Wood Magazine to Test Whole Shop Cyclones

[Phil Thien]

Phil on the other hand assures us that his approach is the best and we are all wasting our time and money using cyclones as he can do it cheaper using a vacuum cleaner.

I think that is a pretty unfair mischaracterization of my position.

[John Coloccia]

All I can say is that I'm very happy I listened to the wise little voice in my head that said to ignore this thread and ignore that article.

People lie...manufacturers lie....my Dylos doesn't lie and really that's all that matters.

re: air scrubber and Dylos readings
You could suck up dust through a sippy straw if you wanted to. When you run an air scrubber, the dust will do one of two things:

1) get filtered in the air cleaner
2) settle somewhere

And either way it stays out of the meter. You want a real test? Run your drum sander for 10 minutes and see what happens to the counts. When you're done for the evening, stomp around your shop a bit and see where the counts go. I have an air cleaner too, but the test of a dust collection system is how it operates when you're actually making dust. If not, you're just testing your air cleaner.

BTW, I now use a Trend Airshield 2 when I'm running machinery in the shop. It protects my lungs, and it also protects my face and eyes. Slip it on, turn it on, it's comfortable and I don't have to worry about fishing out safety glasses, getting them to fit over my eyeglasses, etc. A bit pricey, but it's a great product.

[Mark Burnette]

...what is a major health issue...

Is it? From all the internet WW hubub I naturally assumed it was but a Jan. 2013 entry in Matthias' WW blog raises some issues with that assumption. Near the bottom of the page of his Dylos article he quotes an MD with further support from a health conference on Occupation Lung Disease and a peer-reviewed journal article about a study of health effects of wood dust exposure:
http://woodgears.ca/dust/dylos.html
http://oem.bmj.com/content/early/201....full.pdf+html or http://oem.bmj.com/content/early/201...10.060004.full
To summarize the findings of these various sources: There's no direct link between wood dust exposure and lung cancer.

If true, then what are we talking about? Where is the evidence that wood dust causes permanent damage?

I freely admit I'm not up to date on the topic. I built my system 20 years ago and upgraded the bag to an aftermarket 3 micron one about 12 years ago and haven't dug too deeply into it since. Please feel free to link me to any other discussions that may have already occurred here, or to any relevant medical studies (NOT paid for by a filter manufacturer) that asserts otherwise.

I want to keep an open mind on this and not just "drink the Kool-Aid".

[Rod Sheridan]

Mark, the first sentence of the abstract for the second link indicates nasal cancer, which is what I understood the issue with wood dust being a known carcinogen was.

The breathing issues with respect to wood dust in the lungs may be a different mechanism than cancer...........Rod.

http://humanservices.alberta.ca/docu...-PUB_ch045.pdf

P.S. I've added a link, one of many many items available, wood dust is a known health problem.

[Paul Wunder]

Mark, the first sentence of the abstract for the second link indicates nasal cancer, which is what I understood the issue with wood dust being a known carcinogen was.

The breathing issues with respect to wood dust in the lungs may be a different mechanism than cancer...........Rod.

http://humanservices.alberta.ca/docu...-PUB_ch045.pdf

P.S. I've added a link, one of many many items available, wood dust is a known health problem.

Another link from the U.S.:


http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/wooddust/index.html

[Mark Burnette]

Mark, the first sentence of the abstract for the second link indicates nasal cancer, which is what I understood the issue with wood dust being a known carcinogen was.

The full text of the 1st paragraph indicates this study is more about lung cancer:

Abstract

Objectives Despite the compelling association between wood dust and sinonasal cancer, there has been little systematic and rigorous study of the relationship between wood dust and lung cancer. We investigated whether a history of wood dust exposure through occupational and hobby-related activities was associated with increased lung cancer risk.

There are a great many studies that report short term discomfort and reduced lung capacity from exposure to dust, with relief coming on the weekends when away from the source of the problem. This is the body doing its job of "cleaning house". Other than allergic reactions the evidence of wood dust being permanently harmful to hobbyists is extremely thin. A glance at many of the cited studies finds a great many caveats like "the danger...has not been well established". I'm just wondering if we're all running around in a panic over nothing. Like global warming. Flame away...but I see some parallels in how the issue is being handled.

