By Jason Barnes

Dry Concrete Polishing and Silicosis

For industry workers, it’s a precaution they must take with every project. For example, since all concrete contains quartz, the process of dry concrete grinding and polishing releases harmful quartz particles into the air in microscopic form, or crystalline silica, putting its concrete polishers in serious danger of contracting silicosis.

Therefore, industry workers are turning to non-crystalline amorphous silica, a naturally occurring or synthetically produced oxide of silicon that has not been shown to contribute to cancer or silicosis. It doesn’t have the sharp peaks in its X-ray diffraction pattern like that of crystalline silica, preventing amorphous silica to get trapped in the lungs and cause scarring.

Large quantities of synthetic amorphous silica are produced as pyrogenic-fumed silicas and wet process silicas, which are used most notably for reinforcing elastomers in thickening resins, paints and toothpaste, as well as for free-flow additives and concrete densifiers. The advantage of using amorphous silica in concrete densifiers, applied in conjunction with the wet concrete grinding process, is it densifyes, hardens and encapsulates the quartz or crystalline silica, making it a safer alternative to sodium lithium and potassium silicate densifiers.