scope:

The purpose of the NEBB Procedural Standards for Fume Hood Performance Testing is to establish a uniform and systematic set of criteria for the performance testing of fume hoods.

This publication is the first edition of the Procedural Standards. Similar to the other NEBB disciplines, the Procedural Standards serves as the anchor for the program. Fume hoods and other safety control environments, such as bio-safety cabinets, offer a distinct set of challenges to the firms and individuals testing the field performance of these specialized, containment enclosures. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has developed an ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 110 Method of Testing Performance of Laboratory Fume Hoods. Another standard is ANSI/AIHA Standard Z9.5 Laboratory Ventilation. These publications define the testing procedures to be used when testing fume hoods and are well recognized and respected in this area of expertise. The NEBB discipline builds on these standards and complements them by providing a program that combines their testing requirements with a complete package for firm certification.

The NEBB Procedural Standards and the NEBB Fume Hood Testing program define the requirements for firm certification, for Certified Professional educational and experience requirements, for reporting consistencies, and for instrumentation requirements. This Procedural Standards is similar to other NEBB Procedural Standards in that it is divided into two distinct Parts: Standards and Procedures. These standards and procedures are intended as the minimum NEBB requirements that a NEBB Certified FHT Firm shall follow when performing fume hood testing and reporting the results. Contract documents may supercede the NEBB requirements.

These Procedural Standards have been carefully compiled and reviewed by the NEBB Fume Hood technical committee.