</font><font color="blue" class="small">( PLEASE tell me you are making the kids wear some sort of breathing filters when they are working with you! The grinding disks and the rocks them selves can cause many problems depending on the amount of material that is becomming airborne and breathed in! we used to sand blast with silica sand, and now every time I get near the stuff I end up with pneumonia... )</font>
I don't have the kids near when I'm working the rocks. I'm very well aware of the hazards of the dust.
In my youth I worked for a telco in California. Their policy when opening a paper insulated cable was the manhole had to be dry. So we'd spread loose silica granules all over everything and wipe it down. Sometimes it'd be like a fog in there. In the late seventies they changed to coarse granules and then eventually they went to only granules in packets.
I also do sand blasting. Sometimes I use silica sand. But I have a forced air helmet. In fact my helmet cost more than my sandblaster. I have an old spa blower for an air source for the hood. I see all these air compressors for with filters just for feeding the hood. I have to wonder why. The spa blower sends me a lot of air and it's fresh, not heated or oily. I use the sand blaster to work stone.
One of the sad things about life is what doesn't kill us makes us strong. And sometimes that the makes us strong eventually kills us. One of my favorite uncles died of asbestosis. He never welded nor was he an insulator. But in the forties he worked in a power generation plant and the stuff was everywhere. It took fortie years but it killed him.
I have an uncle by marriage in western Louisiana who's dibilitated by Parkinsons, welder's disease. He's been unable to do much since he was in his late fifties. He worked the country and Alaska on pipelines and in the refineries. His welding unlike mine was in confined areas. He was a welder's welder. They like to tell about the time when there were two teams building a thirty six inch pipeline. One team started at one end and another at the other. But when it came to making the final weld that put it all together him and another guy was brought in. There was some resentment but they wanted it cut one time, right and then sewed up. So while a ton of welders were watching their every move these two did it, one cut, first time, right.
Eventually all welding machines will include a fume extractor. My grandkids won't have to face the hazards while still being able to have all the fun, hopefully.
My father can't visit me in Texas very often. He has emphasema (sp), congestive heart failure, etc, etc, etc. We suspect it's from years of welding. He lives outside Phoenix. When he ventures east he can't breathe. The humidity is like slipping a pillow over his face and pressing down, without affection.
In your own case you might find visiting a drier climate invigorating. And I fully expect that someday some attorney will find the proof the producers of silica knew about and ignored the hazards to workers. It will be another asbestos type debacle.
The good thing is we know and can make the decision about whether to be exposed or not to hazardous invironments. And safety is becoming more worker and job friendly. Some day they'll look back on us and what we've went through with the same feelings we have about the military putting soldiers in harm's way during nuclear weapon testing I believe.
