Dust monitoring equipment – why dust is monitored and what equipment we use to monitor dust
Videos have been posted on the website of The Chemical Safety Board detailing the dangers posed by industrial dust explosions. These occur when a large build up of combustible dust is dispersed into the air and then explode if provided with an ignition source.
Immense damage and loss of life can follow. Other dangers that industrial dust pose are lung diseases caused by the inhalation and retention of dust in the lungs. Coal miners especially are exposed to many kinds of dusts including silica. Tiny particles of coal dust are retained in the alveoli – they are surrounded by macrophages but, eventually, the system is overwhelmed and an immune response follows.
It is impossible to prevent all industrial dust diseases but they can be reduced by various safety precautions, such as adequate ventilation, keeping down dust levels and wearing of facemasks.
An extremely important factor in prevention of dust related problems is the monitoring of dust using specially engineered equipment. Dust monitoring equipment assist industry and agriculture in detecting harmful levels of toxic dust which in turn allows the problem to be engineered away.
Dust not only causes health and safety problems but can also cost industry money in terms of equipment maintenance and production. See the extract below from the website http://www.dust-monitoring-equipment.com/services/dustdesign.htm : “We have successfully removed fish scales from marine diamond deposits with specialized dust control equipment. The fish scales were not actually a dust problem but they did interfere with the optics used to separate diamonds. This is similar to the problem where we had to de-fluff diamond concentrates from underground mining operations, where a slurry explosive is pre-packed in plastic bags.
The slivers of plastic fluoresced in the same way that diamonds fluoresce and needed to be removed from the process.” In general finer suspended dust remains airborne almost indefinitely due to air currents and thermal activities on any given day, even if there is no wind at all. The unit that we use to capture this dust is the DustWatch, designed and patented in South Africa by Gerry Kuhn Environmental and Hygiene Engineering.
The use of fall-out monitoring yields a large amount of information, allowing a far greater and effective study to be undertaken than any other single sampling method. If used in combination with PM10 or total particulate dust sampling, results can be very conclusive.
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