Why Clean Dust Collection and Air Filtration Matters in your Workshop - More time making... less time cleaning...
Does dust collection or workshop air quality matter?
I'll give you the short answers up front...
- Yes, because every minute you spend cleaning up dust is a minute that you didn't get to spend making, building or fixing something.
- Yes, because very fine dust and VOC's generated by painting, cutting, grinding, welding and sanding operations can reach the full extents of your lungs and enter your bloodstream. The particles trigger inflammation which, over time, leads to a much greater risk of allergies, heart disease, cancer, COPD and a host of other chronic diseases.
Spend more time making and less time cleaning!
Even if many do not worry about how dust particles and chemicals may affect their long term health, I think we can all agree that we would rather be making, fixing, building and repairing more and cleaning less. You may be surprised how much dust and clutter slow you down. Another factor that I didn't consider until I modified my tools to create a nearly dustless workshop is how much more I enjoy spending time in my shop now that it is almost always clean. The piles of dust didn't bother me before but now that my floors and tools stay clean, it is just more pleasurable to be here. It is also a wonderful feeling at the end of the day to not have to blow off tools and shelves then sweep my floors. I spend about 5 minutes a week cleaning up now since all I need to do is run a shop vac over a few areas where dust gets away from my machines. I could operate for 6 months without cleaning up dust and still not see it as dirty as it used to be on a daily basis. Good dust collection = more freedom and more enjoyment of your shop therapy time.
Frequent exposure to poor air quality is the cause of many chronic diseases.
Until around 2015 my shop was pretty typical and the floor was most often covered in dust from the last project I made. I never gave a second thought to air quality unless the dust in the air was just so thick I couldn't stand it. At that point I would put on a dust mask until I was finished making more dust. Sound familiar?
Toward the end of 2015 I was the lead investigator for a NASA project to determine the feasibility and effects of recycling 3D printer filaments during long term space flights. Part of that project was to determine how 3D Printing affected air quality. As I dove into the research I found several studies that helped me understand that repeated exposure to many small particulates (2.5 microns and smaller) were proven to cause many chronic diseases . The particles that you can see (5 microns and up) typically get filtered out higher up in your lungs, coated in mucus and then coughed up so, counter intuitively, they are less dangerous than the particles that are too small to see. The very fine particles can travel the full extents of your lungs then enter your blood stream where you body sees them as a threat which initiates an immune response. This leads to inflammation which then, over time, leads to a host of diseases such as heart disease, cancer and lung disease.
Frequent exposure to poor air quality is the cause of many chronic diseases.
Until around 2015 my shop was pretty typical and the floor was most often covered in dust from the last project I made. I never gave a second thought to air quality unless the dust in the air was just so thick I couldn't stand it. At that point I would put on a dust mask until I was finished making more dust. Sound familiar?
Toward the end of 2015 I was the lead investigator for a NASA project to determine the feasibility and effects of recycling 3D printer filaments during long term space flights. Part of that project was to determine how 3D Printing affected air quality. As I dove into the research I found several studies that helped me understand that repeated exposure to many small particulates (2.5 microns and smaller) were proven to cause many chronic diseases . The particles that you can see (5 microns and up) typically get filtered out higher up in your lungs, coated in mucus and then coughed up so, counter intuitively, they are less dangerous than the particles that are too small to see. The very fine particles can travel the full extents of your lungs then enter your blood stream where you body sees them as a threat which initiates an immune response. This leads to inflammation which then, over time, leads to a host of diseases such as heart disease, cancer and lung disease.
If you can measure it, you can manage it!
After working through that research I started taking shop air quality much more seriously. I bought a laser particle counter to determine how good/bad my shop air quality really was. There's an old but wise saying... "if you can measure it you can manage it". Once I started "seeing" what affected air quality in my shop and by how much, my obsession with modifying my tools to capture all of the dust at the source began.
