ANSI Z358.1 Standard
The American ANSI358.1 standard is widely used around the world to govern acceptable safety shower and eye bath builds and installation. The standard is attractive as it is more or less the only holistic standard that applies to all types of shower, eye bath and work environment.
Scope
ANSI Z358.1 covers both plumbed in and tank operated body showers and eye baths. It also does not narrow its scope to any specific type of work environment and so can applied to both lab, industrial and logistics sites.
Main recommendations
- For body showers a minimum flow rate of 75.7 litres per minute is recommended with a shower head that ensures specific amounts of liquid fall within a minimum radius.
- For eye showers the minimum flow rate is recommended to be 1.5 litres per minute, again with specific spray pattern parameters
- For eye/face wash units the minimum flow rate is 11.4 litres per minute.
- Both eye, eye/face and body showers must be able to operate at the required flow rate for at least 15 minutes.
- Water supply should be tepid (16oC-38oC)
Implications for product selection
Tank showers must have tanks over 1135.5 litres capacity in order to have the require 15 minutes flow rate. This means the smaller 350 and 800 litre tank showers are not compliant but the 1200 and 2000 litre showers are.
The water supply will need to be heated in many cases. Unless the ambient water temperature is always going to be above 16oC then some kind of heating will be required to ensure the water supply is tepid. In very warm working environments water cooling may be required particularly for tank showers as its possible the water temperature will be above the 38oC threshold. All our plumbed and tank showers come with heating options.
Other European standards recommend significantly lower flow rates for body showers so we have two main shower heads. If ANSI compliance is required then the high capacity shower head will need to be fitted.