Hi All,

My 14 year old daughter came home the other day with a little wooden
'project' she had made at school in DT.

It looks like it was made from 6mm thick MDF and I asked her if anyone
was required to wear a face mask whilst cutting it and apparently no
one was?

Now I don't *think* this was a real safety issue but should they have
worn masks (officially?).

All the best ..

T i m

And is a "Hegna Saw" any good? (never heard of it till my daughter
mentioned using one)

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:03:20 GMT, T i m wrote:

Hi All,

My 14 year old daughter came home the other day with a little wooden
'project' she had made at school in DT.

It looks like it was made from 6mm thick MDF and I asked her if anyone
was required to wear a face mask whilst cutting it and apparently no
one was?

Now I don't *think* this was a real safety issue but should they have
worn masks (officially?).

MDF dust is certainly not good for the health and there are maximum
exposure limits defined in the COSHH rules.

There are supposed to be risk assessments and exposure is supposed to
be minimised and certainly below MEL.

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.

However, for cutting small pieces very occasionally using hand tools
is not likely to create that much of a problem.

You might want to ask the craft teacher whether a risk assessment has
been done or which guidelines they are following. I don't that this
is worth making a big fuss about, but it may be worth raising the
issue just in case they haven't considered it.




All the best ..

T i m

And is a "Hegna Saw" any good? (never heard of it till my daughter
mentioned using one)

I believe that these are a small scroll saw.



--

..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

"T i m" wrote in message
...
Hi All,

My 14 year old daughter came home the other day with a little wooden
'project' she had made at school in DT.
It looks like it was made from 6mm thick MDF and I asked her if anyone
was required to wear a face mask whilst cutting it and apparently no
one was?
Now I don't *think* this was a real safety issue but should they have
worn masks (officially?).


Does COSHH and the HSAW Act apply to pupils at schools? It certainly
didn't to start off with, and I recall that some years ago there was a
hurried Regulation published to extend COSHH (I think) to technical
colleges, but I can't remember schools being mentioned.
--
M Stewart
Milton Keynes, UK
http://www.megalith.freeserve.co.uk/oddimage.htm

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:50:21 -0000, "Malcolm Stewart"
wrote:

"T i m" wrote in message
.. .
Hi All,

My 14 year old daughter came home the other day with a little wooden
'project' she had made at school in DT.
It looks like it was made from 6mm thick MDF and I asked her if anyone
was required to wear a face mask whilst cutting it and apparently no
one was?
Now I don't *think* this was a real safety issue but should they have
worn masks (officially?).


Does COSHH and the HSAW Act apply to pupils at schools? It certainly
didn't to start off with, and I recall that some years ago there was a
hurried Regulation published to extend COSHH (I think) to technical
colleges, but I can't remember schools being mentioned.

Take a look through this

www.kirklees-ednet.org.uk/subjects/
health/docs/policy/1artdesigntechnology.doc



--

..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

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.

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.

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.

--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/

"Andy Hall" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:50:21 -0000, "Malcolm Stewart"
wrote:

Does COSHH and the HSAW Act apply to pupils at schools? It
certainly
didn't to start off with, and I recall that some years ago there was a
hurried Regulation published to extend COSHH (I think) to technical
colleges, but I can't remember schools being mentioned.

Take a look through this


http://www.kirklees-ednet.org.uk/sub...gntechnology.d
oc

Thanks for the link - it seems to confirm what I thought. All the fine
words are founded on a BS.
--
M Stewart
Milton Keynes, UK
http://www.megalith.freeserve.co.uk/oddimage.htm

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

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:03:20 GMT, T i m wrote:

It looks like it was made from 6mm thick MDF and I asked her if anyone
was required to wear a face mask whilst cutting it and apparently no
one was?

There is never any blanket need "to wear masks". There is a
requirement to reduce exposure to an appropriate level. If you can
achieve this by ventilation appropriate to the dust source being
generated, then you don't need to mask up as well.

A scroll saw is a narrow kerf saw, cutting a small amount of material
and without distributing it into an aerosol. It's also usual for
scroll saws to have built-in dust blowers which can direct this dust
away from the operator.

I'd have no hesitation in scrollsawing MDF without a mask. Under some
conditions I'd even run it through a sawbench (mine only has gravity
dust control) because that too is a reasonably low-dust process. For
routing though it's quite a different situation - lots of dust, and
it's sprayed right up at the operator.


And is a "Hegna Saw" any good?

Hegener. They're definitely high end scrollsaws (although the paint
flakes off in great patches). To be honest, any scrollsaw will work
pretty well. The only real benefits of a Hegener are lower vibration
and a motor that doesn't mind running for 8 hours continuously.


--
Smert' spamionam

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 02:34:49 +0000, Andy Dingley
wrote:

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:03:20 GMT, T i m wrote:

It looks like it was made from 6mm thick MDF and I asked her if anyone
was required to wear a face mask whilst cutting it and apparently no
one was?

There is never any blanket need "to wear masks". There is a
requirement to reduce exposure to an appropriate level. If you can
achieve this by ventilation appropriate to the dust source being
generated, then you don't need to mask up as well.

A scroll saw is a narrow kerf saw, cutting a small amount of material
and without distributing it into an aerosol. It's also usual for
scroll saws to have built-in dust blowers which can direct this dust
away from the operator.

