Woodworking Dangers
I would venture to guess that in all, the biggest threat to a woodworker comes not in the form of bodily injury from a power tool, but from wood dust. Now to overlook or minimize the importance of hearing, eye, and overall physical safety when dealing with power tools, it is the small stuff—the tiny and easily overlooked wood dust particles—that can cause the most long-term damage.
So, just how does wood dust affect a woodworker?
Long-Term Damage: Forget about the large chips and visible sawdust: perhaps the most damaging element is the invisible fine dust (sometimes called “coarse inhalable particles” ranging from 2-10 microns). Basically, these tiny bits of sawdust float around the air and linger even after the tools have stopped running. These invisible particles get inhaled and cause tiny wounds and scarring to our lungs: each time this happens, it causes a very small amount of irreversible damage. The immediate effect is unnoticeable, but over long periods of time, this can result in significantly decreased lung capacity, and a number of other health issues.
Irritants: The most common way that wood dust affects a woodworker is by being an irritant. This simply means that it can irritate our skin, our eyes, and our lungs. This can mean reactions such as itching, sneezing, coughing, runny nose, rashes, and asthma-like breathing problems.
Sensitizers: Taking things a step beyond being just irritating, some woods can make us more and more sensitive upon each successive exposure. So even if you don’t experience any sort of allergic reaction to the wood or its dust upon first exposure, each time you breathe the dust or handle the wood. Sometimes the eventual reaction can be quite strong, resulting in rashes or boils, severe sinus or respiratory pain/inflammation, or a number of other conditions depending on the wood species.
Toxins: Not nearly as common, some wood is considered to be directly toxic. One example of this is Yew, which even according to ancient Roman knowledge, was capable of causing fatality in certain cases. (See the introduction of the article, Wood Allergies and Toxicity.
Carcinogens: If you look at the toxicity chart of wood species, you’ll notice that some species have been shown to cause NPC. That is, Nasopharyngeal carcinoma, or nasopharyngeal cancer.