Business Consulting School
Taught by People Who've Seen It All
We are a group of independent fume a and laboratory ventilation experts. Our focus is making fume hoods safer for those using them. We come from various backgrounds in the industry. In addition to our permanent staff, we have access to a wide array of experts on an as-needed basis.
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What We Do
We educate and train fume hood stakeholders
The only way fume hoods will operate at the intended level of performance and provide the safety that the users expect and deserve, is if all the parties understand enough to ensure that the proper things are being done.
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Unless we treat the entire laboratory ventilation system in a holistic way, we cannot achieve performance that is both safe and energy efficient. The hybrid nature of the fume hood, both as a PPE and an engineering control, blur the lines of functional responsibility. The complexity of the mechanical systems makes managing room conditions challenging. Yet, the best fume hood in the world will not function until it is connected to a properly designed, installed and maintained laboratory ventilation system, which includes both supply and exhaust air and has the controls to keep everything in balance.
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The introduction of the concepts of ECD, Exposure Control Devices, which a fume hood is and the Classification of Laboratory Design Levels which consider the risks of exposure in setting performance levels have made a holistic approach even more important.
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People working in the lab deserve a safe work environment and safe indoor air quality. Unless we all work together the odds of achieving that are not great.
Why ?
For well over a hundred years combined, we have been involved in the fume hood and ventilation business — and for nearly four decades, in the health and safety profession that exists to protect the people who work behind them.
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In that time, we've visited thousands of labs. What we've seen has spanned the spectrum from world-class to genuinely dangerous. We've encountered fume hoods that didn't provide the level of containment their users expected, exposure control programs built on face velocity numbers that told an incomplete story, and safety professionals who were handed responsibility for equipment they were never trained to evaluate.
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We have witnessed, all too often, that the very people fume hoods were supposed to be protecting were under-trained, never trained, and left out of the process that determined the hood's application and performance level. And we've seen the other side of that equation — EHS managers and industrial hygienists who knew something wasn't right but didn't have the technical foundation to challenge a passing test report, push back on a vendor, or make a data-driven case to leadership for the resources they needed.
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For years, the fume hood conversation happened almost exclusively among architects, lab planners, mechanical engineers, and manufacturers. The safety professionals and the researchers — the people with the most at stake — were rarely at the table. We began to understand that the fume hood was the most misunderstood and misused safety device in the laboratory, and that the people responsible for managing the risk had the least access to the expertise.
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So we decided to change that. As independent consultants — with no manufacturer affiliations and no conflicts of interest — we banded together to become advocates for the people who use these devices and the professionals who are accountable for their safety. We brought together deep expertise in fume hood design and testing with decades of experience in industrial hygiene, exposure assessment, risk communication, and safety culture. Because the truth is, you can't manage fume hood safety with engineering knowledge alone, and you can't manage it with EHS knowledge alone. It takes both.
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Fume Hood Certified exists to close that gap. From hands-on workshops to online training, from on-site troubleshooting to consultation on your fume hood safety program, we have something for every stakeholder — whether you're the person testing the hood, the person working behind it, or the person who has to answer for it.
