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I have over the years of woodworking and guitar building developed some serious lung infections, which currently has been pleurisy and pneumonia. I have an overhead dust filter and wear regular masks most of the time, but I need to serious upgrade my protection,
What kinds of masks do you find most effective? Has anyone ever used a system that supplied filtered air thru a mask?
I look forward to your input. Thanks!

I use an Elipse P100 for just dust, and an Elipse OV/P100 for organic vapors.

A friend has a forced air respirator, fed by his compressor. It's pretty cool, but expensive.

You will hear this from a lot of folks, but a part of this puzzle you have not mentioned is dust collection at the source. It can't be the only part of your protection plan (no one thing should be the only thing you do to protect yourself), but it is pretty important, and can be very effective. Do you capture dust at the machine (or work station), and if so, how effective is your system?

I have a general cyclone filter that I run especially when sanding on stationary sander. I mainly use it also on the planer jointer. I have a general air filter at the ceiling. I am thinking of a dedicated sanding table with exhaust.

The thing about the air filter at the ceiling is that it is not a great way to protect yourself. I mean, I have one, and I use it, but that's just to minimize stuff getting into fresh finish. The real protection comes from collecting dust at the source, wearing good PPE, and cleaning up with a high filtration shop vac all the stuff that can't be captured by the dust collection system. I know it sounds like you have to do everything, but I really do think you have to do everything. No one thing is the silver bullet. Good luck with your upgrades, and sorry you are having lung problems. That is no fun.

I have been corrected by other members before that you need to protect your face with a good mask of some kind. I incorrectly thought that the purpose of dust collection was personal protection, which now I realize is mostly for shop tidiness. I had an air supply mask which batteries got so they would not hold a charge. I was going to replace the batteries when I realized that the company went out of business and I could no long replace the little filters. I was skeptical about the particle size removal efficiency of the air supply mask I had, anyway. Air supply is only as good as the filter the supplied air travels through. Last I looked 3M sold such masks (really more like helmets). The air flow is provided by the device itself, and does not need a separate air compressor. It does cost a lot, but with your lung history you need the absolute best. Whatever mask or device you get, you need to study some about what it really does. I have had disposable dust masks from 3M that did not protect me from asthma attack's. I had other masks that seemed not very good fitting that protected me very well. Sorry I do not recall what brand they were.

Whatever you wear, continue to wear it until you are out of the shop and into clean air. For me, with asthma, sometimes it only takes a whiff to set me off.

I think a better way to say this is as follows: Many dust collection machines are designed to only help with shop tidiness, and do a bad job of providing personal protection. A few of the better ones are designed to help with both shop tidiness and personal protection.

In order to provide personal protection, the dust collector has to be strong enough to capture all dust at the woodworking machine, as soon as the dust is made, and not allow it to get up into the breathing air. And then it needs to either expel it outside or filter the air back into the shop via very serious filtration. The filtration has to be great, because the worst dust particles for your health are the smallest ones.

So, great dust collectors do both tasks. But you are right that many fail to provide personal protection, either because they are underpowered, or they have ineffective filtration, or both.

What is the filter upgrade for the standard dust collector? I need to up my filtration and PPE game also.

Edit - canister filter from Wynn filtration. Found my notes.

I'm no expert, but my Clear Vue cyclone feeds into canister filters that are 99.999% effective down to 0.5 microns.

Cyclone was the other part I need to add. And more plumbing to the power tools.

There is a whole world of reading to be done on the question of how to design hoods so as to best capture dust at the machine, how powerful dust collectors should be, how fine the filtration should be, etc. Google Bill Pentz.

Bill Pentz mentions the Dylos 1100 Pro air quality monitor. I'd recommend it.

No affiliation.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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I am not an expert. Lacking face to face discussion, I might come across as defensive, which I am not (this time, anyway).

I think that using a pedestal sander, table saw, or any of a number of machines that cannot fit into a powerful hood, then some dust is generated and dispersed into the work space before it has an opportunity to get sucked up. Even with a powerful dust collection system, leaks or other failures can happen. Let's say someone is massively allergic to walnut or cocobolo, but they want to work with it and they rely on a very good dust collection system. What happens to them if there is a system failure and they are not wearing face/respiration protection?

My asthma used to much more sensitive in the past. When I was exposed to fragrances of thing that I am not allergic to, just the fragrance could set off an asthma attack--didn't need particles. Asthma doctors refer to this as "twitchy lung". If I were still as bad as I used to be, then I would need fragrance filters. In fact, I did not even try to do any wood working for many years when I was at my worst.

This apparently bears repeating:



So, yeah, great dust collectors are not perfect, hence the need to do the other things I mention. But the great dust collectors are not as useless as bad dust collectors when it comes to contributing to lung safety. And one should always wear PPE when generating fine dust, no matter what other measures are being taken.

I’ve been fighting this battle with dust for 45 years...

My shop looks like an explosion in a pillow factory from time to time!

I wear a respirator whenever I do anything at this point but I change out the organic vapor filters that I use for lacquer spraying to filter medium.
The great thing about a mask like this is the seal around your face is perfect so you don’t get any leakage like you do with N– 95 type masks.




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