I am curious how many people out there know of someone who has lung cancer or some other serious ailment which is suspected to be attributable to his exposure to wood dust. I suspect the risk level is fairly low.
Don't get me wrong, the stuff is messy, gets into everything, is an overall pain and can make good finishing work hard to do. I have no desire to breath quantities of it in (although I do enjoy the smell in the air after cutting hickory and walnut). Yet, my grandfather ran a woodshop for 30 years (age
40 - 70). It would be generous to call the dust collection he used as primitive. Generally he went without and just swept up. At this point he is 80 and has no health problems attributable to it (I know, 1 data point doesn't make any headway toward being a credible study).Now the craft is mine, and I do keep things orderly. With a well engineered dust collection system and air purification we can keep things fairly tidy, but not perfect. There is obviously residual exposure beyond what is captured - especially around a handheld router, etc.
Any thoughts on the level of risk?