How Dust Can Harm Your Employees

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Rather than harmful, dust is often seen as simply annoying. It is almost everywhere, but we do not really pay enough attention to it or understand how poor health can result from overexposure to dust in the workplace. As a matter of fact, being exposed to constant high levels of dust can be dangerous and can negatively impact the lives of people affected.    

Exposure to dust is inevitable in the manufacturing sector. The job includes tasks and actions that create and disperse dust into the air. Even with daily, detailed cleaning schedules, it is difficult to maintain healthy dust levels in factories or warehouses.

This indicates that your employees' health is constantly at risk, leaving them vulnerable to acute respiratory diseases and skin disorders that could affect them for the rest of their lives. It is, therefore, essential that you take every conceivable step to reduce the dust in the workplace, including Premium Industrial Dust Collector Filters and machines.

Here are some main ways dust exposure may endanger your workplace's well-being.

Dust in the lungs

Over-exposure to dust can cause issues with breathing that may lead to life-threatening respiratory diseases. Small dust particles are freely inhaled into the nose and pharynx, called respirable dust. These are then able to build up and take up air space in the lungs, creating chest blockages which can cause some quite severe illnesses and reduced lung function.

Pneumonia and asthma can also be caused by dust exposure. Some types of dust are worse than others. For example, the dust created from wood, reactive dyes, flour, and grain can cause chest tightness, wheezing, and prolonged coughing attacks. Asthma caused by occupational hazards is debilitating, but if it becomes pneumonia, as a result of the build-up of dust and lung infections, it can be fatal. It's absolutely vital as an employer that you have measures in place to combat these issues, like these split systems melbourne, which provide you with dust-catching filters to reduce the harmful air in your workplace.

Lung conditions are declared one of the most prominent and severe health dangers associated with workplace dust. Exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RsC) causes lung cancer and silicosis. Sadly, the long-term effects of exposure to dust and the damage to the lungs are usually incurable. As with most things, prevention is better than cure, and employers are responsible for prioritizing their workers' health and safety by taking every possible step to minimize exposure to excessive dust. 

Dust on the skin

The dust has to settle somewhere, most often on the skin. Unless workers are covered in head-to-toe protective gear and clothing and strict routines are followed in removing and laundering these items, there will still be some skin exposure. While not as dangerous—in most cases—as the lung conditions caused by dust, it can cause some painful allergic reactions, especially over a prolonged period. Itching, redness, scaling and crusting, and general soreness are all symptoms of an allergic reaction to dust exposure.

Unfortunately, dust can have some more severe side effects. Some manufacturing processes and materials give off carcinogenic dust, which, over time, can increase the chances of cancer.

Dust and brain function

Brain problems may also arise from the health effects of overexposure to dust. Studies have shown that frequent inhalation of particles of fine, respirable dust can lead to dementia and increase the risk of strokes.

The researchers analyzed nine hundred brains of test subjects older than 60 years. While there is no definitive correlation between exposure to dust and brain health, the study showed that brains less exposed to dust were undoubtedly in better shape.

Your responsibility

As an employer, your priority, above profits, above everything else, has to be the health and safety of your staff. Morally, it is right to ensure that they are kept well at work, but you also have a legal obligation - you can find yourself hit with lawsuits and criminal charges if you are found to be neglectful in your duties. How can we control this seemingly uncontrollable component? The solutions lie in simple practices such as due diligence and maintenance. For example, air conditioning repair services can conduct checks on your HVAC and air-con systems to keep them in good condition, but you should also be aware of the long-term impacts of your employees’ exposure to dust. Just because you have a strong constitution and can breathe like an iron lung doesn’t mean your employees are okay. 

Dust that is not controlled can be dangerous and present severe hazards, both in the long term and the short term, to staff and anyone visiting your premises. It also causes low staff morale, high staff absence, turnover, and lower productivity levels, hurting your bottom line.