Clean Up Concrete Dust Much More Aggressively in our Community!

For the Past 5 to 6 weeks, our neighborhood has endured an aggressive but necessary construction job. Our Streets, especially Downey Avenue, zip code 46219 have been blanketed by dust particles nearly on a daily basis. Each time a vehicle travels down our street a significant dust cloud is generated. We as a community, believe that these construction jobs should adhere to the ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY and OSHA"S exposure limits of dust particles. Today we would like to make it known that we believe you could have done a much better job cleaning up our street each night, which would have prevented such a large dust cloud from hovering over our neighborhood. We are simply asking you to do a better job cleaning up in the future, for the sake of the residents in the communities you do construction in. This is our home AND WE WANT OUR AIR AS CLEAN AS POSSIBLE! OSHA has proposed some new requirements for silica dust that the concrete industry is aware of as described on their web site. CONCRETEWORKER.NET and workers etc. state: Curbing worker and resident exposure to silica dust, concrete dust, and toxins in dirt located near the street. If you can see dust in the air, then the level is too high to be breathing it. Although respirable dust is too small to see, it is nearly always accompanied by larger visible dust. The three ways to keep your workers and residents safe from airborne crystalline silica dust are to prevent the dust from becoming airborne (dust suppression), keep workers and residents away from dusty areas, or use respirators, air cleaners and further warn the residents. The best, and OSHA-preferred method, is to prevent the dust from getting into the air in the first place. This means vacuum systems, wet-cutting and improved grinding methods. The next best approach is a respirator. Paper dust masks cannot filter out respirable crystalline silica dust. Even good respirators can be ineffective with workers and residents who have beards or mustaches. Half- or full-mask respirators with replaceable N-95 filters are the minimum protection required and you should test to assure good fit. Controlling dust at the source, especially on interior projects, is the best approach. Again, we as a community believe that your construction company could do a much better job keeping the air clean when performing major jobs such as the one being performed in our community at current. THANK YOU for your consideration and hearing our voice..