Even working outdoors on a construction site, inhaling dangerous dust or chemicals can be a real problem.

Carpenters are often working very hard on construction sites, often seen cutting wood and paneling and siding using a variety of cutting tools and saws for each job. Good professional carpenters know what to use for each job, and they are adept and keeping their limbs relatively free from the blades and know many safety procedures to keep themselves and others safe.

[Image coutesy of the U.S. Navy Seabee Museum through Flickr via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of the U.S. Navy Seabee Museum through Flickr via a Creative Commons license] Circular saws are very popular and versatile tools on construction sites, but sometimes they are asked to cut materials other than wood, that not only send dust into the air, but dust with dangerous materials, such as silica. NIOSH is addressing a key concern with a recent paper.

Recently, the use of fiber-cement siding has become trendy and has exploded in popularity. This material is best cut by a circular saw, but it has been known to have some airborne hazards with it as the saw releases dust made of crystalline silica into the air.

Silica, if you are not familiar, is the material that is behind beach sand, is used for making silicon wafers for computer devices, and is also found in some of those freshness packets that we might get mailed to us – those little packets that keep odors and wetness away from important items which cannot handle excessive moisture (such as electronics).

While silica is quite useful, it can also be hazardous.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the United States has been noticing the increase in the use of fiber-cement siding and recently sent out a paper making safety suggestions to help mitigate the amount of silica dust that gets into the air when carpenters are using circular saws around this type of siding. It is found that as much as half of this fiber-cement siding can be made of crystalline silica which can create very fine dust particles which carpenters and others could breathe when they cut into this siding.

The silica dust, when inhaled at a high volume, could cause a dangerous lung condition that has been responsible for about 100 deaths every year. And for those working around cut fiber-cement siding, the potential exposure to the dust could be nearly three times times higher than the limit recommended by NIOSH.

The NIOSH paper, which can be found here, makes several suggestions about combatting the silica dust exposure, though some of them involve extra cost investments (such as the use of masks and/or respirators). One noteworthy suggestion is perhaps the easiest to implement because it likely won’t require additional investment.

This involves hooking up a shop-vac to the circular saw. After all, many construction sites have a shop-vac around to clean up a work area after a project, and it is said that having the shop-vac on whiling sawing takes place will help collect much of the silica dust that escapes and would minimize the workers’ exposure to the dust.