Dust Evaluation in the Cottonseed Oil Industry.

Occupational exposure to cotton dust heterogeneous mixture is a potential hazard for approximately 560,000 workers employed throughout the U.S. cotton industry, where 84,000 are estimated to have the disease byssinosis. This investigation was designed to evaluate the dust conditions in the cleaning, delintering, hulling and separating, and baling processes of a cottonseed oil mill and to evaluate the performance and applicability of the Lumsden-Lynch vertical elutriator by utilizing Bendix and MSA personal samplers to collect side-by-side samples with the elutriator for gravimetric as well as microscopic analysis. Additionally, the variability of the heterogeneous cotton dust from process to process and season to season was evaluated.