this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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And asbestos is just one form of silica. Silica dust from many sources can cause serious lung problems, e.g. breathing in the dust from cutting granite countertops (which contain silica as quartz) or volcanic dust.
Heck just concrete dust will accumulate and cause chronic health issues. Something I hate knowing when I drive by a construction site and see a bunch of guys cutting foundations with saws, huge plumes of concrete dust, they're just breathing it unfiltered. But no one is playing up the health risks to these folks, and they aren't thinking about how bad it will be at 60 to be on oxygen or dead.
Wood dust also does this. In fact, any little soluble, hard particles of a certain shape and size can get stuck in your lungs and do damage there. They act in a biophysical and not in a biochemical way. Which is why, in several countries, you're required to wear PPE when handling such, or any, powders or dusts.
Yeah this sucked getting back into woodworking, they basically tell you now, if you can smell the sawdust and wood (my favorite part), you're in danger so get a mask on.
Makes one susceptible to pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis