voiceover:the woodwhisperer is sponsored by festool:faster, easier, smarter and by powermatic, thegold standard since 1921. marc:today we can breathe easy because we're going to talk about protecting our lungs from dust. (lively music) now the best place to collect dusts is at the source so you need
some sort of a high powereddust collection system like my cyclone here. but one of the smaller portable bag units just to get all the dustdirectly from the tool that's producing it. for smaller portablepower tools i recommend either a shop vac or a specializeddust extraction system. now regardless of whichsystem you're using just because it looks likeyou've pulled all the dust off
at the surface and there'sreally no visible dust, that doesn't mean that you got it all. the most dangerous stuffis the smallest stuff and you can't even see it. now when talking about dust particles, we're going to refer to themin a unit of measurement known as microns. now micron is just one onethousandth of a millimeter so it's really, really small.
now just for reference thedot from a simple pencil point is roughly 615 microns. now the dust that we comein contact with the shop comes over a range of sizes. the largest is going to bebetween 100 and 300 microns and that's the stuff thatusually just falls to the floor. going a little bit smaller things that are around 10 microns, that's the stuff we start to breathe in.
it gets lounged in the nasal passages and also at the top of the lungs but the good thing is ourbody's natural ability is there to sort of expelit through normal coughing. okay i said normal coughing. now the smallest stuffaround two and a half microns or less is really the most dangerous. that gets down intothe bottom of the lungs and some of it does getdissolved into the bloodstream
and then filtered out by the liver but not all of it. the stuff that stays therecan lead to allergies, a lung disease and even cancer. now even though i have a reallygood dust collection system, i'm never a 100% positive that i'm getting all of thesmall really fine dust particles so i like to protectmyself a little bit more by using a respirator.
now some people may see this and think it's a little bit overkill because they just use regular dust mask. my problem with a regular mask is and of course you couldspend a little bit more money to get the nicer ones that fit better. most of these don't really fit that well over your face and you wind up having gaps where you're just taking in unfiltered air
which is obviouslydefeating the purpose of it. the second thing is over all comfort because these are usually made of paper. they're not that comfortable to wear for long periods of time whereas a respiratorwith this nice very soft rubber area here around your face is actually pretty comfortable when you work out here all day long
you really need somethingthat's comfortable otherwise you're justgoing to keep taking it off and again defeating thepurpose of wearing it in the first place. i usually recommend a half mask respirator very similar to this one. let's talk a little bitabout the filtration itself and with most respirators it's really going to be two stages.
the first is going tobe the dust filtration or particulate filtrationthat you get with soft pads like this stuff here. the second one is the onethat filters out the fumes, usually it's an organic cartridge and you can actually get cartridges that filter all kinds of differentthings for specific test. for most things that we do as woodworkers and most of the finishes we deal with,
the standard organic vapor cartridge that typically comeswith these respirators is more than adequate for what we do. now let's take a really close look at one of these filter unitsand i'll show what's inside. now first glance you mightthink that this cartridge has something pretty complexgoing on inside there but the reality is, it'sjust activated carbon. anyone has ever had a fish tank
has had a lot ofexperience with this stuff. now activated carbon is really cool stuff. it may just look like an irregularblack pebble of some sort but the reality is thisstuff is incredibly porous. you think of the surfaceof activated carbon sort of like maybe thesurface of an english muffin where you have a lot of nukes and crannies and places for things to get lodged into but instead of butter
we're basically filteringout the air that we breathe. all of the bad gases and things as they go sort of pass through here, they get stuck into all ofthese nukes and crannies on the activated carbon. the surface area thisthings is incredibly large for the size that it is. if you take just onegram of activated carbon you get the equivalentof over 5,000 square feet
of space on one gram with that stuff. now let's talk aboutparticulate filtration or dust filtration. now it's important toknow what the numbers on these filters means because at some point you're going to have to buy replacements and if you start looking online it can get pretty confusing pretty fast
if you don't know what this mean. the good thing is its pretty simple. there's usually a simpleletter and number. the number itself 95, 100 it depends on which ones you buy just refers to the efficiency. if it's 95 it means that it collects 95% of the airborne particlesthat pass through it. if it's a 100, it doesn'texactly collect 100%
it's usually labeled as 99.97% effective which is pretty darn good. now the letter is typically either n or p and i think there is a few others but most of the time i don'tcome in contact with those. if it's n it means thatyou can't use those for oil-based aerosolsthat might be in the air and for dust that's really not a problem. if you buy the one with p on it
that means that you canuse that with oil-based plus everything else. typically when i'm buyingreplacements i just buy p just in case because who knows what i'm going to beusing it for at some point and it's usually notthat much more expensive. the ones that typically comewith the respirators again are like an n95 for instance, when i buy replacements
i like to get the upgradedbest ones that i can get so i typically go withsomething that's labeled p100 and that's what these little pink ones are and i don't want them to be pink but that's the way that they come and it catches a lot ofattention and the ladies love it. now i get a lot of questionsabout my respirator set-up so i'm going to showyou exactly what i use. i've got a 3m 7500 series respirator,
very comfortable and the realreason why i like this one is because of the down firing exhaust. most respirators have anexhaust right in the front which tends to go rightup into your glasses, your safety lenses and fog them up. this on the other hand fire straight down so you never really have that problem. now the cartridges for this,pretty straight forward, they're always color coded.
