Construcciones Yamaro: Clearing the air on respiratory protection

The SR500 offers both gas and particle respiratory protection. (Images: Safety Equipment Australia)

Evolving construction environments, from deeper digs to increasingly hazardous materials, are pushing contractors to reconsider what constitutes ‘adequate’ respiratory protection under live site conditions. The challenge is that compliance is easily mistaken for safety, as though meeting the minimum standard equates to genuine protection, when in reality their workforce is less shielded than they believe. For Safety Equipment Australia (SEA), that’s not good enough.

Respiratory protection in construction refers to the equipment and practices used to prevent workers from inhaling hazardous airborne contaminants created during common tasks such as cutting concrete, grinding, drilling, welding, spraying and demolition. These activities can release fine particulates, silica dust, fumes, vapours and other substances that travel into the lungs and contribute to long-term illness.

Effective respiratory protection involves selecting the right type of respirator for the task, ensuring it fits and performs correctly, and using it consistently whenever a worker is exposed. In high-risk environments such as tunnelling, demolition and enclosed spaces, respiratory protection becomes a critical measure that sits alongside ventilation, engineering controls and safe work systems to reduce exposure to acceptable levels.

Airborne hazards have always been part of construction work. What has changed is the clarity with which those risks are now understood. Silica, in particular, has pushed respiratory protection higher on the agenda for large-scale projects, demolition jobs and tunnelling works.

Yet there are still shortcomings in how respiratory protection is understood and applied. That gap between ‘baseline compliance’ and ‘best-available protection’ is where SEA managing director Graham Powe believes the sector still has ground to cover.

The risks behind minimum standards

“Most reputable companies are taking a serious approach to respiratory protection. Many implement a respiratory protection program, which is required in the Australian standards,” says Powe.

“There are also companies that are just looking to tick the box. If you have a small team of people working for an employer and they all need respiratory protection, but they have beards and do not want to shave, then the company has to go to a loose-fitting head‑top.

The SR700 is designed for use with tight-fitting and loose-fitting head-tops, providing protection in wet and dry particle environments.

“The temptation for a small company is to buy the cheapest product that fits that design concept. There are products on the market that, in real terms, give a lower level of protection.”

Loose-fitting head-tops differ fundamentally from tight-fitting face pieces, which rely on an airtight seal and require the wearer to be clean-shaven and fit-tested. Loose-fitting head-tops, by contrast, do not form a facial seal. Instead, they create positive pressure inside the hood by delivering a constant flow of filtered air from a powered-air purifying respirator (PAPR) unit. This makes them suitable for workers with facial hair, but it also means the protection level depends on airflow performance rather than a physical seal.

“When people are working hard, their breathing rate increases, and when the breathing rate increases, the speed of the air moving in and out of the lungs is much higher,” says Powe.

“If someone is consuming 40 litres of air a minute in volume during heavy work, they could have instantaneous air flows of 160 to 180 litres a minute on an inward breath. If your fan unit only delivers 120 litres a minute, you will outbreathe it and the pressure will go negative. As soon as it goes negative, there is a high chance of inward leakage of contaminant.

“A tight-fitting full-face piece connected to a PAPR gives a much higher level of protection. But you have to be clean shaven, otherwise you can have inward leakage if you are not careful.”

The issue, he says, is that the Australian standard test requirements for PAPRs set a relatively low bar. AS/NZS 1716 specifies the baseline requirements for manufacturing and performance of respirators used to protect against harmful or oxygen-deficient atmospheres. If the only question asked in procurement is “does it have AS/NZS 1716 approval?”, then differences in performance can go unnoticed.

This is where Sundström’s approach to respiratory protection has demonstrated its value, distributed by SEA in Australia since 1984.

From box-ticking to real protection

The Swedish family-owned company has been manufacturing respirators since 1926, originally with half and full-face masks and entering the PAPR market in the early 2000s. What distinguishes Sundström, Powe explains, is engineering designed to reduce exposure as far as practicable, not just to the occupational exposure limit.

“Their objective for respiratory protection is to bring the user’s exposure to contaminants as close to zero as possible,” says Powe.

“Some other brands aim to get the wearer down to what is considered the occupational exposure level. The difference is that, over the past 20 years or more, occupational exposure levels have been reduced for different gases, chemicals and particulates. What was considered safe 10 years ago might not be safe now.

“When Sundström works with its engineering team, the project is not just to manufacture a product that meets the European, Australian and US standard requirements, but one that exceeds those requirements in terms of material quality, performance, service and technical back up.”

Inside the SR500 and SR700

To illustrate that focus on protection, Powe points to the Sundström SR500 and SR700 PAPRs.

