Tulane Wood Dust Study - "wood dust is bad for you" is a lie?
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"A major study of the effects of wood dust on mill employee respiratory health has found "no statistically significant adverse effects from wood dust at the facilities participating in the study," according to Sharon Kneiss, vice president of regulatory affairs at the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA). The six-year study, which followed more than 1,100 employees from 10 wood products industry plants around the country, was commissioned by AF&PA and 18 other wood products trade associations, including APA. The study was conducted by the Tulane University Medical Center."
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A Google search on "Tulane Wood Dust Study" will give many results referencing this study. This quote listed above is from the American Plywood Association site.
Here's another, from Lisa Harbatkin of Wood Digest - "Solid wood dust is not a respiratory danger to wood workers at levels measured in plants participating in the recently completed Respiratory Health Study of the Wood Processing Industry."
Is it just me, or does this study (or at least the general conclusions drawn from it) seem to contradict everything we've (as a group) always understood about the dangers of wood dust? :confused:
Inquiring minds want to know.....
Dustfully yours,
Matt
Long but near but this hits to close to home.
Matt,
I presently work in the Industrial Health and Safety field as a product manager. Part of my job is to recommend instrumention that is used to measure things like airborne particulate matter so I read the report with great interest. The way I read it the study realy had to do with are the allowable levels of airborne particulate safe or do the need to be changed. The industry standard today for a worker 8 hour exposure is set at 5 mg/m3. There was some talk of lowering the standard to 1 mg/m3. this would cost the industry about $1B/year to achieve. What the Tulane study said was that the present limit is safe.
What I can't find out and no one is talking about is the size of the particulate and what the alowwable concentration should be for small particles. This is talked about in other studies just not wood dust. Here is my concern. There are 3 threshold that are used as measuring stick for particulate size. the first threshold is 10 micron (called PM-10) the second is 2.5 micron (PM-2.5) and the third is 1 Micron (PM-1).
Any thing bigger then PM 10 will not make it through the respetory tract to the lungs. PM-2.5 particles are so small that the can be trapped in the lining of the lungs. And PM1 particle are so small that they are absorbed directly into the blood stream. I think that as a minimum we need to find out the concentration of particulate is in these lower and smaller sizes before we say we are safe enough. Unfortunatly the average hobbiest as a great many of us are don't have the where with all to find this out. I will do some testing in my new shop (my present setup has no dust collection :o ) when it is set up and if anyone is interested will post the results if anyone is interested.