Morphological and Morphometrical Characteritics of Ornamental Stone Airborne Dusts: Capture and Filtration

Dust generated during ornamental stone transformation process is considered one of the most dangerous factors affecting the health of workers employed in the stone industry. Workers are exposed to very-high dust generation during manual work actions, especially during the finishing stage of the production cycle. During such operations tools are handled directly by the workers without using water. This particulate matter (dust) presents different composition and different morphological and morphometrical attributes which strongly influence capture and filtering system behavior. As a consequence, the quantity and the quality of the dust circulating in the work environment directly influences the air being breathed by the workers causing considerable variation in quality. In this paper, results obtained from a dust collection analysis campaign, carried out in an ornamental stone conversion industry, are analyzed and discussed in order to obtain the best dust reduction adopting an innovative captioning-filtering device. The study was particularly addressed to identify possible correlation between working actions performed, tools utilized, concentration of produced dusts in order to define the best strategy to reduce its production during hand working actions and to improve the air quality of working environment, through the adoption of efficient dust collection devices. All the tests have been carried out in a controlled environment, directly installed in the factory, equipped with an innovative filtration system and an “on-line” control logic for dust collection. Different types of ornamental stones have been selected for the tests (granite, limestone, sandstone, etc.).