Hello all, 

I wonder if you could assist me with an issue I have with dust control when drilling holes to fix brackets/backboards. 

I'm in the process of reviewing the risk assessment and took the approach that the operatives need to be clean shaves, face fit tested with an appropriate dust mask but when reviewing HSE Information Sheet 36 it states that: 

Task: Short-duration drilling totalling 15–30 minutes with hand-held rotary power tools

Eliminate or limit the dust by: 

■ Limiting the number of holes during design/planning

■ Using direct fastening or screws

Control the dust by using:

■ Where possible use equipment that stops dust getting into the air. The larger the holes the better this needs to be. Options range from: – drilling through a dust ‘collector’ or using cordless extraction attached to the drill (for smaller drill bits) or – on-tool extraction using an H or M Class extraction unit

■ Otherwise use RPE* with an APF of 20 

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/cis36.pdf

Taking into account that the drilling activites will only take around 10 minutes maxium, we are looking at a dust collector without the use of RPE.  Can anyone recommend a suitable dust collector attachement that they have used without the use of a vacuume.

Thanks 

SR  

Hi Chas, 

Thank you for your reply.  I've been looking on Google but there are many different types/makes and that's why I was looking for suggestions taking into account other peoples experiences with collectors they've used. 

Thanks 

SR