On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 00:15:06 +0000, Peter Parry
wrote:

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:39:15 +0000, Andy Hall
wrote:

MDF dust is certainly not good for the health

MDF is no more harmful than any softwood dust and considerably less
harmful than many hardwood dusts.

There is no question that many hardwood dusts are a lot more harmful
than softwoods.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/wis6.pdf

However, the HSE rates all wood dusts equally in terms of MEL, so this
throws up question marks.

Certainly one should not take wood dust protection lightly

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/roc/tenth/p...s/s189wood.pdf



Certainly if you were sanding MDF or cutting it with power tools in a
confined space with no form of dust extraction, then a face mask is
important. You have dust and formaldehyde fumes to contend with.

The formaldehyde content of MDF is now (and has been for some years)
negligible.

Yes, but has been known to affect those allergic to formaldhyde.



You might want to ask the craft teacher whether a risk assessment has
been done or which guidelines they are following.

Also whether they make children wear goggles to play conkers.

I don't that this is worth making a big fuss about,

On this we agree.

Because the exposure level is likely to be small in this case.

If they were using power sanders or powered cutting tools it would be
sensible to have some dust extraction and possibly disposable masks.

I don't think that this is a 'conkers' argument but agree that that is
nonsense.

--

..andy

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