Mechanical intervention for reducing dust concentration in traditional rice mills.

A huge number of workers are employed in traditional rice mills where they are potentially exposed to dust. In this study a dust collection system was developed to capture the airborne dust in the rice mill. The feeding and sieving section of the mill was identified as major dust creating zone. The dust was captured by creating suitable air stream at feeding and sieving sections of the mill and collected in cyclone dust collector. The air stream was created by blower which was selected on the basis to get minimum air speed of 0.5 m/s in the working zones of workers. It was observed that the developed system is successfully collects the significant amount of dust and able to reduce the dust concentration up to 58%. Further, the respirable dust concentration reduced to below 5 mg/m(3) throughout the mill which is within the recommended limit of dust exposure.