This past Friday, I celebrated my 25th anniversary at Industrial Scientific. Wow! What an opportunity to sit down and reflect on how the industry has changed over the last quarter century.
In the past 25 years we have seen gas monitoring instruments change from analog based meters with limited functionality to the feature rich microcomputer based machines of today. We have built multi 5 and 6-gas instruments that are a fraction of the size of yesteryear’s single gas moniters. We have moved from wireless communications interfering with our instruments being a primary reliability concern to embedding wireless communication in those instruments to give us real time data. We have gone from having stacks of paper to document infrequent calibrations to using docking stations to test and calibrate routinely and document records automatically. New sensing technologies such as PID and infrared have become commonplace in portable instruments.
Yet we still have work to do. Workers still become injured and die in gas-related accidents. I do not know what technology will bring to gas monitoring in the next 25-years, but I do know that we will have to compound the advancements of the past 25 years more than once to totally eradicate gas related injury and death.
We will take a look back again in another 25-years. Hopefully we will see that we have succeeded with technology enough that we have made our own existence questionable.
Until then – think safe, be safe.
Dave
2 comments
Rick Graham says:
February 25, 2012 at 7:08 pm (UTC 0)
Happy 25 th. I joined MSA in April of 1977 so I too am an old timer in the industry. I noticed your recent comments on another good reason to bump test. Bery good advise. Have you seen the comments from RKI? These comments come directly from their president:
. “We do not feel that periodic bump testing of a gas monitor is
necessary or useful if the instrument is calibrated at about once per
month. In our instruction manual, we do mention bump testing. This is
wording that any CSA approved gas monitor must include in the
manual to obtain the CSA approval. However, we believe that this
recommendation is misguided and an overkill and that it causes more
problems than it solves. As a company we do not insist on or
recommend bump testing as a matter of policy.”
I would be curious what your thoughts are.
Dave Wagner says:
March 1, 2012 at 6:03 pm (UTC 0)
Rick,
Thanks for the note.
As for RKI, I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion however irresponsible it may be. Unfortunately, we cannot simply speak in terms of technology. If we could, I could find agreement with them on this. But we are talking about delicate electronic instruments and sensors that are used by human beings in diverse and rigorous environements. There is little that you can do to protect instruments in these conditions and the only way to know for certain that they work daily is to test them daily. This may change in the future, but for now, it is what it is.