Attaching a normal shop vacuum to a dust-collecting saw can remove 81% of dangerous silica dust from the air, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) reported today.
The federal agency said its "practical solution" reduces exposure to crystalline silica to well below NIOSH recommendations. To learn more about this practical solution, see the synopsis in Remodeling magazine.
OSHA's proposed silica rule has been getting a lot of press this week, following a funding bill that passed the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 25. The new bill would fund OSHA at $28 million less than its current spending level of $552.7 million, and includes an amendment that bars funding for the final silica rule unless the agency jumps through a number of hoops (see "Senate Budget Bill Adds Steps to OSHA’s Silica Rulemaking Process" Safety + Health, 6/25/15).
Slate is among those news organization lambasting the government for its failure to act on a workplace danger that it issued a warning about in 1974, and has been widely known as a mining and construction hazard since the 1930s (see "Working to Death," Slate 6/15)
