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Wood Toxicity


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One thing to help prevent becoming overly sensitized to any wood is to always wear some type of disposable or washable overall, like painters wear, you can get quite light ones for the summer time and heavier ones for when it is colder. You should look for elastic cuffs you can pull over your gloves.

Basically as nerdy as it seems you need full coverage, even your face, heck especially your face and eyes covered, this is very important never disregard eye protection, sealed eye protection for sanding, not standard safety shades. They make all this stuff, any safety supply shop should be able to set you up. its used everyday by woodworkers all over the world who cannot afford or who dont want to lose their livelihood.

If your arms are getting covered in sawdust, your getting sawdust on your face and in your hair, your just playing with fire, you may not be sensitized yet, and truthfully, maybe you never will, but if you do !!!

If you are covering up proper, then when your done your sanding sessions you must go outside, or into a 'dirty room' to take of the overalls first, dust off with a decent duster, wearing your respirator the whole time, it does not come off till your not all dusty. Never hurts to go wash up.

I know there are tons of stories about people who have worked with this stuff their whole lives in T shirts and shorts, getting covered in dust everyday, they are lucky I guess, becoming sensitized to wood, or whatever, is a personal thing, everyone is different, it doesn't mean you are not tough, it means your chemical make up really disagrees with whatever it is your getting exposed too, some people are hardly sensitive to wood, some not at all, some terribly so. There is no one size fits all prescription either, but a little prevention, that is proven to work. can never hurt. May be damn uncomfortable in the hot summer, but that's just the way it is.

Stay Safe everyone.

PS: on a related note, last summer me and a partner were removing a dead and crusty old Japanese Elm(IIRC ??), we had to buck the tree into firewood lengths once we dropped it on the ground, after cutting it up, my partner had to go to emergency ward for allergic reaction. I wore a bandanna as a makeshift respirator as I do some days if the wood is really dry and dusty, I told him to do the same but what do I know?

You see usually sawdust is quite wet, but occasionally a tree will be near dead and dried right out and when you buck them up they kick out big clouds of dry dust, much like sanding would(wood).

Thankfully it was/is a very rare tree, this persons grandfather had planted it not something we run into very often if ever before.

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On 11/15/2005 at 6:42 PM, Donnie B. said:

I have a 1996 Warwick Corvette standard that is cool cause it has the older 100% wenge neck (a beautiful deep rich dark color - almost black). 96 was the last year they made them this way cause they found the workers who did the neck shaping were getting ill from the wenge wood dust.

 

They now have changed to an ovankel (sp?) neck with just the fretboard made from wenge.

 

Oh, and it's currently on Ebay btw..........

I love how we get looks. I’ve no clue about what dust does to you but I hate sanding it.  It doesn’t like to be sanded.  Those oil filled razor sharp hook fibers it’s comprised of are evil.  

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Wood dust is considered a carcinogen by several international cancer research bodies, irrespective of the species of timber being worked. On that advice it's probably best to err on the side of caution and employ appropriate PPE and dust extraction/collection when performing woodworking of any kind that generates dust.

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Wenge is all it’s cracked up to be.  I was looking at a piece at my local supplier and as I was putting it back in the stack, it slid across my hand on the only darn unsurfaced section.  I didn’t feel it to about 30 minutes later.  Those fibers burn like hell. You also can hardly see them. I was able to remove about 10 with tweezers and the used a razor blade like a scraper for the rest.  Topical and injected Benedeyl helped the burning / itching but my palm blistered for a couple days after.  Careless mistake but I know now what that Hellwood can do. 

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