The SR700 is the lighter of the two systems, designed for loose-fitting head-tops used across wet and dry particle environments. It pairs with Sundström’s SR510 P3 particulate filter – a unit engineered to capture 99.997 per cent of particulates – and offers airflow settings of 175 and 225 litres per minute that maintain positive pressure inside loose-fitting hoods, shields and helmets. By removing the need for gas filtration components, the SR700 reduces weight on the body and simplifies operation for workers engaged in grinding, cutting, sanding or other dust-generating tasks.

The SR500 is configured for more complex exposure conditions, offering both gas and particle respiratory protection. It uses the same P3 particle filter as the SR700, but can also be fitted with a range of threaded gas and combination filters to manage organic vapours, inorganic gases, acid gases, ammonia and mercury in different combinations. With airflow settings designed for higher-demand tasks – 175 and 240 litres per minute – the SR500 allows contractors to move between silica dust, solvent-based products and mixed hazards across a shift without changing blower platforms.

“Both units are compatible with all Sundström head-tops,” says Powe. “A lot of people do multiple job types where they might be exposed to gas and particulates on one job and then only particulates on the next. They might buy the SR500 so they do not need to worry about having different units.”

The SR500 and SR700 are also built around sustained airflow performance, an area that separates minimum-standard equipment from systems that genuinely safeguard workers. Each blower continuously monitors resistance in the hose, filters and pre-filters, and alerts the wearer through sound, light and vibration if the unit can no longer maintain safe flow. This becomes critical during heavy physical work, when rising breathing rates increase air demand and raise the risk of inward leakage.

Comfort, wearability and flexibility

Respiratory protection is rarely associated with comfort, yet Sundström continues to refine wearability without diluting protection.

A PAPR is comfortable to wear because its battery-powered fan reduces breathing resistance by providing continuous airflow, and the use of loose-fitting hoods or helmets eliminates the need for a tight face seal. The blower fan pulls air through the filter, reducing the effort required to breathe.

“The design of Sundström head-tops focuses on making them as light as possible without compromising the protection levels. They have a good head harness, Sundström’s own design, not something bought in,” says Powe.

“The direction of airflow inside the head-top is designed so it is not blowing into the user’s eyes. The flexibility of the hose between the head-top and the fan unit, and the way the fan unit is supported on the body, are all carefully considered.

“Ergonomic design is very important. There is still some weight, it is still extra equipment, but Sundström has a strong focus on minimising the impact the wearer feels from the unit.”

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Standards, fit testing and frameworks

Behind the hardware sits the architecture of respiratory programs: standards, frameworks and the guidance that ties them together.

AS/NZS 1716 is the familiar reference on product approval, however Powe is careful to point out that while it is essential, it does not tell contractors how to choose and use products in context.

“It does not do as much for the end user as people might think. It is the standard that the products themselves have to be approved to, so it is still important and everybody should look for it,” says Powe.

“The standard that end users should refer to is AS/NZS 1715. That is the one for the user. It has many guides on how to make a selection and what protection levels you get for different contaminants.

“In that standard, fit testing is compulsory for people using tight-fitting face pieces, and it is expected to be done annually or if there is any change to the person wearing it, such as teeth being removed or scars or other changes to the face.”

SEA has been involved in fit testing since the late 1980s and participated in the development of the RESP-FIT program, the accreditation framework under the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists (AIOH). As a sponsor of the program, the company now steers end users towards RESP-FIT accredited fit testers while continuing to train distributors across its national network.

At the same time, international standards are shifting. Australia has adopted new ISO standards for respiratory protection that will run alongside existing Australian and New Zealand standards before taking effect in 2027. The incoming ISO frameworks will create more defined performance tiers for different respirator classes, including PAPRs, making it easier for contractors to align equipment selection with the conditions on site.

“If we just talk about PAPRs for instance, at the moment they all have the same protection levels in the standards, no matter how much flow rate they provide,” says Powe.

He explains that the new standard provides guidance for end users on aligning protection with exposure levels, while creating an incentive for manufacturers to develop equipment that satisfies the four designated protection tiers.

“In the future, the standard will position existing products like Sundström at a higher level and help people make a more informed choice,” he adds.

The next frontier

If there is one message Powe wants the industry to absorb, it is that loose-fitting PAPRs are not a catch-all solution.

“I would like them to better understand that loose-fitting head-tops have limitations, particularly where hard work is involved on hot days. They need to reconsider that and, in certain situations, they need to use tight-fitting face pieces,” he says.

“Not all PAPRs perform the same. They have different flow rates, and some do not even meet the flow rate they claim. With Sundström, end users can be rest assured they are getting the highest quality and highest protection levels on the market.”

SEA’s challenge to contractors is to look beyond the approval sticker and treat real-world performance as the measure that should guide their decisions.

With nearly half a century of respiratory protection experience, 140 distributors nationwide, educational resources and a trained support team, the company is well placed to help drive a more informed approach across the industry.

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