I'd be interested in the AMOUNT of dust in the air. The zinc part is worrying....mainly because I assume they are not grit blasting galvanised metal, so the zinc may be from the applied protective coat (paint).

I believe metallic / solid zinc is not specifically hazardous, being partly bound in a paint matrix would make it possibly less bio-available as well. Although Zinc is an essential nutriant for the healthy human too much can cause health effects and ingestion can react with stomach acids causing the more harmful zinc chloride to be released. Due to the fairly low % zinc concentration and if the rest of the substance is inert the health risk other than minor irritation would be quite low. The effect of metal fume fever would involve inhaling a substantial amount of bio available zinc fume deep in to the lungs, the effects of which (metal fume fever) are mainly short term, although not that pleasent (but you would not want to repeat frequently, eg. daily for several years - this can happen with welders in poorly controlled work shops). The blasting will likely be of large particles unlikely to remain suspended for a long period of time so actual exposure will have been fairly low if you entered the office say the morning after work had completed. Unless you stayed in the office whilst this was occuring for several hous, exposure is likely to be low, and even so would still mainly only effect you by irritating your nose / throat eyes etc. I would recommend giving your office a good clean wipe a damp cloth and just trying to prevent it from occuring again in the future. Des

An update on the Zinc/Dust situation. All the dust has been cleaned away and deemed to be safe, we have had a few members of staff with Metal Fume Fever, these people are all fine now. The problem I have now is that since the works started I have requested on numerous occasions from our estates team a copy of the risk assessment, even though we have had all these problems with dust etc... Our employer says that the works are being completed outside of the building, and the contractors gave a guarantee that the "envirowrap" was 100% going to work so there was no need for a RA? It is now clear that a RA was needed. I have now asked for a RA to be set up, our estates team are refusing on the grounds that each business unit in the building(21 of them) need to complete their own? We all work for the same company and personally I find that ridiculous, especially as none of the business units have any H&S experience (not needed, ESS provide all cover normally). Who legally has to provide the RA for our staff in the building?

Bob, Thanks for your reply, that's exactly what I was thinking, I will get on the case first thing Monday morning