Construction
Many activities in construction can cause dust creation including demolition, remediation, excavation, drilling, concrete work, sandblasting, aggregate transportation and woodwork. Silica dust is commonly generated, which can lead to silicosis, cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
For many years, dust exposure monitoring was not a focus of the construction industry. It was thought that because workers are typically in unconfined spaces, their exposure levels were not overly high. With cases of workers illnesses coming to light and tightening of government exposure limits across the world, it is becoming a more well-known concern at construction sites.
Real-time wearable monitoring
Many construction sites use an area monitor fixed at one location, often mounted to a pole in the air. This monitoring location is not representative of workers’ breathing zones at various locations on the site and can mislead worker exposures.
As in other industries, some tasks commonly have the worker wearing PPE to reduce their exposure. But illnesses are being discovered in workers who did not wear PPE as part of their regular job description. A wearable, real time dust monitor can be used to easily monitor the exposures of these workers.
Nanozen Blog
Our blog is full of interesting articles. Here is one about how to effectively sample silica in the workplace.