Sawdust allergy

Factual Questions
1

I am deep into an outdoor project using redwood, that involves a lot of work on the table saw. Apparently, although I have never had any problem with sawdust before, I am intensely allergic to redwood sawdust (anyone ever heard of anything so specific before?). It’s not that I inhale sawdust, because I use very good dust masks; it is apparently the dust that gets on my skin.

I have a very small shop and I do have a rudimentary dust-collection system, but because of the saw design it is not very effective for that tool.

I can’t stop the project now, but I really, really don’t want to have to go through several days of unpleasantness every time I work on this project. In the nature of things (because I have a day job) I normally work on the project on the weekends.

Last weekend, every time I finished working for the day I immediately showered and put on clean clothes. This helped some, but not nearly enough. I did not wash my work clothes every day, which may be part of the problem. But my regular work clothes are just an old pair of pants and an old shirt, and they aren’t designed to keep stuff off my skin.

I am contemplating using one of those full-body paper-y suits which I guess is used mostly for painting. They cost around $10, and I don’t know how often I would be able to re-use them, but it would be worth it to me to buy one a week if that would keep me from breaking out in a rash every week for several days. I’ve never used one before, do you think this would keep sawdust off my skin?

Any other suggestions out there?
Roddy

2

I got some replies with interesting and potentially useful replies in my other thread in IMHO. For the rest of you:

Update, for anyone who might be interested:

I did try the full body “painter” suit, with a hood, and it worked pretty well. I hadn’t been having any problem with my lower half, so I cut off the legs and just tucked it into my trousers. I do need to do a better job with the gap at the wrist, those are the only parts that are itchy after two days of working on this stuff this past weekend. There is elastic, but it isn’t very strong. I’ll figure out something for that. And these suits are cheap enough that I don’t mind buying a new one for each weekend.

The hood was especially important to keep dust off my scalp, which would get very itchy.

Also, I bought new antihistamines and they did provide some temporary relief, including for the asthma. I discovered the ones I tried before were way expired. But I can’t live on those things, and I am much happier to have found a means of prevention.
Roddy