Any Phoenix area creekers willing help me with an air particulate study

[Ron Mexico]

Mr Pentz,

Could you post results of your 'Doc Friends' studies? Maybe you could supply his name so we can read his research on the web, if that would be more convenient.

Thanks,
Ron

[Bill Pentz]

Ron,

My doctor does allergy testing and finds enough home woodworkers and often their family members become sensitized that that is one of the areas he consistently checks with new patients. He is not the one who did the air quality studies I cite. Those are done by the State of California, Cal-OSHA inspection team that does mandatory inspections for OSHA. Unfortunately, thier data does not directly appy to hobbyists, but instead to small to large commercial woodworking facilities. Since small commercial shops use identical tools and dust collection, I suspect there is a very close relationship to our hobbyist shops in all ways except the amounts of woodworking we do.

How much woodworking will vary so widely, I was trying to work with Don and others to try and measure some common baseline data, then do a fairly consistent amount of woodworking and see its effect, plus how long the resulting dust will stay airborne. The Cal-OSHA senior inspector who tested my shop said the smaller the shop, generally the worse the build up of "fugitive dust" and higher the chance of poor air quality. I supsect there will be quite a bit more variation today than in 1999 when my shop was tested.

Still, the whole point of this testing is to try and set some baselines so we can see what is going on in our shops and measure the real dust levels. Once we have those risks the insurance data is available that will match dust levels to numbers who get ill. Typically at OSHA levels all eventually develop some dust related problems with about one in fourteen getting seriously ill. At normal pre OSHA chip collection levels typical of small shops all get ill sooner with about one in eight developing such serious problems they are forced into an early retirement. These high problem rates are why most firms voluntarily step up to ACGIH air quality and why the European community addopted even more strict airborne dust limits. If what my inspector said and the test results from my shop are any indication, most hobbyists have a fairly large problem with invisible residual dust, with our tools spewing dust all over, our dust collection not moving enough air to collect the dust, and filters that often pass the worst dust right through. If you are one of those who like me worked with a lot of the more reactive woods, then that residual dust can be a serious problem. In my case I was careful to wear a good 3M dual cartridge mask when making the fine dust, but did not realize that the same stuff built in my shop and got stirred back airborne to continue to expose me and contaminate my home.

bill

[Jim A. Smith]

I don't see that you have answered Ron's question.
Your doc does allergy testing. Does He have his research on the web for viewing?

[Bill Pentz]

Bill,
I got your E mail and agree that we should come up with some sort of standards for testing so that any data we come up with will be relevant. The 531 is small enough that it can be worn by the person doing the testing and I would suggest that when you measure you do it in the breathing zone, that is around you chest area. I would also think that measuring TSP and PM 2.5 would be the data we are looking for or do you think PM 10 and PM 2.5 would be more relavant to health issues.

I don't see that you have answered Ron's question.
Your doc does allergy testing. Does He have his research on the web for viewing?

Jim,

Sorry, although my doctor does do quite a bit of research and is fairly well published including many thousands of references on the Internet, but he does not have anything published on wood dust sensitivity. Cal-OSHA may have studies published on test results, but I don’t know how those are broken out. I have a call in to them to see what is available, and will share if they come up with anything interesting.

If you are interested in learning more try a Google search on “Wood Dust Sensitivity”. There are about 1.2 million hits.

If you are interested in how many hobbyists are affected, to my knowledge that data has not really been collected anywhere. We do know there are lots of medical and insurance studies that show statistics on health problems based on exposure levels. What we don’t have a good handle on is hobbyist exposure levels. My doctor and Cal-OSHA inspector strongly believe our exposures are far higher than most commercial shops in spite of our doing far less woodworking because unlike most commercial firms we tend to trap the finest dust inside where it builds to fairly unhealthy levels. I know my very clean looking shop with top rated cyclone and filters failed its air quality tests pretty badly. Regardless, this is why Don and the rest of us are looking at doing some measurement.

bill

[Don Baer]

Jim,
To expand on what Bill has already said, there arn't any studies done on the home shops. Several things are known about particulate and bill explained then when he talked about PM 10 etc. ACGIH (American Conference of Government and Industrial Hygienists) have set PEL's (permissable Exposure Limits) standards for fine dust. OSHA and CALOSHA use then reccomendation to set workplace safety standards. We as hobbiest should also try to follow these standards for our own safety and that of our families. We wear hearing protection and safety glasses because we are aware of the hazards involved. Too many folks out there think that the average woodworker cannot generate the fine dust and say that folks like Bill are chasing windmills. What Bill, myself and others is to get good data so that we can prove or disprove that indeed the fine dust is a problem in the home shop.

You all know Bill's background, let me tell you a little about mine. I am the instrumentation product manager for a large (multistate) safety house, my duties included evaluating enviromental instruments, training others on the proper use of these instruments and and insureing that the proper instruments are being used for a given hazard. I work with enviromental engineering firm, first responder and others involved in workers safety. Bill asked me what instrument I would reccomend and thats realy what perked my interest, that and being a wood butcher.

[Jay Albrandt]

Hey Don and Bill,

I have a garage shop with a Pentz design cyclone. My ducting is 6" pvc and all the transitions to my tools are modified according to Bill's web page. The shop is attached to a laundry room which in turn attaches to the house. I also have a hanging air filter if that is of any interest to you.

I live in San Diego and my schedule is very flexible. Bill has always been very helpful to me and I would love to return the favor any way possible.

