Rivers, lakes and coastal waters are vital natural resources and are an important resource for industry. Industries discharging large volumes of waste water will see usage costs rising over the next five years in line with Europe’s Water Framework Directive which expands the scope of water protection to all waters and sets out clear objectives that must be achieved by specified dates

Those responsible for looking to new technology to provide efficient methods of production should, as part of their annual compliance inspections, look at whether regulatory changes governing the usage of existing equipment could actually give surprising savings. This is very much the case with emergency showers

The latest universal ANSI standard which governs the design, manufacture and installation of emergency shower units stipulates that the flow rate of the shower has to run at 75.7 litres a minute for 15 minutes. With weekly activation necessary for maintenance purposes alone the water wasted is considerable

Decontamination facilities of this kind are hopefully not used very often although large plants and industrial sites legally need to have a number of units readily available. What this can mean is that such a facility can be overlooked when a company comes to looking at reducing costs

Companies should also carefully consider the type of emergency shower to meet the needs of the workers and environment in which they work, as there are a number of energy efficient models