Abrasive blast materials that are easy on the lungs?

[killakobra]

i'm sure it's not healthy but i've been using screened river sand. bought 3/4 ton for $12. i do wear a hood and a mask when blasting though.

[dablack00]

i'm sure it's not healthy but i've been using screened river sand. bought 3/4 ton for $12. i do wear a hood and a mask when blasting though.

It is your life, but there is no reason to waste it. A simple dust mask isn't going to cut it. Also, if you lived anywhere near me and was doing that, I would sue you into nothingness. You might as well be spraying poison.

Please check this out:
http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec04/ch049/ch049i.html

What you are doing is more than "not healthy", it is down right deadly.

[killakobra]

yes i know. I've got a respirator i wear (should have been more specific). from what it sounds like, coal slag doesn't seem much better. black lung anyone? could be wrong but inhaling any particulate isn't exactly healthy.

[Fordnatic]

Baking soda is the safest. Doesn't work on the heavy stuff, but will take off paint nicely--without harming glass or rubber also. Leaves metal looking like the day it was painted at the factory.

[robroy]

yes i know. I've got a respirator i wear (should have been more specific). from what it sounds like, coal slag doesn't seem much better. black lung anyone? could be wrong but inhaling any particulate isn't exactly healthy.

Hi KillaKobra!

Sorry if this is all stuff you're already aware of, but I thought it couldn't hurt to point it out.

While it's true that coal slag probably isn't so great to breathe, there's something special about river and beach sand. When the particles collide with iron at high speed they release silica dust, which is one of the most deadly things for the lungs. It causes scar tissue to form over each spec of silica, and the scar tissue is there for good--that part of the lung will never heal again. Silicosis is the name of that disease and lots of people died from it before folks knew this about using beach/river sand in sandblasting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis

The silica dust particles that are deadly to the lungs are tiny. They're so tiny that respirators are ineffective against them--they go right through in to the lungs. So the only way to blast safely with river/beach sand is with a supplied air system (usually an air tank on your back), and that's naturally super expensive.

Most sandblasting media you buy specifically for that purpose these days doesn't generate silica dust when used so it's a lot safer. Glass beads, aluminum oxide, and crushed garnet are some that don't generate silica, as far as I've been able to gather from reading around about it.

As I understand it, this knowledge of the hazard of beach/river sand is pretty new. Even as recently as the early 1990's its hazards weren't commonly agreed upon.

Maybe somebody else knows a lot more about this and would care to add more details?

-Robroy

[killakobra]

hmm. yea, it rings a bell. AP bio actually pays off. did a bit of a quick search and misting water is one way of controlling silica dust. would it be possible to use a wet cloth along with a resporator to trap the dust?

[killakobra]

Baking soda is the safest. Doesn't work on the heavy stuff, but will take off paint nicely--without harming glass or rubber also. Leaves metal looking like the day it was painted at the factory.

won't really help in my situation. the past 40 havn't been kind to my two ton paper weight.

[dablack00]

I got a supplied air set up for about $400. You need it for blasting, painting and other stuff. The great thing is, you can pull the air from a cooler and the air you are breathing is about 50 degrees. I love that thing. It can be 100 degrees in my garage but with my supplied air set up I can be painting and I feel nice and cool. Gotta love it.

So, please, don't blast or paint with anything but a supplied air setup. Life is too short to not save the extra $400 and do it right and safe.

[robroy]

I second the recommendation for the supplied air setup. And the health safety benefits of this should make it an easy thing to convince a relative to lend you the cash for if you don't already have it on hand.

I bought a HobbyAir 1 from Eastwood during one of their sales. I think the total came to around $500.

It has 40 feet of air hose coming from the pump, which is barely adequate. If I were buying again I would spend more and get the HobbyAir 2 with 80 feet of hose. The HobbyAir 2 is something I wasn't even aware of until I ordered mine because it's not sold through the Eastwood catalog.

One thing I haven't been able to get working perfectly yet is the seal the air mask makes around my face. From time to time I smell paint when I'm working with it, which I'm sure is never supposed to happen.

Another benefit of this full face mask type of system: you get a face shield that never fogs up, since it has air blowing across it constantly. You know how regular face shields fog up after a minute or two.

-Robroy

[robroy]

hmm. yea, it rings a bell. AP bio actually pays off. did a bit of a quick search and misting water is one way of controlling silica dust. would it be possible to use a wet cloth along with a resporator to trap the dust?

Hey Killakobra!

It might help, but in my opinion, it's still an unreasonable gamble. And the trouble is that it's not possible to tell whether it's helping or not--the silica dust is so fine there's no way for a human to detect it, as far as I know. So with this method, you wouldn't know until way down the road whether it worked or not, and, naturally, it wouldn't be a nice thing to discover one day in the hospital with trouble breathing!

BTW: have you noticed that respirators, regardless of where you get them, say somewhere in the fine print that they're not intended for use with abrasive blasting? That's 'cause the silica dust goes right through them.

-Robroy

[Brokenarrow]

How about soda-ash? Anyone tried it in a blaster?

[killakobra]

i've seen the blaster for it and i've read about it but that's as close as i've gotten to soda blasting.

[marxtoys]

I sort of have the impression that the only 'safe' way to get all the crud off these old parts is to haul them to someone who does this stuff and remain upwind 'til they're done.

That crusty black factory undercoating is loaded with asbestos, and all our pretty red-orange-yellow paint is full of lead... other colors - other nasty metals... and the list can go on.


So anyway..... have the folks at Black Whatever come up with some miracle method of removing the arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium, and, oh yeah a bonus, radioactivity - from their coal spew? or is it like that power plant stuff that's been in the news lately? Hey, maybe it comes from "clean coal"!

[robroy]

That crusty black factory undercoating is loaded with asbestos

Hey Marxtoys! Thanks for replying! That's very interesting and surprising to me that asbestos is in that stuff. Do you happen to remember your source for this information? Just wondering if this is a well documented fact?

Thanks again!
-Robroy

[marxtoys]

That crusty black factory undercoating is loaded with asbestos

Hey Marxtoys! Thanks for replying! That's very interesting and surprising to me that asbestos is in that stuff. Do you happen to remember your source for this information? Just wondering if this is a well documented fact?

Thanks again!
-Robroy

Here's one.

Have to admit that I only read the abstract, which mentions "the relatively high concentrations (5.6 – 28%)(emphasis mine) of chrysotile fibers detected within bulk samples of seam sealant" but says that a lot less goes into the air when scraping by hand instead of using an air hammer with a scraper blade. I would imagine that a wire wheel or a sandblaster would break the stuff up and put it all in the air.