Let me know if there is anything I can do.

Jay Albrandt

[Bill Pentz]

Jay,

I have family I planned on visiting in the Huntingbeach and San Bernardino areas in a few weeks. I'm alreaday scheduled to drop in on a couple of friends' shops in southern California, so maybe could come check your shop at the same time. Your shop description sounds pretty familiar, in fact near identical to my own. I've got to actually get my hands on the gauges which are due to be delivered in the next few days, then work up a schedule. Drop me an email at bpentz@cnets.net and let's see what we can work out. Thankd for your offer.

bill

[Jan Williamson]

Don and Bill,
You could use my shop, I am in the final stages of installing the Clearvue. I live in Yreka CA. It is about 4 hours north Sac. I am hoping to be done with ducting and wiring in the next few weeks. It would be nice to see how the various DC systems compare.
Thank you for your efforts.
Jan

[Bill Pentz]

Jan,

Drop me an email and we can talk about figuring out a time that will work for both of us.

bill

[Art Mulder]

Which Phoenix area creekers would be willing to let me come into your shop and measure the level on Indoor Air Quality. I'll provide the instrumentation do the work, all you need to do is provide the shop and the sawdust.

Will you go on a road trip to Vancouver, BC? I know of several shops you can test with a variety of DCs and tools. I plan on doing the same thing up here if I can get my hands on the testing gear. I have a lead...

... we should come up with some sort of standards for testing so that any data we come up with will be relevant. The 531 is small enough that it can be worn by the person doing the testing and I would suggest that when you measure you do it in the breathing zone, that is around you chest area.

So, Don, (or anyone else from the history of this thread) has this project made any progress that you can share with us?

In light of the recent kerfuffle about dust collecting, I thought it would be nice if we could get back to doing some actually studying, collecting, and publishing of dust collecting information in home shops.

Real tests. Real results. No BS.

I'd also volunteer my shop (basement, non-cyclone, single-bagger w/1 micron bag, hobbyist) for this. If Allan gets his hands on gear, let me know and I'll pay shipping to get it here and we can maybe coordinate some Canadian shops.

How much does the gear cost? I found the www.metone.com website and found the description of the test box Don mentioned, but they don't list prices. Which is usually an "if you have to ask you can't afford it" situation...

I wonder... does anyone have some contacts at the larger WW'ing magazines who they could ask to consider sponsoring a study like this?

I know enough about stats to know that I don't know enough about stats to properly design a study like this... I do know that with stats you need to have as many shops as possible participating to get believable numbes, and you need tests to be as consistent as possible. But I hope that we could keep it simple - test the air after using a ROS without a vac hookup (just the stock little dust bag). - test the air after using a TS without a DC hookup. Then with a standard single-bagger, and then with a Cyclone.

[tod evans]

i sent don a p/m offering my shop to study....i`m not a hobbiest and my d/c is homemade.....i`d be interested to see how my system compares to those costing much more money if there are similar shops running different set-ups.......tod

[Bill Pentz]

Art,

My gauges arrived Wednesday, and I did my first testing yesterday of a long time friend's shop. He has two big commercial 55 gallon can top type dust collectors placed outside that vent outside connected via a long length of flex hose to his different machines. He has two large squirrel cage blowers each with over 100 square feet of fine filter, plus a large industrial shop vacuum. He works with large front doors open at the front of his shop with a good industrial sized fan that pulls the air through his shop and vents out a back door. His shop tested cleaner inside than the outside air before woodworking, after cutting 54' of 3/4" MDF his tablesaw with overarm blade guard still allowed the dust level to rise from 0.018 mg/m^3 to 0.269 mg/m^3. This worst case is below OSHA 5 mg and ICGIH 1 mg standards but over medical 0.1 mg recommended standards per cubic meter of air. It took about 1 hour to reduce that dust level amply to comply with medical standards where he no longer needed to wear his NIOSH approved respirator mask.

Bill

[Earl Kelly]

Don,

This could prove to be very beneficial to all. I would suggest before testing the workshop, test the outside air and if possible the home interior air. I know the latter might be out of line for some. But this would give you an Accurate baseline, with which to compare the shop air quality with. And post test results, numbers of all, maybe explaining the significance of the data, and allow those that read the test to form their own conclusions.

I think this would give you Real World comparables of areas people use everyday.

[Don Baer]

Earl,
The proceedure for using this type of equiptment would call for getting background readings. Regarding testing, I have two volunteers, one who is a snowbird and isn't in Arizona at present and the other, who I will shortly be contacting to do testing.

[Bill Pentz]

Don,

This could prove to be very beneficial to all. I would suggest before testing the workshop, test the outside air and if possible the home interior air. I know the latter might be out of line for some. But this would give you an Accurate baseline, with which to compare the shop air quality with. And post test results, numbers of all, maybe explaining the significance of the data, and allow those that read the test to form their own conclusions.

I think this would give you Real World comparables of areas people use everyday.

Here are the spreadsheets I setup for my first test. I'm awaiting feedback from Don and anyone else who has constructive recommendations. Most of this testing will be done by others with a background in the sciences and engineering. We are trying to come to an agreement on what information needs to be collected as there is a wide variation in hobbyist shops, equipment, space, and dust collection.

bill

Edit: For those who are thinking their eyes are playing tricks, I am continuing to refine these collection forms so the pictures above will reflect the latest version.