[amluto]

Contractors with brooms are a huge pet peeve of mine at a construction site. Seriously, WTF? You take all the dust and re-suspend as much of it as possible into the air?

Every construction site should have a HEPA-filtered vacuum with a filter bag. (The bagless kind is to be reserved for special cases that need it, and people should wear respirators when emptying it, TYVM.). Brooms are for non-vacuumable debris only, and subcontractors should be reminded of this regularly.

[anon-sre-srm]

Keeping dust down with water sprayers should be a thing. Also, there should be particulate counters and VOC sensors all around sites to indicate what level of PPE is non-obvious but needed.

[amluto]

For indoor construction, a water sprayer seems like a mistake. It would turn all that only-mildly-nasty dust into hard-to-remove goo, not to mention making wood soggy and damaging gypsum and other materials.

[vintermann]

I've noticed that a lot in public outdoor construction where I live the last ~10 years. Whenever there's the slightest chance of dust, they have giant water mist spraying machines in addition to the PPE.

[RCitronsBroker]

may i ask where you live? I’ve worked outdoor construction as a teen for a while, even up till now, I’ve never seen mist sprayers in use round here in Germany.

[vintermann]

Western Norway. The rock here is high in quartzite I hear, maybe that's got something to do with it?

Surely you use mist sprayers during building demolition though? That's where I first saw them.

[RCitronsBroker]

yeah, i think they are pretty standard for demo work around the world afaik. Very interesting, Germany tends to be hellishly strict on building codes and such, but PPE is seriously lacking over here. It bred the mother of all toxic cavalier attitudes.