Just a few words of advice about MDF and dust.
DO NOT BREATH IT
In '09, we were remodeling the house and I was cutting some MDF in the garage. Like a total *******, I had the doors open, but no air moving and I didn't have a particle mask on. When I was done cutting, I swept the floor, then took the leafblower and blowed out the rest of the garage. No problem.
A few days later, I developed a cough. Most of the time when I get a cold, I will develop a cough. This was one that absolutely would not go away. I called the doctor and they gave me something they called White Pearls. Some sort of antibiotic I guess. The cough was getting worse and had developed into a cough that once it got started, you would cough what seemed like 30 minutes non-stop. So I called the doc again, went to see her and she gave me a big shot in the *** of steroids and sent me to the hospital for X-Rays.
To shorten the story way down, the X-Ray showed something on my lung, which resulted in me going to a specialist, which resulted in a Broncoscopy, numerous CT Scans, and a couple P.E.T. test, which finally resulted with me laying on the operating table for a needle biopsy and possibly having surgery to remove a third of my lung.
Two doctors, and three specialist all had come to the conclusion that I had a massive tumor on my lung that was cancerous.
Thank God the doc that was getting ready to do the needle biopsy and to possibly split me from stem to stern decided to do ONE MORE CT Scan.
6 months of doctors, using all of my vacation up at work, numerous test and scans, and there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had developed pneumonia, or to put it a different way, I had developed a lung infection from breathing in the MDF dust. Not only was not wearing a dust mask a stupid move on my part (and some of you out there have done the same thing) it also cost me lost time at work, used all of my vacation, spent a few thousand dollars out of my pocket, cost the insurance a whole lot of thousands of dollars, and basically took away 6 months of my life thinking I had the Big "C". A $.25 mask would have prevented the whole thing.
So any of you guys out there messing with MDF, make sure you use at least some cheap precautions against breathing in the particles.
