Dangers breathing wood dust?

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Glennbear

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Glenn
Alan-
as a practicing Pulmonologist and someone who has learned so much from you on this site, I would be happy to assist you in answering or researching any specific questions you may have for your project.

As a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) guy, I have listed below a few basic points to consider about any respiratory exposures.

- our bodies are built to live in dirty/dusty environments: the thing on the front of our faces is the first filter and humidifier in a long line to protect the delicate air sacs where we swap good air for bad
- we breathe in 10-14 thousand liters of air every day filled with dust, pollen, fungal spores, bacteria, and viruses and we survive; the filter and defense mechanisms of the respiratory system never sleep
- big particles get stuck in the nose/mouth/windpipe, it's the small particles that can be inhaled deeper into the lungs that we need to worry about: anything larger than 5microns (a micron is 1/1000th of a millimeter) gets filtered out in the upper airway and anything smaller that 1-2microns gets breathe in and out without ever sticking
- hogging out wood with a coarse rasp will generate lots of large particles and very few small ones, whereas using 200grit on your ROS will generate only small particles
- a runny nose or extra mucus in your airways after a dust exposure are good things: mucus lying on top of the airway mucus membranes is designed to capture junk in the air; tiny hairs on the surface of the airway are constantly doing the Wave, sweeping the mucus up towards the back of our throats where we swallow it down into the lethal acid bath in our stomachs
- if your nose or airways are having a bad day (inflamed from a virus, allergy, or exposure) then little things are going to bother them more (causing more irritation, swelling, and mucus production) than when they are having a good day
- chronic low level exposure/irritation tends to be worse than an occasional big exposure, presuming that the airways have a chance to get back to normal (smoking cigarettes every day is worse than having a cigar every once in a while, even though the particle load from a cigar is much higher than from cigarettes)
- some woods are more irritating to the airways than others; see the multiple threads on this subject on the site
- dust = bad :thumbs_do DCs, shop air filters, and masks = good!:thumbs_up:thumbs_up:thumbs_up

Thank you for sharing your medical knowledge on this subject Mike. :wsmile:
 
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