Progress in Dustiness Estimation British Occupational Hygiene Society Technology Committee Working Party on Dustiness Estimation

In the BOHS Technical Guide No. 4 on Dustiness Estimation (i.e. the estimation of the dust-generation capacity of materials), the BOHS Working Party on Dustiness Estimation reviewed methods and compared four different techniques with the objective of working towards a standard method. In this paper, the Working Party reviews its original objectives and gives details of some of the latest developments in dustiness estimation technology. These details relate to the single drop methods in particular, and concern the variation in the dispersion of dust with: drop height, sample size, pour rate and the geometry of the sample injection hoppers or other devices. Work on the use of laminar air flows and further work to correlate different methods, sometimes within the same apparatus (e.g. optical and. gravimetric), is also reported. The final section of the paper outlines the aim of the Working Party to harmonize results obtained in the estimation of dustiness using various methods by relating them to a 10-point Dust Index Scale. This would be achieved by a specially designed interlaboratory trial involving a selected and pretested set of test materials covering a wide range of dustiness values. Ultimately, this should lead to the inclusion of Dust Indices in the specifications of materials, greater competition to produce less dusty forms of them and a reduced potential for dust exposure at work.