C. H. Breedlove found this warning on a bottle of a lab chemical. How interesting to find a source of sand that is free of silica. Sand is silica. No doubt the way to play with silica-free sand is to just think about it. It is too bad that more thinking didn t go into this letter.
Silicosis is produced by the inhalation of dusts.
Silica is a common culprit, but the disease is also produced by sugar cane waste and raw cotton dust. Sand particles at the playground are mostly too big to float in the air as a dust. Also, even the most aggressive sandbox play would put too few dust particles in the air to be of any concern. Van Nostrand s Science Encyclopedia , 5th ed., D. M. Considine, Ed. Back to the Bogus Science home page.