Begin main content:

which stone dusts are safe to breathe

Stone Conversations : Archive 1 : Message 00260

From: Curt Daly <cdaly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 17:05:09 -0600
Subject: which stone dusts are safe to breathe

Be careful with the fan solution. It gets the dust out
of your face, the heavier stuff falls to the floor, and
the light, dangerous stuff just keeps flying around the
room. A 'small' fan will stir the room less. Ideally
you need to blow (waft) fresh, clean air, and exhaust
the dusty stuff. That'll get your attention in the
winter!

A good furnace filter attached to a box fan will clean
the air a bit.

The woodworking community uses dust colletion systems to
deal with this problem. For short term use, a shop vac
is a painfully loud possibility. The upscale solution
uses a quiet motor connected to a squirrel cage fan that
sucks your rubbish through a cyclone separator, and then
blows your dust into a bag filter.

A cyclone traps all of the wood chips and most of the
sawdust. I have no idea how it would behave with rock
dust. Bags are rated at micron hole sizes. How big is
a rock dust mote?!

$300(US) can set you up with a commercial solution. Or,
surplus squirrel cages and ducts are cheap. Furnace
fans can move a lot of air and have to be either slowed
down or vented to relieve vacuum pressure. They also
don't have the ideal vane size for this, but they'll do.
Ducting is a do-it-yourself proposition.

Curt

End of main content.
Begin local navigation menu:
End of local navigation menu.

©1998-2006 About Stone. Designed, maintained and hosted by Diversity Studio.

Mail converted by MHonArc 2.6.16 06 April 2007