Newport · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Newport workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Newport
Newport is a South Wales city of around 160,000 on the River Usk, built on steel and docks and now home to a growing compound-semiconductor cluster.
The heavy work is steel and semiconductors - the Llanwern steelworks, the wafer fab and advanced electronics, and the engineering and laser cutting - across the Queensway Meadows and Imperial Park estates, with the fabrication and bodyshop units between them.
Wherever a Newport process releases fume, dust, mist or vapour, COSHH puts the duty on you to control it at source, and the extraction that does so is LEV - subject to a thorough examination and test at least every fourteen months. We work across the range, from the Queensway Meadows units down to the smallest Newport workshop, measuring capture and face velocity and issuing a plain pass-or-remedial result with every hood tagged.
By sector
A system that catches fume, dust, mist or vapour at the point it is released is LEV, and for Newport employers and others across South Wales it is the record COSHH looks for first.
Grinding-dust, weld-fume and mill extraction across the steel and heavy-engineering lines, a trade rooted in Newport's Llanwern and docks heritage, where metal dust and fume need capture at source.
Solvent, acid-mist and fume extraction across the wafer-fab and electronics cleanrooms, where process vapour needs capture proven.
Fume and particulate extraction on the laser-cutting and precision-engineering lines, where metal-ablation fume needs capture at source.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Queensway Meadows and Imperial Park units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Newport bodyshops. Two-pack paints release isocyanates - the leading cause of occupational asthma - so booth airflow is examined to its design figure.
Fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for the University of South Wales Newport campus and the Royal Gwent Hospital, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Newport
We are out under Newport's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
A precision laser-cutting workshop in Newport had the saturated secondary carbon filters on a nitrogen-assisted cutter letting a sweet plastic-and-metal ablation odour bypass into the assembly room. We measured the differential pressure across the multi-stage filter box and logged the face velocities at the cutter bed. It failed on total carbon-filter saturation and gas breakthrough, even though the system met its mechanical airflow spec. We ran the test during a scheduled machine-calibration downtime to keep out of production.
The test
An HSG258 statutory LEV test goes well beyond a walk-round look. On a Newport 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 Queensway Meadows 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 Newport line.
Where exposure is in question - a steel and heavy engineering process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
COSHH Regulation 9 puts a hard duty on the employer: any LEV controlling a hazardous substance must have a thorough examination and test at least every fourteen months, with records kept for five years.
On most Newport sites - the Queensway Meadows 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 Newport 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 Newport duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Imperial Park 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 steel and heavy engineering bay, a semiconductors and electronics bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
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 Queensway Meadows production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
Steel and heavy engineering, semiconductors and electronics, precision engineering and laser cutting, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and the labs of the university campus and hospital - the trades clustered around Queensway Meadows and Imperial Park and across the wider South Wales.
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 Newport, but a Queensway Meadows fabrication shop and a Commercial Street canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
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 Queensway Meadows or a smaller Newport workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Yes. Each hood is labelled with its status and next-due date, and you get the HSG258 report and system schematic for your COSHH file - the record an HSE inspector visiting a Queensway Meadows unit will ask to see.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Queensway Meadows units, term-time access at the Newport university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
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