Economics of dust control

Our plain-English summary of Economics of dust control, by D.W. Hills (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1965).

The study

• Author: D.W. Hills
• Journal: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
• Published: 1965;132(1):322-34
• Cited by: 4 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy.

In plain English

This paper was a descriptive engineering and cost account, not a medical study. The author worked at Turner Brothers Asbestos Co. Ltd. in Rochdale, England. The paper described dust-control methods in the company's asbestos textile factories, which mainly processed chrysotile. It also gave cost figures for the Cape Asbestos Co. Ltd.'s new amosite mill at Penge in the Transvaal. Its historical section summarized the 1930 Merewether and Price government report, which was a separate study. The author reported that ventilation added between 20 and 37 per cent to the cost of new textile plant. Running dust extraction cost nearly $250,000 a year, equal to seven per cent of the wages bill. About 700 tons of asbestos dust were filtered from factory air each year. At Penge, dust-elimination plant cost approximately $360,000, which was 27.5 per cent of the mill's total capital cost. The paper reported no new worker health findings and no measurements of dust in the air workers breathed; its health findings came from the earlier Merewether and Price report. The author concluded that both operations showed dust control was an integral part of the U.K. asbestos industry's thinking.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Descriptive technical and cost account of industrial dust-control methods, with a historical introduction (not a health study)
• Who was studied: Turner Brothers Asbestos Co. Ltd. asbestos textile factories in the U.K., plus the Cape Asbestos Co. Ltd.'s new amosite mill at Penge, Transvaal; no workers were studied for health effects in this paper
• Exposure: Asbestos dust from textile processing, mainly chrysotile (some crocidolite textiles in small quantities), and amosite milling at Penge
• Main results:
  • Historical background, not this paper's finding: the paper summarized a 1930 report by Merewether and Price, which examined 363 of about 2,200 exposed U.K. asbestos workers and concluded that inhaling asbestos dust over years causes a serious lung fibrosis
  • In the company's textile factories, ventilation added 20 to 37 per cent, depending on the process, to the cost of new textile plant
  • Total capital spending on dust extraction equipment in the company's textile factories over the years was approximately $1,500,000
  • In the carding-machine ventilation pipes, 0.0026 lb. of dust was carried by each 100 cu. ft. of air exhausted (a dust load in ventilation air, not a measure of what workers breathed)
  • In the company's textile factories, 700 tons of asbestos dust were filtered from extracted air each year, or 2.8 tons every working day
  • Annual running cost of dust extraction in the company's textile factories was nearly $250,000, equal to seven per cent of the wages bill or 2.7 per cent of the total cost of converting fiber into yarns and cloth
  • Fiber and dust removed by hand from under each loom fell from 14 lb. per week in the 1920s to one-half lb. per week at the time of writing
  • At the Penge amosite mill, dust-elimination plant cost approximately $360,000, equal to 27.5 per cent of the mill's total capital cost
  • At the Penge amosite mill, dedusting required 1,350 cu. ft. of air per pound of fiber produced
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that dust control at both the Cape Asbestos mill and the Turner Brothers textile factories showed that dust control of the highest order was an integral part of U.K. asbestos industry thinking

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Dust Control.

Related studies

• Developments in dust sampling and counting techniques in the asbestos industry — S. Holmes (1965)
• Present threshold limit value in the U.S.A. for asbestos dust: a critique — E.L. Schall (1965)
• Dust measurement and monitoring in the asbestos industry — C.G. Addingley (1965)
• A comparison of impinger and membrane filter techniques for evaluating air samples in asbestos plants — H.E. Ayer, J.R. Lynch, et al. (1965)
• Human exposure to asbestos: dust controls and standards. The inhalation of fibrous dusts — V. Timbrell (1965)
• Observations an atmospheric air pollution caused by asbestos — A. Laamanen, L. Noro, et al. (1965)

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