just dust, not Dust
Oct. 30th, 2003 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleSometimes I wish I still had an unfinished basement with a washing machine. I miss being able to go through the mud room, straight down the steps, and strip to the skin without feeling like I was making more of a mess than I was cleaning up. I've swept up the dust I trailed in the hallway on my way to the bathroom, but my clothes in the laundry basket are still threatening to send up little clouds of white powder. It was that kind of day.
This isn't the scary kind of white powder that comes in the mail and panicks the nation. I *wanted* it. I ordered 40 pounds of it, for work. It's an extremely fine, light powder - 40 lbs fills quite a large bag. If it were a shower stall, I'd consider it cramped, but it's a big bag of dust. Not surprisingly, it was shipped in an even larger cardboard box, to protect it in transit.
The idiots who shipped it neglected to seal the bag. And they filled the extra space in the box with large sheets of crumpled paper. When I opened the box the loose powder floated up into the room. The dust that had come out of the bag would probably have filled a gallon bucket, if it were collected and reasonably close-packed. Floating free, dispersed as it had to be in order to remove the paper and get to the bag...there was enough to fill the laboratory with a thick white haze. The powder is so light, it took a long time to settle. And then of course I had to transfer it from the big container into 5 gallon buckets.
It's not a terribly hazardous material. And I was wearing a dust mask (one of those little filter things, not the cartridge respirator type that are so hard to breathe through.) I was still not at ALL happy about the experience. Though I was somewhat relieved (for once) to be alone in the lab with nobody to see me acting like a reckless idiot, picking up the big bag and pouring from it.
This isn't the scary kind of white powder that comes in the mail and panicks the nation. I *wanted* it. I ordered 40 pounds of it, for work. It's an extremely fine, light powder - 40 lbs fills quite a large bag. If it were a shower stall, I'd consider it cramped, but it's a big bag of dust. Not surprisingly, it was shipped in an even larger cardboard box, to protect it in transit.
The idiots who shipped it neglected to seal the bag. And they filled the extra space in the box with large sheets of crumpled paper. When I opened the box the loose powder floated up into the room. The dust that had come out of the bag would probably have filled a gallon bucket, if it were collected and reasonably close-packed. Floating free, dispersed as it had to be in order to remove the paper and get to the bag...there was enough to fill the laboratory with a thick white haze. The powder is so light, it took a long time to settle. And then of course I had to transfer it from the big container into 5 gallon buckets.
It's not a terribly hazardous material. And I was wearing a dust mask (one of those little filter things, not the cartridge respirator type that are so hard to breathe through.) I was still not at ALL happy about the experience. Though I was somewhat relieved (for once) to be alone in the lab with nobody to see me acting like a reckless idiot, picking up the big bag and pouring from it.
