Video Exposure Monitoring (VEM)
Nanozen’s DustCount can now be combined with video using Enhanced Video Analysis of Dust Exposure (EVADE) software. The added visuals provide an enhanced tool to remotely determine workers’ exposure for an uncompromised health assessment.
Helping protect workers when you can't be onsite.
New tools to overcome the challenge of travel limitations
Covid-19 has prompted many global industrial companies to set new guidelines for occupational exposure assessments. Even when operations eventually go back to normal, alternative or backup plans for exposure monitoring will be required whenever industrial hygienists cannot be on site. Privacy issues related to widespread use of video as an assessment tool are now being weighed against the need to protect workers’ health.
Video Exposure Monitoring (VEM) has been introduced as an enhanced hygiene tool, combining sampling data with a correlated video of activities to identify processing issues. VEM can also be an effective risk communication tool for management and workers. After many years of developing and improving VEM, a free EVADE software (Enhanced Video Analysis of Dust Exposure) has released. EVADE merges real-time data with a visual record of workers’ activities, allowing hygienists to identify potential exposure sources, leaks or maintenance issues.
There are many examples of VEM in practice: visualizing farming dusts (P. T. Walsh et al. 2009 J. Phys.: Conf ser. 151); pharmaceutical powder transfers and acrylic powder in a plastic manufacturing plant (Gressel et al., 1987); silica in slate-splitting (Walsh et al., 2000); fumes from casting in a pilot foundry (gressel et al., 1988); mechanical scaling in a mine (Andersson et al., 2003). In 2014, Skaugset et al. published a VEM research work combining aerosol real-time monitors with hydrogen fluoride in aluminium smelter pot rooms (Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2014, 16, 1035).
Deploying VEM has historically been limited by the need for expensive video cameras and the relatively poor accuracy of real-time monitors. These issues have since largely disappeared due to the wide availability of affordable/high quality cameras and real-time dust monitors, such as Nanozen’s DustCount, which can be calibrated to the particle of interest, thereby minimizing measurement error as noted in Science Blog “The Use of Real-time Respirable Dust Monitors”.
VEM - Quick Start Notes
Simplified Application Note: Video Exposure Monitoring
Below are brief guidelines for using the DustCount with the EVADE software application using readymade files and an easy demo.
- Download the EVADE application and Guideline document here.
- Importing the Video Camera data file into Evade as a video channel (an example video and data file can be found here). To import the video capture file into Evade:
- Click on the Add File dropdown button.
- Select New Channel.
- Select the Video Button.
- Enter a name for the Video Channel.
- Click OK.
- Select the Video File to be imported and click OK.
- Click Open.
Once the video is imported, the EVADE application will display:
1) Video Channel segment; 2) A new window with the imported video file.
- To import the modified DustCount CSV file into EVADE: Click on the Add File dropdown button.
- Select New Channel.
- Select the Log Button.
- Enter a name for the Log Channel.
- Select Concentration for data type.
- Click OK.
- Select the Generic CSV importer.
- Click on the Browse button.
- Select the modified DustCount .csv file.
- Click Open.
- Enter the concentration units configured on the DustCount (mg/m3 or µg/m3).
- Click on the Preview button.
- If the file was edited correctly, it will be successfully imported, a short table of data will appear.
- Click OK.
Once the data log is imported, the EVADE application should now display: 1) Video Channel segment; 2) A new window with the imported video file; 3) Log Channel segment; 4) A new window with the concentration data displayed as a graph.
Once the data and video channels have been created the user may now use the Play button which will play the video and show the graph scrolling from left to right in sync with the video.
NOTE: Either the Video or Data Channel segments can be selected and can be dragged to better refine the time synchronization between the video and data.
Learn More...
Please contact us to learn more about video exposure monitoring, or for a comprehensive guide on the use of EVADE and DustCount.