I had a 1.5 hp bag dust collector that I used occasionally by moving the hose from machine to machine. When I measured the shop air with the dust collector running the air quality remained in the "very poor" range. To give you an objective comparison, I would often see readings of 30,000 on the meter (3,000,000 particles/cubic foot). For reference, 150 to 300 is considered "good" and anything over 3,000 is considered "very poor". My dust collector was really just a dust pump, spreading the smallest and most unhealthy particles throughout my shop. It did a great job of collecting the heavy dust that I could see but it was pumping 700 cfm of invisible fine dust particles throughout the shop every time I turned it on. The laser particle counter helped me see the invisible particles that were filling my lungs. As a reference, I just checked the air in my shop and the meter is reading "80" which is in the "Very Good" range. The air outside the shop measured 1500 which is in the "Poor" range.
There are quite a few air quality meters available on the market and I would recommend that you research them to determine which one will give you the most information for the amount you are willing to spend. I would make a recommendation but it would likely be outdated in less than a year so I'll just suggest browsing Amazon and Google to see the latest and greatest. The market is expanding VERY quickly because the public is becoming more aware of the negative health effects of particulates and volatile organic compounds. You can find air quality meters from $50 to $5000 or more but the quality of the meters is quickly increasing and the prices are decreasing.
Not all meters are created equally. You can buy professional laser particle counters that cost over $5,000 and provide very accurate readings for a very wide range of particle sizes. There are single beam laser particle counter systems out now that cost under $200. These systems won't provide as reliable accuracy as the $5,000 units but they are still VERY useful to help determine how changes to your tools affect their dust collection efficiency. In other words, the cheaper meters may not give you an absolutely accurate particle count or concentration but they will tell you if the changes you make to your tools are lowering the amount of dust that escapes or not. For example, if your meter reads 30,000 after you make a cut on your table saw then reads only 250 after making the same cut after modifying your dust collection then you know you made a drastic improvement even if the second reading may be off by 50% from the true accurate value.
I would recommend not buying a meter unless it reads particle sizes at least as low as 2.5 microns. The one I use will read down to 0.5 microns. Most of the professional units will read down to 0.3 microns and some go lower than that. OSHA and NIOSH use an index that is based on concentrations of particles between 2.5 and 10 microns. The lower the particle counts the more accurate the cheaper meters will be in most cases.
I had a 1.5 hp bag dust collector that I used occasionally by moving the hose from machine to machine. When I measured the shop air with the dust collector running the air quality remained in the "very poor" range. To give you an objective comparison, I would often see readings of 30,000 on the meter (3,000,000 particles/cubic foot). For reference, 150 to 300 is considered "good" and anything over 3,000 is considered "very poor". My dust collector was really just a dust pump, spreading the smallest and most unhealthy particles throughout my shop. It did a great job of collecting the heavy dust that I could see but it was pumping 700 cfm of invisible fine dust particles throughout the shop every time I turned it on. The laser particle counter helped me see the invisible particles that were filling my lungs. As a reference, I just checked the air in my shop and the meter is reading "80" which is in the "Very Good" range. The air outside the shop measured 1500 which is in the "Poor" range.
There are quite a few air quality meters available on the market and I would recommend that you research them to determine which one will give you the most information for the amount you are willing to spend. I would make a recommendation but it would likely be outdated in less than a year so I'll just suggest browsing Amazon and Google to see the latest and greatest. The market is expanding VERY quickly because the public is becoming more aware of the negative health effects of particulates and volatile organic compounds. You can find air quality meters from $50 to $5000 or more but the quality of the meters is quickly increasing and the prices are decreasing.
Not all meters are created equally. You can buy professional laser particle counters that cost over $5,000 and provide very accurate readings for a very wide range of particle sizes. There are single beam laser particle counter systems out now that cost under $200. These systems won't provide as reliable accuracy as the $5,000 units but they are still VERY useful to help determine how changes to your tools affect their dust collection efficiency. In other words, the cheaper meters may not give you an absolutely accurate particle count or concentration but they will tell you if the changes you make to your tools are lowering the amount of dust that escapes or not. For example, if your meter reads 30,000 after you make a cut on your table saw then reads only 250 after making the same cut after modifying your dust collection then you know you made a drastic improvement even if the second reading may be off by 50% from the true accurate value.
I would recommend not buying a meter unless it reads particle sizes at least as low as 2.5 microns. The one I use will read down to 0.5 microns. Most of the professional units will read down to 0.3 microns and some go lower than that. OSHA and NIOSH use an index that is based on concentrations of particles between 2.5 and 10 microns. The lower the particle counts the more accurate the cheaper meters will be in most cases.
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