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Most small shop workers wrongly think that fine wood dust poses little risk because we put limited time in our shops and use dust collection equipment with fine filters that leave us with clean looking shops. I learned the hard way that my clean looking shop provided a bad false sense of security. I landed in the hospital with an apparent heart attack from fine wood dust that shut down my respiratory system leaving my heart with inusfficient oxygen. A few different things contributed to my problem. Fine wood dust reduced my respiratory capacity after a lifetime or woodworking. I vented my cyclone dust collector inside. Its filter freely passed the fine invisible dust that causes the most harm to our health. I made things worse by working fairly toxic woods. Almost any activity launched this fine dust airborne. This left me blindsided from a clean looking shop that tested with dangerously high amounts of airborne wood dust. My continued heavy exposure to this dust developed a bad sensitivity meaning strong allergic reaction. I argued strongly that I already had good fine dust collection. I used the “top” rated dust collection system with the “best” rated small shop cyclone including vendor designed and supplied ducting and even vendor recommended fine filter upgrade. After reminding me that I was in the hospital with allergy testing that proved with nasty welts and boils I had a big problem with wood dust, he convinced me to spend my recovery time doing research on what went wrong and what I needed to do to make repair. A little study on the dangers of fine dust convinced me to get costly air quality testing on my home and shop. That testing showed my big expensive cyclone so badly contaminated my shop and home that I would have been better off just opening a door and using a big fan blowing the air out of my shop. This inspired me to get to work to figure out what was needed to clean up my shop.

After seeing the changes to my shop and new cyclone design, my respiratory doctor, who is also an avid woodworker, talked me into sharing what I learned about the dangers of fine dust and the many changes I made to control fine dust. I shared that information on some long Internet woodworking forum posts and was immediately buried in emails. In self defense I moved those articles to these Cyclone and Dust Collection Research pages, plus started an active testing program. With help from my friends all over we tested almost every well known brand, size and type of small shop dust collection system. Sharing those results on these pages upset just about everyone. Nobody wanted to hear that their expensive dust collection system worked poorly. Our vendors were even less happy because this testing showed they inflated their airflow claims two to three times and filter claims ten to twenty times what we actually measured from their systems in real use. This testing clearly hosed almost all under 3 hp dust collectors and cyclones less than 3.5 hp moved too little air for good fine dust collection. Worse, most small shop vendors sold “fine” filters that freely passed the finest dust particles which are invisible without magnification right through. With it taking months to years for this fine dust to dissipate, every small shop dust collector and cyclone we tested when vented inside raised the dust levels so high that most small shop workers end up getting more fine dust exposure in a few hours than full time workers in larger facilities that vent outside get in months.

This site started off as a project to help woodworkers, but all who are exposed to fine dust are at similar risk. Many ranging from those who work with fiberglass, those who roast coffee, to those who work with grain storage strongly recommend reading these pages. In fact, three of the best known large industrial dust collection providers whose customers must conduct regular air quality testing now make reading this site mandatory for their staff and highly recommend its reading to their customers.