Safety showers and hygiene showers, what's the difference?

We’re all familiar with domestic hygiene showers. However, it is important to note that these are not considered suitable when it comes to mitigating the risk of people being exposed to dangerous chemicals or substances. There is a world of difference between a standard domestic shower and an emergency safety shower; Hygiene showers are there simply for routine washing, but not generally capable of decontaminating an individual exposed to a harmful chemical or substance. Hygiene showers and emergency safety showers have very different attributes, let’s take a look at some of them:

Safety Shower Spray Pattern

While most hygiene showers have a standard shower head fitting, like you mind find at home, emergency safety showers have shower heads specifically designed to give full body coverage (specifically, 50.8 cm diameter at 152.4 cm height).

Safety Shower Activation

Whereas a standard hygiene/domestic shower is manually activated off, safety showers are hands-free and activate within 1 second.

Safety Shower Water Temperature

Domestic/hygenie showers generally have adjustable temperatures to suit the users’ preference. Safety showers however, must only supply water at a tepid temperature range (between 16° and 38°C), in order for effective user decontamination to take place. 

Safety Shower Water Flow Rate

There is no mandatory flow rate for domestic showers, however emergency safety showers must have a constant flow rate of 75L per minute.

Safety Shower Location

While generally domestic showers are installed in bathrooms or changing rooms, there are no specific requirements around this. In the case of emergency safety showers, however, they must be situated within 10 seconds reach of the relevant hazard.

As you can see, emergency safety showers and domestic/hygiene showers are far from the same thing, and the latter must never be substituted for the former. There are plenty of other differences too, and indeed, there are individual safety shower designs to suit different environments.