Sandblasted Quartz Bangers --> Silicosis?

[DaDankyDank]

Just recently within the past month or two, there's been a new trend of sandblasting quartz bangers to help keep them cleaner (easier to scrape) and look more aesthetically pleasing. One of the top high end banger distributors, DC Glass, made a post about the problem on instagram and it inspired a huge debate on whether this is safe or not, and was deleted because of all the negativity/full blown childish arguements (if it hasn't been annealed after blasting, which is what Toro has been doing with their new holy grail nails, it's supposedly really dangerous.)

Silicosis is a lung disease caused by the inhilation of dust containing silica. Quartz is the MOST common form of crystalline silica. When you scrape the gritty sandblasted quartz, people think it's causing tiny microscopic quartz particles to be sucked up into your lungs, water filtration or not. It doesn't have immediate affects, but overtime constantly scraping and inhaling those particles can be pretty detrimental to your lungs.

Do you believe that this is propoganda so banger distributors can sell more product? Do you think it's something to be generally concerned about? Most of the hate was from people making money who had side businesses blasting bangers, so for me it's up in the air.

Personally, I'm one the fence because we've been using sandblasting on joints of glass on glass pieces for years. Obviously we don't really scrape those other than the friction from pulling the nail/bowl off, but people scrape the fuck out of their bangers. If it was really the case, I feel like we'd all of been fucked a long time ago. On the other hand, I'd also like to not fuck up my lungs so I won't be having my bangers blasted anytime soon.

Curious if anyone else has any input on this.

 

[szuko000]

Does the devise use water as a filter? I couldnt say for sure but I would believe the water would cause some of the silica to be removed. Also sand is made up of silica and people dont wear respirators when they play baseball and the alike. This is my take on it as i said i dont even know if a "banger" goes into water I do know the argument seems invalid. It just seems like if silica was so bad for us we would all die.

Missed that part of the water not taking care of them but "microscopic pieces of silica" have got to be in the air all around us. That is like seriously one of the more common compounds. People get issues from chronic exposure if you use it every once in a while I believe you would be fine. This is just my guess.

 

[w01fg4ng]

I can see the potential worries, but personally I don't scrape my bangers at all anymore. I simply heat them up red hot until the black turns white and cakes into the quartz. A good heating with the blow torch cleans mine up good enough.

With that said, I won't be buying a blasted banger anytime soon either.