Tulane Wood Dust Study - "wood dust is bad for you" is a lie?

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Industry Wood Dust Study Completed</TD></TR><TR><TD>http://www.apawood.org/images/clear.gif</TD></TR><TR><TD class=contentBodyText><!--mgt_rpt/storypara.htm-->

"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."
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
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

I know of people that have developed allergies to wood because of wood dust...at least that is how it is assumed they developed the allergy.

My recommendation is to keep the dust collectors going and keep the masks on.

Key words in that quote are "at levels measured in plants": these guys have orders-of-magnitude better dust collection than the average hobbyist.

I don't know about the study Matt, but exposure to wood dust and the resulting allergies, asthma and pneumonia almost killed me last year. Visit Bill Pentz's website for an eye opener about the dangers of wood dust.

As far as the study goes I would look at who funded it and who stands to benefit from test results which are contrary to a rational person's good judgement. Problems from long term exposure to wood dust can also take years to begin to show up and by then the damage is usually done.

There is a lot to be said for good dust collection at the source and hopefully these plants have excellent dust collection cababilities. Most of them are way better than the systems we have in our shops.

Hope this helps,

Lloyd Morris

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee DeRaud

Key words in that quote are "at levels measured in plants": these guys have orders-of-magnitude better dust collection than the average hobbyist.

---

You're Rigth.

May i Cite Bill Pentz's text here:

=========================
My doctor, a fellow woodworker and pulmonary (lung) specialist helped and pushed me hard to learn what went wrong then share what I learned along with my personal solutions to provide protection. He says testing of thousands of small shops as they apply for commercial licenses shows small shops with indoor dust collection equipment consistently test with five to twenty times higher than government allowed maximum airborne dust levels. My shop with the top recommended cyclone and fine filters tested over the eight hour government maximum with the parts per million particle counts surging to over 12,000 times medical recommended maximums
=========================

Maybe the plants are not ALWAYS in the allowed range, but they have to be the closest they can at the most workstation they can....

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.

I take a simple view of these things.

If I work my table saw for 2 minutes with no DC running I sneeze like mad and end up coughing.

Sneezing and coughing are reactions that nature has given my body to deal with foreign bodies likely to have a deleterious affect on my health. If my bodies semi-autonomous reactions are telling me that something is bad for me I don't care how many studies you point to - I trust my body.

With my DC gear going I can work all day without a cough or sneeze. Simple conclusion in my mind.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ian Barley

I take a simple view of these things.

If I work my table saw for 2 minutes with no DC running I sneeze like mad and end up coughing.

Sneezing and coughing are reactions that nature has given my body to deal with foreign bodies likely to have a deleterious affect on my health. If my bodies semi-autonomous reactions are telling me that something is bad for me I don't care how many studies you point to - I trust my body.

With my DC gear going I can work all day without a cough or sneeze. Simple conclusion in my mind.

---

Well said Ian! I certainly trust my own body's reaction to dust a lot more than a study which appears to be funded by the American Forest & Paper Association.

One good point made in the results of the study was the recapitulation of the measured amounts of dust and the sizes of the particles measured. This could be translated to our systems and the respective data for their abilities to remove or collect dust to this concentration. If we all had some readily available method to collect such information about our environments, we might be able to safely evaluate them versus the test environments. We tend to focus on making sure that no dust is uncollected. Not a bad approach, just not supported scientifically.

Allergic reactions to wood dust are the same as the allergic reactions to anything else. If you react to an allergen, the smallest amount will trigger the reaction. Allergies can result from persistent or frequent exposure to an allergen. Sometimes allergic reactions can result from the first such exposure, indicating that the allergy existed all along.

I suspect that the greatest value of the study is the empirical data that it provides. The next logical step would be to extend the study over a greater time to evaluate exposure over the long term.

We can use the data from the study to set current targets and evaluate exposure over time to decide if there are any different effects after 20 or 30 years.

At the same time, we must recall who funded the study and keep our own counsel.

Ah - I think I may have mistakenly given the impression that "we don't need no stinking dust collection" whereas I'm actually looking at this study with a "yeah, uh huh, right-o!" reaction! I could not agree more that any research funded by a party with a potential gain based on the outcome of said study is to be viewed as highly suspect.

I believe Frank is correct in saying that Ian has nailed this one!

I'll continue my plans to install a cyclone system when (or is that "if"?) I build my dream shop to be sure! :) If my 'paltry little Shop Fox bag house' can make as big a difference in the air quality as it does, then a properly installed (I'd be rather embarrassed for y'all to see my current cobbled-together collection of S&D pipe, flex hose and metal tape) cyclone would have to be leaps and bounds better!:D

Take care,

Matt

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Don Baer

Matt,...... snip
..... 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.

---

Don, I, and I think a lot of others, would be very interested in the measurements you take at your shop! If no one else wants to know, please hang on to my note and PM me the results!! Thanks. Jim

"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.


Folks....FOLLOW the MONEY. Look at who funded the study. Need I say more?

Around home when we heard something like this that we didn't believe we always said ya & their eyes are brown too. Meaning they are full of it.

I am getting to where I'll be wearing a mask & Ear protection more of the time I'm in the shop. Ear protection for sure because in talking to my Dad he is on his RD pair of hearing aids the latest costing $6000.:eek: :eek: :eek:

no matter what,

WEAR A DUST MASK OF SOME KIND !!!!!!!!!!!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Maurice Ungaro

Folks....FOLLOW the MONEY. Look at who funded the study. Need I say more?

---

While I agree in principle with that sentiment, I think it applies more to studies that say "X is good, you should buy a whole bunch of it" or "X is bad, you need to pay us big bucks to fix it". It's not like they're trying to sell us sawdust or talk us out of buying DC equipment.

For that matter, who else is going to fund a study of this?