Gas Safety Measures

the set of measures taken to provide safety from explosion, gas, or fire danger in industrial enterprises that extract, process, or use toxic, asphyxiating, or explosive gases; inflammable liquids; metallic, coal, and aluminum powders; carbonyl compounds; and similar substances.

Gas safety measures include procedures for the prevention of emergencies and restoration of normal conditions after emergencies, the inspection of the air of industrial plants and factories for harmful and dangerous admixtures, and the testing of the equipment available for protection against gases and training of personnel in the use of this equipment. Gas rescue stations staffed by professionals or by volunteer brigades are organized in industrial enterprises in order to rescue people in emergencies created by dangerous levels of poisonous gases in the air, to restore normal conditions after emergencies have taken place and to aid the victims, and to introduce preventive measures related to gas dangers. The statutes governing gas rescue stations and the specifications for technical apparatus and their accompanying instruction manuals are all approved by the ministry responsible for the industry to which the enterprise belongs and by the State Mining and Technical Inspectorate of the USSR (Gosgortekhnadzor).

Gas safety stations are equipped with various kinds of respirators: oxygen breathing masks, hose-type masks, and industrial filtration masks.

In cases of gas poisoning, the victim is given a closed-chest cardiac massage, and artificial respiration is administered by the mouth-to-mouth (mouth-to-nose) methods or by means of the Gornospasatel’-8 (GS-8) device. To restore conditions to normal after a gas emergency, equipment identical to that of mine rescue units is used.