the Doncaster borough of South Yorkshire, a former coal, pottery and glass town whose earthenware and bottle works once shipped out along the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation. It is also the town that shaped Ted Hughes, who lived here from the age of eight to twenty-one, and the industrial country around it fed the imagery that made him poet laureate.
Its working economy still runs on the fabrication, engineering and food trades, much of it grouped in the units at Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate and the Cliff Street Industrial Estate down by the canal.
Each of those Mexborough processes throws fume, dust, mist or vapour into the workplace air, and COSHH demands it is captured at source - that capture system is local exhaust ventilation, and it must be thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We cover the lot, from the Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate units to the one-bench Mexborough workshops, taking capture and face-velocity readings and leaving a clear pass or remedial verdict with the hoods labelled.
By sector
A system that catches fume, dust, mist or vapour at the point it is released is LEV, and for Mexborough employers and others across South Yorkshire it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres and turning shops across the Swinton Meadows and Cliff Street units, the descendants of the Don Iron Works and the deep engineering skill the Denaby and Cadeby pits left behind.
Steam canopies, flour-dust control and cold-store ventilation in the bakeries, butchers and food units that supply Mexborough market and the surrounding Dearne Valley trade.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Mexborough cabinet shops and joinery works, where hardwood and MDF dust is captured at the tool before it reaches the lungs.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches at the metal shops on Cliff Street and Swinton Bridge, heirs to Greenwood Engineering and the town's gantry, handrail and structural steel trade. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Mexborough and Denaby bodyshops. Two-pack paints release isocyanates - the leading cause of occupational asthma - so booth airflow is examined to its design figure.
Clay, glaze and silica-dust capture in the ceramics and glass workshops that carry on the town of the Rock Pottery and the Phoenix Glass Works, and fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for the labs and clinical rooms at Montagu Hospital on Adwick Road.
On the ground in Mexborough
We are out under Mexborough's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
The saw and sander hoods at a family-owned Mexborough upholstery workshop were under-performing against the benchmark, with a leaking flexible connection behind it. I took benchmark readings, smoke-tested the capture at each hood and re-sealed the loose joint. One point failed initially on that unsealed joint and passed once the remedial work was done, all captured in a signed report. The job ran across two evenings after closing to keep disruption down.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On a Mexborough system it has to establish three things - that the plant and ductwork are sound, that the hoods still capture, and that the capture still meets the figure the system was designed around.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate units - the faults that quietly kill capture.
Face and capture velocities, static pressures and airflows measured at each hood with calibrated instruments - numbers, not opinion.
Readings compared to the system's commissioning figures, so drift from as-designed is caught before it becomes a failure on a Mexborough line.
Where exposure is in question - a precision engineering and manufacturing process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
The duty is written into COSHH Regulation 9: where LEV controls a hazardous substance, the employer must have it thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months and keep the records for five years.
On most Mexborough sites - the Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate units and the smaller workshops alike - it is the fourteen-month clock that bites: let it lapse and the system is non-compliant that day, however well it seems to run. We examine it, tag each hood with its status and next-due date, and hand over the report an HSE inspector or insurer will want. Where something fails you get the reading, the cause and the remedy - never just a red sticker.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Mexborough site.
Calibrated velocity, pressure and airflow readings at each extraction point.
A COSHH-compliant report: results against benchmark, clear pass or fail, and plain-English actions for the Mexborough duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Cliff Street Industrial Estate floor.
Questions
Under COSHH Regulation 9, most local exhaust ventilation needs a thorough examination and test at least every 14 months, with higher-risk processes more often. A precision engineering and manufacturing bay, a food and drink production bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
No. LEV testing is a statutory examination of fume and dust control to COSHH and HSG258, with capture and face-velocity readings; TR19 is kitchen grease and fire risk. We do both across Mexborough, but a Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate fabrication shop and an Adwick Road canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
We record it as remedial and set out what is needed - airflow, ductwork, filtration or capture at the hood. You do the work and we re-test, and on a Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate and Cliff Street Industrial Estate, the university and hospital labs, and the wider South Yorkshire.
precision engineering and manufacturing, food and drink production, woodworking and joinery, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and ceramics, glass and laboratory extraction - the trades clustered around Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate and Cliff Street Industrial Estate and across the wider South Yorkshire.
A dated report to the HSG258 method, the readings taken, a pass or remedial outcome for each hood, and system labelling - the evidence a duty-holder at Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate or a smaller Mexborough workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Swinton Meadows Industrial Estate units, term-time access at the Mexborough university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Local knowledge
Two shafts were sunk across the Don in 1863 for the Denaby Main Colliery Company, and by 1867 the Barnsley bed was won at more than twelve hundred feet, with Cadeby Main following in 1893 before the last coal was drawn in the 1980s. That deep engineering instinct still runs through the machine shops and fabrication units on Cliff Street and at Swinton Meadows, and every one of them carries a duty to control the mist, fume and dust its work throws off. We test and certify local exhaust ventilation to the standard COSHH sets, so the extraction reads true against its design figures.
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