[Phil Thien]

There are a great many studies that report short term discomfort and reduced lung capacity from exposure to dust, with relief coming on the weekends when away from the source of the problem. This is the body doing its job of "cleaning house". Other than allergic reactions the evidence of wood dust being permanently harmful to hobbyists is extremely thin. A glance at many of the cited studies finds a great many caveats like "the danger...has not been well established". I'm just wondering if we're all running around in a panic over nothing. Like global warming. Flame away...but I see some parallels in how the issue is being handled.

The OSHA table (below) is actually one of my favorites. The "safe levels" range from 15 mg/m^3 (5 mg/m^3 inhalable) down to .5 mg/m^3.

So the values differ by a factor of at least 10x, possibly as high as 20x to 30x. Even on the low side, the difference between 1 mg/m^3 and .5 mg/m^3 is 2x.

I was taking a Mathematical Economics course (which, despite the name, was a bunch of fun).

One day the professor put a chart up on the overhead projector (remember those?).

It listed a bunch of results of flipping a coin 100x.

The chart had a pretty even distribution of outcomes. There was 1 heads to 99 tails, to 99 heads and 1 tail. Of course, 50/50 was represented, too.

"What is wrong with this chart?" was the question.

Of course, the answer was you should expect a tighter (much tighter) distribution.

That is, if .5 mg/m^3 was the right answer, then nobody is going to go around saying 15 mg/m^3 (5 mg/m^3 inhalable). And vice versa.

So apparently nobody can prove anything.

Here is a link to an interesting study, BTW, where they tried to correlate data in North America to the English study. Couldn't do it, but they did offer yet another standard (5 mg/m^3):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9048321

osha_table.jpg

[Michael W. Clark]

Absolutley Phil,
Even ACGIH and NIOSH publish different acceptable leves than OSHA. Who knows what the correct number is? The main point is that multiple organizations have spent considerable time and money to research and develop the data, which indicates there was some reason for doing so.

To Mark's point, whether or not a health problem develops is going to be dependant on multiple variables, such as exposure, genetic predispositions, exposure to other sources of fine particulate (its not just wood dust), type of particulate, etc. Because hygiene testing has been done in industrial/commercial applications, it is known to be an issue. What dust level and exposure rate will affect a home/hobby woodworker? I have no idea. If it is causing you to sneeze, cough, or blow this stuff out your nose, then DC/filter improvement is probably advisable if you are going to do this long term on a regular basis.

Some dust can be particularly irritating. I was in a salt plant one time that had DC issues, imagine a snout full of salt! There is a range of harmful particle sizes (I don't know the exact numbers). Sizes above the range are prevented from entering the lungs through natural defenses, and particles smaller than the range are inhaled and exhaled as air and are not a problem. Its the range of particles that can get in, but they can't get out. If the particulate is inert, then lung capacity can be impaired over time. If the particulate is toxic in any way, other respritory problems can result.

MIke

[Chris Parks]

I think that is a pretty unfair mischaracterization of my position.

You might think that Phil but I assure you that is the way it comes across and always has.

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Mark, yes I understood the study you referenced was about lung cancer, my point was that there are studies that have established a link between wood dust and nasal cancer.

I haven't seen anyone suggest lung cancer, however there are many other lung injury mechanisms that are documented from wood dust.

There seems to be a greater risk from hardwoods, Australia for example allows 5mg/cubic meter for softwood dust yet only 1mg/cubic meter for hardwood dust.

Regards, Rod.

[Joe Leigh]

You might think that Phil but I assure you that is the way it comes across and always has.

I disagree completely. I think Phil's stance has always been a completely rational and logical one. That is, if by using a dylos meter, you can show that the air quality in your shop is as clean as or cleaner than the air outside your shop, either by the use of a single stage collector or some other device, then put the slide rule away and call it done. Simple.

[Mark Burnette]

The main point is that multiple organizations have spent considerable time and money to research and develop the data, which indicates there was some reason for doing so.

