Designing for Containment: The High Stakes of Fume Hood Specification
Chip Albright, president, Fume Hood Certified
Fume hoods remain one of the most essential—and misunderstood—safety systems in modern laboratories. They are routinely commissioned, certified, and documented at the time of installation, yet years later, containment failures still occur. According to industry veteran Chip Albright, president of Fume Hood Certified and co-author (with Alex Albright) of the new book The Art of Specifying Laboratory Fume Hoods: Guidelines, Risks, and Best Practices for Safer Labs, the root cause of many failures is neither the hood nor the user, but the room that was designed years earlier.
“When we talk about hood testing, we are not really testing the hood itself, we are testing how it has interfaced with the building. Year after year, when ‘hoods’ are tested we are really testing room conditions,” Chip Albright says. This core insight shapes the central premise of the book: that design teams must shift from a narrow focus on equipment specifications toward a systems-level understanding of airflow, pressure relationships, and the dynamic realities of laboratory use.
Static tests, dynamic risks
Traditional commissioning and certification procedures—particularly face velocity measurements and ASHRAE 110 tracer gas tests—remain industry standard. But as Albright notes, “ASHRAE 110 is not a performance standard, but rather a testing methodology.” It provides a reproducible snapshot of containment under controlled conditions. The problem is that real laboratories are rarely controlled.
ASHRAE itself acknowledges this limitation. As Albright highlights through standard excerpts, the test “does not define safe procedures,” “may not adequately simulate actual material use,” and “does not simulate a live operator.” The standard even states: “It is important to evaluate the performance of the laboratory hood under dynamic conditions. This performance test method may be modified to evaluate a dynamic challenge.”
That dynamic challenge is exactly what Albright’s team set out to address.
Why dynamic containment testing belongs in the spec
Inside every conventional fume hood sits a swirling internal vortex of air. Under stable conditions, that vortex stays within the hood’s capture zone. But under real-world conditions—doors opening, people walking by, cross-drafts, VAV ramping—vortex collapse can send contaminants directly into a researcher’s breathing zone.
Many of these failures occur within seconds and cannot be detected by traditional testing. That’s why Albright argues strongly that dynamic testing must be written into specifications from the start. “The reason it should be in the specification from the start is that if it is in the specification, it becomes a legal requirement, not an option.” He adds that dynamic testing “ensures that the hood is going to work as specified in the way it will be used AFTER installation, which is under dynamic conditions.”
His firm incorporates dynamic challenges such as pedestrian traffic, lab doors opening, and other airflow disruptions—conditions explicitly cited in ASHRAE 110 as real-world concerns—while replacing the standard’s large-scale smoke and SF₆ tracer gas test with their Tri-Color visualization method. They video-record all tests and store them in a “Fume Hood Performance Tracker,” creating a useful record for designers, contractors, and facility managers.
In litigation scenarios, this level of documentation can be invaluable. Albright asks a simple question: “If you ended up in court, which would you rather have? ASHRAE 110 report which no one really understands. Or A video showing how the hood performed under real lab conditions?”
Design factors that undermine performance
When a fume hood fails, the instinct is to blame the equipment. But Albright’s decades of data tell a different story: “25 percent perform poorly due to design issues … 50 percent perform poorly because of room conditions … 25 percent perform poorly because of user work practices.”
Room conditions are often the hidden culprit. Door placement, supply air diffusers, return locations, corridor pressurization, and negative room pressure all influence the airflow patterns around a hood. “Any time a door is opened there is a pressure change. And the room has to readjust. That period of instability is when hood loss of containment is most likely.”
Even a suite of hoods that passed commissioning flawlessly can become unreliable over time as occupancy loads change, VAV systems age, or user habits shift. That is why ongoing testing matters.
And it is why Albright believes the industry’s long-held focus on average face velocity is misplaced. “There is no direct relationship between Face Velocity and Containment,” he says. During a pressure disturbance, a hood that averages 102 fpm may drop to 35 fpm at the face—low enough to lose containment. “That is why averages and snapshots are dangerous.”
Bridging the gap between design intent and real-world use
The Art of Specifying Laboratory Fume Hoods aims to equip architects, engineers, and lab planners with a practical guide to writing specifications that align with how labs actually operate. With a foreword by Glen Berry, FAIA-NCARB—who has designed more than 100 science buildings—the book connects design practice, testing methodology, and human factors in a way that has been missing from the industry’s standard tools.
Albright’s recommendations for achieving long-term performance include:
Incorporating dynamic containment testing into project specifications.
Verifying that hoods operate correctly under real-world airflow disturbances—not just during commissioning.
Designing rooms with airflow in mind: avoid placing hoods near doors, corners, or active walkways.
Prioritizing containment over face velocity in design, testing, and operation.
Training users as an integral part of the ventilation ecosystem.
He also points to emerging technology designed to transform ongoing hood evaluation. “Several manufacturers have or will be introducing Self Validation soon. The hoods have a mini-Tri-Color built in.” These systems allow users to verify containment for each experiment setup—an innovation he compares to restoring a vehicle’s broken speedometer.
Beyond the technical guidance, Albright emphasizes a shift in mindset: “I personally think that we would be more effective if we changed the conversation from ‘Lab Safety’ to ‘Laboratory Accident Prevention.’” With accidents and lawsuits on the rise, he argues that clearer specifications, better testing, and stronger user training are essential—and overdue. Above all, his motivation is personal: “Every lab worker deserves to go home safe tonight.”