the one i use is color coded with black that's the standardorganic vapor cartridge and that's what's going to come with it when you buy this brand new. the system is pretty straight forward. this is actually what it comes with. okay twists on and locks in place. now the organic filtered cartridge has this little plastic cover on it.
if i can get that off. it's got this cover on it okay so now we're back down to the single organic cartridge itself then the particulatefiltration goes on top of that and then this littleplastic piece holds it in. if you want to step up to a better filter, this is the one that i purchased okay, the little pink one.
the problem is this doesn't go on there, okay and this plastic piecedoesn't allow this to fit so i did a little bitmore research and realized that there are alternative covers so you don't have to use this one. what i wound up finding was a cover that had another port thati can attach this to, right? now and it's relatively inexpensive, it's only a couple bucks for that.
the ultimate set up withboth stages of filtration p100 on the outside of my organic filter all connected together to methat's the ultimate set-up. what you have to keep in mind is these cartridges are heavy and you do not want thison your face all day if you're not finishing,if you're just sanding why would you have that onthere for the entire day. the good thing is these filters
unlike the ones that come with it, these have that pore on the outside and i'm sure you guyshave seen me use this in the show before connects directly to the respirator and is now pretty lightweightand very comfortable to wear all day. now when you go to buy your respirator you're probably going to notice
that they come in multiple sizes. you want to get the one thatfits your face the best. now for me maybe as a frame or a reference it might help some of you, the size that i use is a large. the seal around the face is really nice, goes over the bridge ofthe nose and under my chin and i could wear this thing all day and not smell anything.
that's really what you want to do. i mean if we had accessto the proper fit testing that they get done likeif you have to wear this for your occupation you'll probably have to go through a fit test where they determine how good the seal is and you get one that'sperfectly fit to your face. no we don't really have thatluxury so a lot of times if i'm using let's justsay an oil-based varnish
something that's not too offensive but you can use it as sortof a testing material. do a sample piece finish it. if you can't smell anything at all then i think you're good to go. ideally if you couldget access to a fit test to make sure that you'vegot a perfect seal that's even better yet. if you do smell something
you may want to take thatone back to the store and try a different size soyou can get a better fit. one thing to keep in mind isif you have facial hair guys you want to make surethat you don't have hair between this connecting point in your skin because that's going toreduce the efficiency of the filtration as well. now one more thing i want to go over, concerning your lungs andkeeping the shop air clean.
our air cleaners, i'msure you've seen this, some of you may already have them. typically they're hung from the ceiling and it's basically justa big fan and a filter. the idea is it pulls allthe air out of the shop, filters it so that youhave nice clean air. now the thing is i've seen thisused improperly in the past and i just want to makesure you guys understand how they're suppose to work.
the idea is this big fankeeps the air in the shop in circulation, it remindsof like a pool filter. a pool filter can't work unless the dust is insuspension in the water and those things are pretty much the same if that dust is just laying on a surface it can't pick it up 10 feet in the air so it tries to keep the air circulated. now if you're walking around in the room,
that doesn't necessarilymean that it's helping you because it's stirring the dust up and before the dust gets fromwhere it's originating from to where it's going,what's it have to pass? it's going to pass my face so i'm going to breath it in anyway so running these things whileyou're working in the shop and assuming that that's cleaningthe air adequately for you and you don't need to use somesort of a mask or respirator
probably isn't the best way to go. what i typically recommend people do when it comes to these air cleaners, i mean if you want to runit while you're in the shop i still recommend using a respirator that's perfectly fine becauseit will clean the air. what i typically recommend though is take advantage of the time or feature that's on this thing
so every time you finish up in the shop at the end of the day, clickit on for a couple hours, leave the shop and then when you come back you're going to be welcomedto a nice clean air shop that you don't necessarily feel like you have to throw yourrespirator on right away because that thing wasworking after you left and after you stopped producing dust. now like anything concerning shop safety,
ultimately the decision is yours, how far do you want to take it. for me i think a respiratoris great way to go and some people may thinkthat's a little bit overkill but if i'm going to go overboard in any area concerning woodworking, safety is probably nota bad one to focus on. now hopefully i've givenyou enough information and you can go out there,
pick out your own respirator and know that you're gettingexactly what you need to keep yourself safe in the workshop. until next time, breatheeasy friends, take care. (joyful music)