My stance: Question Everything. Just because there are a lot of researchers doing & publishing studies does NOT mean there is a cause-effect relationship. Hell if it was that easy there really wouldn't be a need for all the research! Everyone wants job security & to keep the grant money flowing. There's no harm to public health if they settle on a course of action that mandates greater filtration or better devices...except that we bear the cost when all DCs must be supplied with .5micron filters. (how many MORE airbags do you want to pay for in your car?)
Maybe later someone will "discover" that all along mucous was adequate defense for most people most of the time.

Bill Pentz has put forth a tremendous amount of effort in trying to improve dust collector efficacy but at the end of the day it began as a way to improve his comfort due to his sensitivity to wood dust. Shall we adopt all his findings as gospel & force everyone to install a Clearvue cyclone? Another Sawstop debacle in the works?

[Michael W. Clark]

My stance: Question Everything. Just because there are a lot of researchers doing & publishing studies does NOT mean there is a cause-effect relationship. Hell if it was that easy there really wouldn't be a need for all the research!

I may be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time, but I don't think there is a lot of active research going on with this to prove/disprove the theory. The relationship was established decades ago. What is often debated, as is with any standard, is what is the cut-off level for compliance. These levels change constantly (especially with air emissions standards wich are way more liberal than indoor air quality standards) and are probably biased as much politically, legally, and coporately than on the actual numbers. I agree that a lot of standards are way over reaching and it is costing this country a lot of jobs and makes us less competitive internationallly. There has to be a balance between clean/safe and ridiculously over-reaching.

I'll give you a personal example related to wood dust. This weekend I was resawing a 3' long piece of poplar about 6" wide at the bandsaw. I just rearranged my shop and my DC hose was not long enough to reach the BS in its new location. I thought, its one cut, just get it done. I have no known allergies and have been in very, very dusty environments with my job. I was coughing significantly by the time I got through the board. I turned on the air scrubber and the shop was clear in about 15 minutes (my shop is about the size of a 1-car garage).

I later realized that I needed to re-saw another board, so I connected a shop vac to the 14" BS port. No coughing this time and the air was noticable cleaner (by visual inspection only) and I had the air scrubber running the whole time. I don't know if the particle count was low enough to meet OSHA, NIOSH, or ACGIH standards, but I know it was lower and I wasn't coughing. Is this setup good enough for a home/hobbiest? I don't know, depends. If you are doing this once a month, then you are probably OK with the shop-vac. If you are spending a significant amount of time resawing on a daily basis, then probably not.
Mike

[Geoff Barry]

You might think that Phil but I assure you that is the way it comes across and always has.

I, too, strongly disagree with this. Chris, I'm going to assume that you are not simply trolling on this topic. I think that a number of posters, Phil and Michael in particular, have adequately addressed the question syou raised. They have no need to debate BobL, or anyone else, for that matter. You have presented BobL's thread as containing some kind of truth - either you can adequately support that (which you have not), or you can take what Phil and others have explained to you in this thread and question BobL yourself - perhaps that will give you some new insight, perhaps not. Either way, the proof of the pudding is in the eating - the best test for the efficacy of one's dust collection system is measuring particle counts. Do you want to avoid breathing in wood dust? Wear a respirator. Of course, you still have to clean the air anyway so you're not tracking it around on your clothes, etc. How clean is your air? Measure it with a meter. In the end, it doesn't matter what seems implausible, what seems improbable, or what seems impossible. It doesn't matter what your airflow is, or what you use as a filter - what matters is that you have a low particle count. Measure your particle count, and you will know if your dust collection is working. If it is not, then you should begin to explore airflow, filtration media, system design, etc. But if someone could maintain nomal background particle counts using a leafblower and a tube sock, more power to them - their dust collection needs have been met.

[John Hays]

I think Phil's stance has always been a completely rational and logical one. That is, if by using a dylos meter, you can show that the air quality in your shop is as clean as or cleaner than the air outside your shop, either by the use of a single stage collector or some other device, then put the slide rule away and call it done. Simple.

Well said, Joe!

FWIW, I realize that I'm never going to eliminate every dust particle in my shop, so as long as the dust stays at an acceptable level, I'm not going to worry about it. With that said, if a DIY solution gives me similar results compared to more expensive commercial solutions, then I'll be more than happy to save a few bucks in the process.

Btw, I have a lot of respect for Phil and his ingenuity. If it wasn't for him, many of us would still be in the dark ages of dust collection, so cut the guy some slack.