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Most small shop workers assume wrongly that fine dust poses no serious risk because we have little shop time and use fine filters that leave clean looking shops. I used the magazine top rated cyclone dust collection system with vendor designed and supplied ducts plus the vendor recommended fine filter upgrade. Little did I know that converting from my old system that blew the fine dust away outside would hospitalize me and cost over half my respiratory function. As a stubborn engineer I figured out what caused the problems and devised my own shop solutions.

My respiratory specialist saw my changes and told me I must share what I learned and my innovations. We wrote a long Internet forum post article that addressed fine dust risks and shared my fine dust controls. We wrote two more long articles that addressed the far too many questions. These additional articles generated even more questions and email, so I created these Cyclone and Dust Collection Research pages that share our information and answer frequently asked questions.

I then coordinated and shared the results as my professor and engineer friends tested almost every brand, size and type small shop dust collector and cyclone. Our test results upset many, particularly small shop vendors. Our tests showed the only popular small shop vendors Delta and WMH Tools (Jet, Powermatic, and Wilton) provided accurate maximum airflows that matched our Dwyer Instrument recommended air flow testing. All other vendors exaggerated, some considerably. Our testing showed these advertized maximum airflows represent about double what these units provide during real use. Sharing these test results produced rapid vendor equipment and advertizing changes.

Follow up air quality testing showed almost all “fine” filters freely pass particles twenty times larger than advertized. The vendors said dust collection filters must season meaning build trapped dust not removed by normal cleaning. I called a senior American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) air engineer. He called these vendor seasoning claims accurate as long as we vent outside. When we vent inside ASHRAE only measures clean new filter performance. He said fully seasoned filters provide roughly twenty times better filtering, but how aggressively we clean defines filter performance. Our testing showed him correct as most small shop air contained particle counts over 10,000 times higher than considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Even after we shared our testing, follow up 2006 and 2007 air quality tests showed when vented indoors every major brand small shop dust collector and cyclone still created dangerously high airborne dust levels. At these exposure levels two hours small shop work creates more fine unhealthy dust exposure than months full time work where the dust vents outside.

Although woodworking dust collection inspired this site creation, all fine airborne dust types endanger our health. Air quality experts recommend fiberglass workers, coffee roasters, granary storage workers and others who get fine dust exposure read these pages. Three large industrial dust collection providers who guarantee air quality require their air engineering and sales staff read this site and they recommend customers read these pages.