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On Monday, January 9th, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) finalized new beryllium standards for professions commonly exposed to Beryllium. Several are affected including workers in the marine and construction industries. OSHA’s new ruling on Beryllium confirms that at trace levels, beryllium can be harmful. Long-term beryllium exposure can lead to berylliosis, as well as cancer and heart failure. According to author John Emsley, a third of those who contract berylliosis die, leaving the rest permanently disabled.

Every great business looks to maximize efficiency. Efficiency keeps costs down and increases profit margins. One way to increase the efficiency of workers is through training. This is especially true in the industrial coatings industries (which includes surface preparation). As industry leaders retire, insight and experience can be lost. Training can help combat this loss of wisdom and knowledge. This is why Sponge-Jet built a Global Technology and Training Center at our Newington, NH Headquarters – just an hour north of Boston. Training courses offered at Sponge-Jet range from internationally accredited NACE and SSPC classes to certified training programs on Sponge-Jet abrasive blasting.

The Society of Protective Coatings (SSPC) released its latest Abrasive Specification – SSPC-AB 4, making it the first update since 2000. The AB series of specifications establish proper quality controls and procedures for using Recyclable Encapsulated Abrasive Media during surface preparation. While these standards are not referred to directly in many coating specifications, they are used from within other SSPC documents – most notably SSPC-SP7, SSPC-SP6, SSPC-SP10 and SSPC-SP5. These are perhaps the most widely cited standards for surface preparation worldwide and certainly within the USA. The SP series of standards has always required that abrasives meet an AB quality standard. Before this AB 4 release, exceptions allowed for the use of composite abrasives like Sponge Media, as no AB abrasive quality standards were applicable.

Check out this article published by Marine Maintenance Technology International that discusses potential pitfalls when choosing high pressure water and hand-tooling over abrasive blasting. Among them, the author addresses:

As it stands today, ordinary abrasive blasting substitutes continue to get hit hard by regulatory bodies around the world as well as by public interest groups due to associated health and environmental risks and impacts.

Sponge-Jet distributor SAE (Champtoce Sur Loire, France) had a message for their local Corrosion Engineers at the Les Rencontres de la Peinture Anticorrosion exhibition held a few weeks back. You don’t have to compromise abrasive cleanliness levels and profiles in abrasive blasting- prohibited environments – or anywhere else for that matter. No need to use time-consuming hand-tools to create sub-par anchor profiles. You can achieve the highest cleanliness levels and nearly any profile… and even maximize the life of industrial coatings with Sponge-Jet Sponge Media™ abrasives technology. This was the message SA3 was projecting at their most recent corrosion engineering event.

Joe Maty, Editor of Journal of Architectural Coatings (JAC) on popular demand decided to re-run an article on work architect David A. Kemnitzer and painting subcontractor Lepi Enterprises did using Sponge-Jet technology. The article was rel...eased on Technology Publishing’s Durability and Design, architectural portal (www.durabilityanddesign.com). The title and abstract follow. Check out the project. Paint Removal: Having a blast, gently Paint removal with composite sponge media lends power, precision to restoration program for exterior of historic West Virginia courthouse. Click the link below for the actual article (easy login)… http://www.durabilityanddesign.com/archive/?fuseaction=view&articleID=3449&CFID=151949&CFTOKEN=eac50496cc7fc8a0-F3FC842F-DC47-814A-CD649F702120E4EB

October 12, 2011 - Portsmouth, NH