Textile mill dust

Analyses of Card Room and Other Textile Mill Dusts... 

A number of investigators have reported proximate analyses and elemental composition of textile mill dusts and trash. Only two of these involve studies of dusts collected with an elutri-ator sampler (20,31). Samples from both of these studies were collected in a model card room at North Carolina State University (42). In one of these, glass fiber filters were used and the dusts were analyzed for average ash contents (see Table IV). The total ash content was about 20%. The average ash content of area samples also collected on glass filters was found to be slightly lower. 

Brown and coworkers (17-18,47) reported compositions of dusts from cotton compresses and warehouses. Samples were removed with the aid of a sonic bath in hexane. The compresses were in Mississippi, Southeastern and Western Texas, and New Mexico. The samples in the bale press area were high in ash content with silicon the most abundant element (up to 18.7% in one New Mexico compress Scimple). Compared with card room dusts, samples from compresses were high in aluminum, silicon, chlorine, iron and magnesium and relatively low in potassium, phosphorus and zinc. The ratio of silica to silicon was high also for these scunples compared with textile mill dusts. 

Investigations reported in the literature of the inorganic content of cotton plant parts, textile mill dusts, cotton gin dusts, oil mill dusts, and solids from card room humidifier water have been reviewed. 

Textile mill dusts investigated include samples collected using a vertical elutriator cotton dust sampler, seunples of fine dust separated mechanically from carding filter cake material, Scimples collected on electrostatic precipitators in a card room, coarse condenser trash from a card room, and weave room dusts. 

Polonium can be mixed or alloyed with beryllium to provide a source of neutrons. The element has been used in devices for eliminating static charges in textile mills, etc. however, beta sources are both more commonly used and less dangerous. It is also used on brushes for removing dust from photographic films. The polonium for these is carefully sealed and controlled, minimizing hazards to the user. 

Monitoring dust and trash concentrations in cotton by a simple, rapid, on-line process analyzer with feedback control could provide ginners an incentive to produce cleaner cotton and thus improved rarketability of the coimiodity. Based on the dust and trash in the baled cotton, it may also be possible to predict airborne dust levels in textile milling. Bales could be automatically blended to minimize mean dust level in the workplace. (In... 

There is therefore a need to investigate atopy, particularly as that variable may interact with dust exposure, in cotton textile mills." The reader is left with the thought that perhaps "reactors" who exhibit symptoms of acute byssinosis in a cotton mill might be in some sense people who are not obvious asthmatics but who, however, have some minimal or borderline type of asthma or other mildly increased bronchial sensitivity. Merchant et al. (51) tested workshift declines in FEVi workers exposed to cotton dust. In their summary they state "The patterns of FEVi response over a week suggest that there are distinct individual patterns of response not dependent upon previous cotton dust exposure."... 

A close relation between the extent of byssinosis and the contamination of cotton by GNB has been demonstrated in several studies ( > j )- It has been shown that FEV. decrements in textile mills correlated best with the square root or the product of dust concentration and numbers of GNB in raw cotton ( ). It has also been demonstrated that the cotton bract contains an agent or agents capable of eliciting acute respiratory responses during human challenge tests (, 7.) ... 

Preparation of Aqueous Extract of Cotton Dust. Cotton cardroom dust was collected from V-cell filters in a commercial textile mill. A typical extraction was carried out by manually kneading 50 g of dust with 500 ml of deionized water for 5 min at 25°c and removing the liquor by centrifugation. The process was repeated twice with 250 ml of deionized water each time. The combined supernatant was filtered through filter paper by gravity and the filtrate (of final pH 8.3 without addition of buffer) was freeze-dried to yield fraction 1 (f-1). The major portion of f-1... 

Brown and Bern (26) cinalyzed the elemental composition of four card room dusts using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. Two of these were from filter cake material collected in two textile mills from which fine dusts (<20 ym) were separated by mechanical agitation (sonic sifting). The third sample was from filter cake material collected in a textile mill from which dust was removed by hexane washing followed by sonification of the bath, filtration and further sonification. The fourth sample came from dust collected on an electrostatic precipitator in a model card room. Results are shown in Table VI. 

Even more dreunatic changes in dust concentrations were observed in a textile mill by Roberts and coworkers (25) when regular water was replaced by distilled water in their humidifiers (see Table X). 

Dust Concentrations Measured in a Textile Mill with Vertical Elutriator Samplers as a Function of Variation in Water in Humidifier System. (25)... 

Brown and coworkers (17) determined the silica content of gin dusts from Mississippi. The ratio of silica content to silicon was much higher than the corresponding ratio for cotton textile mills. 

Christiani DC, Wegman DH, Eisen EA, et al Cotton dust and Gram-negative bacterial endotoxin correlations in two cotton textile mills. Am J Ind MedDil)-.)) ,-), , 1993... 

Hazard Toxic by inhalation. TLV (dust) 0.2 mg/m3. Moderately flammable in the form of dust or linters fiber ignites readily. In the form of dust or linters, exposure of workers in textile mills may cause brown lung. ... 

Use Boring, lathe-cutting, milling, polishing lubricants, dressing textile fibers, dust laying. 

Most OSHA standards require firms install specific types of safety equipment or institute specific safety programs. Besides specification standards OSHA also uses performance standards to set maximum levels of exposure to particular hazards. Both specification and performance standards impose considerable financial burdens on firms. The National Association of Manufacturers calculated OSHA standards cost about 103,000 (1993 dollars) for an average firm with 1-100 employees and 1,026,000 for an average firm with 501-1,000 employees (Smith 1976). Within certain industries the costs are even larger. The 1978 cotton dust standard, for instance, increased operating expenses in the textile mill products industry by more than 50 million per year (Viscusi 1992). Clearly, only if regulations are backed by financial penalties for noncompliance will firms install the safety equipment or institute the safety programs dictated by OSHA. 

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