ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022: Laboratory Ventilation

An American National Standard, ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022, focuses on laboratory ventilation.

Why Do We Ventilate Laboratories?

Air enters your body through your mouth or nostrils and travels through the throat, windpipe, and divides in the lungs into two main bronchial tubes, which split into bronchioles. At the end of these small branches are the alveoli, where the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide takes place. Every cell in your body needs oxygen to live, but what happens if you inhale harmful contaminants?

Inhalation is the most common way workplace chemicals enter the body. Just as oxygen travels throughout your bloodstream via the capillaries in the alveoli in your lungs, contaminants you inhale enter your bloodstream. Ventilation, along with various other protective measures, safeguards workers who interact with harmful contaminants.

What is ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022?

Applying to the ventilation in most laboratories, ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022 establishes minimum requirements and best practices for laboratory ventilation systems. Users of this American National Standard aim to protect personnel from physical harm and overexposure to harmful (or potentially harmful) airborne contaminants generated within laboratories. Where relevant, the standard’s requirements can help protect property.

Specifically, ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022 covers a laboratory ventilation management plan, fume hoods, exposure control devices like gloveboxes and ductless hoods, lab ventilation system design, commissioning and performance testing, training, exhaust system maintenance activities, and air cleaning.

How Does ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022 Address Energy Considerations?

In addition to protecting personnel and property, ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022 confronts energy considerations.

There is an increasing pressure to operate laboratory facilities in environmentally sustainable ways. In April 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) measured atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, which accounts for 65% of all greenhouse gas emissions, at 420 parts per million (ppm). In 2021, global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose by 6% in 2021 to 36.3 billion tonnes, their highest level in history.

With this, environmental sustainability is in the interest of every business. For laboratories, this encompasses careful consideration of how energy is used by the buildings’ ventilation system, both for conditioning air supplied to the laboratories and the energy used moving air through the building.

Who Needs ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022?

While ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022 is written for all laboratory ventilation stakeholders, it places an emphasis on those with legal responsibilities and liability for providing a safe laboratory. However, the standard also proves useful for the needs of users/operators, industrial hygienists, and other safety and environmental professionals.

What Does ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022 Not Cover?

General laboratory safety practices are not included in ANSI/ASSP Z9.5-2022 except where they relate to the ventilation system’s proper function or effectiveness. This standard cannot provide designers and users with everything needed for conducting hazard assessments, and it does not address comprehensive hazard control for particular hazards posed by laboratory operations.

Furthermore, this standard does not apply to the following types of laboratories, hoods, or systems except in relation to general laboratory ventilation:

animal facilities
biosafety cabinets
explosives laboratories
high containment facilities (e.g., BSL 3, BSL 4, facilities operating under “chemical surety plans,” etc.)
laminar flow hoods and isolators (e.g., a clean bench for product protection, not employee protection)
radioisotope laboratories
fire, smoke or emergency response systems