Dust Monitoring Technology isn't an option, it's essential

The surprising facts about workers’ exposure to construction dust:

• How long do you think that dust actually remains in the air?
• And how many different types of dust do you think exist on a given worksite?

The answers to these questions might surprise you.

Dust particles can stay in the air for a staggering 20 or more days. And when it comes to a construction environment, there are typically six main types of dust present, as well as additional sub-categories of dust, depending on factors like tool and material use, and ventilation.

Prolonged exposure to any type of dust can be harmful to your health. Regularly breathing in harmful dust can result in chronic conditions like asthma or COPD, or more serious illness such as silicosis, which is believed to contribute to the death of 500 construction workers per year in the UK alone, while estimates for how many workers are exposed to silica dust (the dust that causes silicosis) on a yearly basis are placed well into the hundreds of thousands.

With numbers like these, it’s clear that exposure to harmful dust isn’t a problem that can be ignored, or addressed with inadequate or outdated methods.

Evolving your approach to dust monitoring: technology for the modern team

Early warning technology - in one form or another - has been around for nearly 150 years. The first example of such an effort was the use of canaries in coal mines: when the canaries would become ill or die, the miners knew that there was poisonous gas in the mines, and they could evacuate before they experienced any ill effects.

Over the years, early warning and real-time monitoring technology has evolved, and only relatively recently has innovation allowed the same principles to be applied to other hazards, with companies like Trolex taking the lead and redefining what it means to meaningfully reduce the risk of harm caused by exposure to construction dust.

Most recently, Trolex has released the XD1+ Personal Dust Monitor. An addition to their suite of industry-leading particulate monitoring technology, the XD1+ is designed to be the lightest weight, most approachable dust monitoring technology on the market.

The XD1+ is a simple, accurate, personalised real-time dust monitor that offers several key elements to help drive adoption and make an impact on worker health and safety:

With no filters, pumps, tubes, or replaceable parts, the XD1+ is incredibly compact, making it easy to wear and uncomplicated to use. Just switch it on, secure it in place, and get to work.

The XD1+ uses real-time alerts to notify individual wearers when they’ve been exposed to harmful levels of dust, making it an effective, informative tool for workers in a range of environments.

XD1+ was purpose-built to stay out of the way, while providing the alerts you need to stay safer. With an automatic self-test routine and a two-minutes long maintenance cycle just four times per year, the XD1+ is low maintenance, high-impact kit.

Reactec + Trolex: a partnership that powers insights and impact

Deploying the XD1+ alongside Reactec’s powerful analytics delivers a robust, reliable, GDPR-proof data management solution for monitoring exposure to harmful dust in your workplace.

With the support of Reactec’s ecosystem, the XD1+ is transformed into a connected, personalised device, seamlessly delivering invaluable, real-time insights across your team.

Reactec’s Analytics brings your XD1+ data to life, delivering real-time updates from individual workers to remote supervisors, and tracking data to determine where high-dust environments exist in your workplaces.

With the information that you get from Reactec’s powerful analytics, you’re armed with the information that you need for more effective, more efficient future planning. Plus, this insight is automatically collated and distributed: no IT expertise is necessary to access or update this critical information. You get the insight you need, when you need it - there’s no fuss, and no additional workload.

Through our partnership with Trolex, Reactec is committed to successfully reducing the risk of exposure to harmful working conditions through personalised monitoring, real-time notifications, and meaningful insights that empower better future planning. The key to success is a data-driven approach that doesn’t rely on guesswork, and makes it easy and fast for workers, duty holders, and teams to adopt and implement better, safer ways of working.