Crappiekiller

I hear ya Bob, but honestly it isn't even discussed in most welding shops, or wasn't when I was welding and it hasn't been that long. One place I worked provided us with suction in our booths via a dust collection system, it did a pretty good job of sucking up smoke and fumes as well as dust. That was an aircraft shop though and everything was clean and shiny. No other shop I've ever worked in has provided any such protection nor any information. With the large number of older more experienced guys around me not wearing any sort of respiratory protection, it never dawned on me that there was anything to be concerned about. I was welding up some galvanized material building a gate or something for my boss once and one of the older guys came over and tapped me on the shoulder and told me to make sure I ground off as much of the galvanizing around the weld area as I could and to flip a fan on "so as not to have to breathe that stinky crap" as he so eloquently put it. Never dawned on me that I was working with something that could potentially kill me till much later. Maybe welding schools and tech schools teach these things but self taught welders are on their own for the most part. I agree that one's health is one's own responsibility, but without knowing, one could get themselves in a world of hurt at the request of one's employer.

Strange to me that this will be my first post ever to this forum but this topic is interesting to me. I welded for about the first 10 years that I was in the working world. For the first few years I was doing mostly TIG work; Stellite hard facing, Inconel, some Titanium, all on aircraft parts, then in an oilfield equipment shop working purely on stainless. After that I rounded out my career working on stainless pipe and then big vessels that were carbon. I didn't go to welding school and nobody ever advised me to wear a respirator or mask when welding or grinding. Recently I've been bitten with this knife making bug. I've watched all these videos on YouTube, and dug through all these forums for all the info I could gather. One common thing I see is these guys grinding knives while wearing a respirator. So the point of my post is this, if there is some inherent danger to the respiratory system due to grinding steel, someone needs to get this information out to the welding community! I'm starting to wonder if this has anything to do with why I'm so easily winded and if I screwed myself up welding and running angle grinders for so long without protection....