I'd have no hesitation in scrollsawing MDF without a mask. Under some
conditions I'd even run it through a sawbench (mine only has gravity
dust control) because that too is a reasonably low-dust process. For
routing though it's quite a different situation - lots of dust, and
it's sprayed right up at the operator.


And is a "Hegna Saw" any good?

Hegener. They're definitely high end scrollsaws (although the paint
flakes off in great patches). To be honest, any scrollsaw will work
pretty well. The only real benefits of a Hegener are lower vibration
and a motor that doesn't mind running for 8 hours continuously.

Hi all and thanks for the replies and info.

I wasn't 'worried' as such by my daughters exposure to the MDF dust (I
guessed the levels would be pretty low) I just wondered (knowing how
cautious educators were these days) if they should?

I'm lucky that I'm not allergic to anything I know of and can work
with stuff like glass fibre with no reaction. Howevrer if I feel I'm
being surrounded by 'floating' particulates I will either ensure I
breathe through my nose and shallow breathe, get out of the area till
the dust settles or get a mask ;-)

Out of interest I have been using one of those aggressive wire brushes
(twists of coat hanger sized wire on an angle grinder) to de-rust
various items re my kitcar 'upgrade' and that dust seems to get
everywhere and hangabout a bit?

Any particular (no pun intended) risk with this type of dust please?

All the best ..

T i m

"T i m" wrote in message
...
snip

Out of interest I have been using one of those aggressive wire brushes
(twists of coat hanger sized wire on an angle grinder) to de-rust
various items re my kitcar 'upgrade' and that dust seems to get
everywhere and hangabout a bit?

I'm not sure what is the more dangerous, the iron oxide dust or the tool...


Any particular (no pun intended) risk with this type of dust please?


Well, would you choose inhale iron ore ?

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:18:22 -0000, ":::Jerry::::"
wrote:

Well, would you choose inhale iron ore ?

Much rather iron than the other metals used in primers. Metal primers
are _very_ nasty.
--
Smert' spamionam

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:50:21 -0000, Malcolm Stewart wrote:


Does COSHH and the HSAW Act apply to pupils at schools?

Well the teacher is at work. Would be a bit odd if the teacher wore
protective equipment and the pupils didn't :-)

"Malcolm Stewart" wrote in
message ...

Does COSHH and the HSAW Act apply to pupils at schools? It
certainly
didn't to start off with, and I recall that some years ago there was a
hurried Regulation published to extend COSHH (I think) to technical
colleges, but I can't remember schools being mentioned.

So you have to protect those who have a choice in what they do but not those
who don't?

Yes, I can believe that ...

Mary
--
M Stewart
Milton Keynes, UK
http://www.megalith.freeserve.co.uk/oddimage.htm

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:18:22 -0000, ":::Jerry::::"
wrote:


"T i m" wrote in message
.. .
snip

Out of interest I have been using one of those aggressive wire brushes
(twists of coat hanger sized wire on an angle grinder) to de-rust
various items re my kitcar 'upgrade' and that dust seems to get
everywhere and hangabout a bit?

I'm not sure what is the more dangerous, the iron oxide dust or the tool...

I know alll about that Jerry .. one took more layers of skin off my
knee than I knew I had .. in about 20mS .. (ouch) ;-(

Any particular (no pun intended) risk with this type of dust please?


Well, would you choose inhale iron ore ?

What, as opposed to eating or injecting it ? (I thought Iron was good
for us g). Well, no, I don't think I wan't to breath anything other
than 'air', but I wasn't aware of it being particularly hazardous?

Is it?

All the best ..

T i m

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 12:45:15 +0000, Andy Dingley
wrote:

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:18:22 -0000, ":::Jerry::::"
wrote:

Well, would you choose inhale iron ore ?

Much rather iron than the other metals used in primers. Metal primers
are _very_ nasty.

As in the acid etch type or any?

I tesnd to use stuff like Hammerite or Chassis Black on my car /
chunky metal parts.

All the best ..

T i m

"Andy Hall" wrote in message
...
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.

Agree - the splinters on some of the offcuts of the meranti skirting I'm
putting in are lethal.

But the dust just falls to the floor it's so heavy

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

Dont you think that teachers have enough regulations and hassle to contend
with, without you bothering them with stuff that doesn't really worry you at
all?

T i m wrote in message . ..
On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:18:22 -0000, ":::Jerry::::"
wrote:


"T i m" wrote in message
.. .
snip

Out of interest I have been using one of those aggressive wire brushes
(twists of coat hanger sized wire on an angle grinder) to de-rust
various items re my kitcar 'upgrade' and that dust seems to get
everywhere and hangabout a bit?

I'm not sure what is the more dangerous, the iron oxide dust or the tool...

I know alll about that Jerry .. one took more layers of skin off my
knee than I knew I had .. in about 20mS .. (ouch) ;-(

Any particular (no pun intended) risk with this type of dust please?


Well, would you choose inhale iron ore ?

What, as opposed to eating or injecting it ? (I thought Iron was good
for us g).

I don't advise it but you could try taking iron tablets for a while.
You *can* have too much of a good thing.

MBQ