According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans spend on average 90 percent of their time indoors. Whether this is at home, in the office, at school or otherwise, these environments often exhibit air pollutant concentrations two to five times higher than the outdoor equivalents. In industrial settings, dust can be a regular annoyance and often at its worst, a deadly hazard.
If you perform dust generating processes, which most businesses in manufacturing, extraction, food processing, engineering and construction will, the first step is to identify these processes and understand the substances involved and aim to control the level of exposure and protect those exposed. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) respiratory standard requires employers to develop and implement a respiratory protection program for when Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs) of airborne contaminants could be exceeded.