New WE owner from the upstate NY area . . .

[sksharp]

I’m going to use a mask from now on as well MarcH with the diamond stones. The dust can stay in the air for hours depending on the ventilation. If you are doing a lot of sharpening around an air conditioner or any device that filters, change and/or check the filters regularly.

[tcmeyer]

If one was really concerned about the dust getting into your lungs, I suppose that using a water spritzer on all of your stones would be an option.  Just messy to clean up afterwards.

My father worked in a plastics injection molding plant that mixed asbestos with the plastic to make the parts more rigid, as well as cheaper.  The guys who worked directly with the asbestos (loading it into the mixing hoppers with pitchforks) all died within about twenty years.  Dad was a maintenance guy, so his expose was somewhat less.  He died about 30 years later of bone cancer, but it might have metastacized from the lung.  Can’t know for sure.  My oldest sister’s husband worked at the same plant at about the same time.  He died in ’98 of sclero derma, unrelated to asbestos, but she has been diagnosed as having asbestosis, which is nodules in the lungs resulting from asbestos, but not yet cancerous. Probably a result of shaking his work clothes out when doing the laundry.  It’s been reported that wives were more likely to get it than their husbands, because their exposure was to airborne particles.

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sksharp, Dwight Glass, Expidia, Marc H

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