Beryllium Exposure Control Program at the Cardiff Atomic Weapons Establishment in the United Kingdom

The Cardiff Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) plant, located in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, used metallic beryllium in their beryllium facility during the years of operation 1961-1997. The beryllium production processes included melting and casting, powder production, pressing, machining, and heat and surface treatments. As part of Cardiff's industrial hygiene program, extensive area measurements and personal lapel measurements of airborne beryllium concentrations were collected for Cardiff workers over the 36-year period of operation. In addition to extensive air monitoring, the beryllium control program also utilized surface contamination controls, building design, engineering controls, worker controls, material controls, and medical surveillance. The electronic database includes 367,757 area sampling records at 101 locations and 217,681 personal lapel sampling records collected from 194 employees over the period 1981-1997. Similar workplace samples were collected from 1961 to 1980, but they were not analyzed because they were not available electronically.Annual personal mean sampling concentrations for all workers ranged from 0.11 to 0.72 micrograms per cubic meter (

Keywords:

• Beryllium
• Industrial Hygiene
• Chronic Beryllium Disease
• Engineering Controls
• Atomic Weapons