Hi,

Ive been looking for along term data regarding 'plaster dust' and its effect on long term health, I can only find general forums on the web.

can anyone advise please?

Advise on?

There are many forms of "plaster" that have been used down the ages some with old binders such as horse hair, modern versions with glass or man-made fibre reinforcement, coarse, skimming, bedding grout, medical....

New build, refurbishment, demolition, A&E....

Industrial, professional, consumer....

Hi Tittensor

Not sure you will get much joy with this - you might find some research papers and if you cast your eyes internationally you are quite likely to find more than from a UK focused search.

Occupational health risks are (with some notable exceptions) a relatively new part of the approach to health and safety.

So the data tends to be at a higher level than individual tasks or products. As example, we have a good guestimate as to how many former workers die prematurely as a result of inhalation of airborne hazards, but not such a good handle on what all those hazards have been.

In the first Century AD, philosophers from both Greece and Rome commented on the dangers of asbestos. But their very astute observations got largely lost in the Dark Ages. The Annual Report of HM Factory Inspectorate for 1898 commented on the dangers of asbestos, yet the first UK legislation to deal with this didn't happen until 1931.

With a few exceptions such as wool and cotton dust most respiratory hazards didn't really hit the radar in the UK until MUCH later - most of the exposure limits in "EH40" used to be inherited from ACGIH guidelines in the US, before the key influencer became mainland Europe.

So, EH40 for a long time has had exposure limits for dusts of no specific type and in the main subsequent  versions of EH40 have applied similar limits for the inhalable and respirable fractions of specific dusts (including for Plaster of Paris) EXCEPT where there is good documented reason to apply more stringent control standards. 

P