a sore subject but i live with it passing it along

ive hauled grain lots of grain,wore 3 new trailers out. ive also been exposed to chemicals in the air.
about 13 or so yars ago i developed a severe cough nothing could stop.
i ended up going to a pulmonary dr. the dust n chemicals ive breathed gave me copd.
i spent this last sunday in hospital missing my wifes big 60 birthday party .they got breathing calmed down due to upper respitory infection.
having copd helps me catch colds easy.
over at the farm the young people get in bins no mask on ,i say put this on before you mess yourself up. they ignor an old man. i point out i carry a portable nebulizer all the time.
my point to everybody toss the smokes n vape,use a mask . what im going through aint very nice. sure i was tough but not now.
right now im weak from this infection 20 years ago id coughed it out never slowing down.
and even on this place i probably wasted my time telling my trouble.
oh yes if you do wear masks get best you can get .cheepies dont filter out the bad stuff. i carry a box 3m masks in all 3 of our trucks n a few in my pickup if im grinding rusty metal im sure that dont help either

I guess I am pretty much right there with you . Life time of exposure is the dust in a tie stall dairy barn has damaged my lungs. And I baled hay on open tractors, and swathed grain on open swathers, handled grain, ground feed, feed chop to cows and hogs. In my late 50s I developed a wheeze and sometimes had trouble breathing. Doctor sent me to a breathing lab, they determined the level of damage to my lungs made me about the same lung capacity as someone with Asthma. I have trouble exhaling, and discharging crap out of my lung in the morning. I was given an inhaler to doalate the passages in my lungs, and allow me to cough out stuff. So I wear a mask now when I will be in a dusty environment. And I have just mostly stopped doing things that used to put me at risk. Always wear a mask if I swath grain, use a cab tractor doing dusty field operations and I dont have the dairy herd anymore so very little time inside the barn. I never wheeze anymore as long as I use my inhaler first thing in the morning, and never short of breath. Doctor told me I have permanent damage but it is manageable. I wear masks now, never gave it a thought before, just like you. I didnt see any risk, because my dad never had a mask, but he also never had as many cows to milk or hay to bale or feed, just had less exposure. I wish Id been smarter

Thanks for sharing your story. Hopefully some folks listen to your advice.

Better than a face mask is a respirator.

Excellant point. We should all pay more attention to how we do things including our backs, eyes, ears, exposure, etc.

Here is my story,I worked in a concrete block plant and ready mix operation for 25 years,exposed to cement dust almost daily.Sometimes huge amounts,cough up black stuff.Also exposed to dust on the farm all my life.I'm now almost 71 and have Zero lung or heart problems,the difference is on the farm I have never been exposed to the chemicals most farmers use.Dad never used chemicals in the farm operation and I have not either.On the other hand had an uncle that embraced chemical farming early on and he died in his 60's from strange nervous system problems.

I grew up on a stantion dairy farm. Dust in the hay mow, high moisture corn in the upright silos frozen silage scraped from silo walls. I had what we now know was asthma as a child but I was never treated.Now I have ashtma and COPD. I have oxygen both tanks and concentrators to go wherever I do. I sleep with a bipap. I also need to be very careful what I am exposed to.I never smoked in my life.

Hard to motivate your kids and grandkids to wear a mask because, like us, they think their invincible. The dust exposure does cause breathing problems early in that, if they play sports in school, it will cause them to be winded much sooner. It will affect them when play, no matter what sport, will be at its hardest and most demanding. Never realized this until I started running in my thirties and could run better than when i was in my teens. I'd been away from the farm for a few years and not breathing any dust.

I am just shy of 74. My worst problem is my sinuses. I can be disabled for three months if the problem gets triggered by dust or a solvent. I have learned to put on a respirator whenever there is a potential problem in the air. The situation here is not so much unwillingness to listen to seniors, it is the well known phenomenon of the "invincibility of youth". Young people can ignore warnings and point out, "Look at me!!! I drove all day without my seatbelt and didn't die! I didn't put on my hearing protection and I can still hear! I drove drunk and didn't get in a wreck! I crashed my motorcycle not wearing a helmet and I can still walk! I didn't wear a mask but did not catch the virus! Yes, many get by but many don't and they end up not being able to support themselves and being dependent on their families, burdening medical professionals, and being supported for the rest of their lives by you and I. It is just human nature. It takes a hero to not give in to peer pressure simply live an intelligent life.

I'm in my mid 60's and if I even try to wear one of those round masks while cleaning out grain bins sweeping and all I can't breathe with them on. I just try to work slow with little dust movement. I have even tried to put a fan in the door to expel the dust in beans doesn't help much. If I could run the air fan under the air floor with it blowing out it would probably suck the most of the dirt out close to the floor. Corn is not much of a dust maker beans are the dust here. Hay is still baled on open tractors. In fact we only have cabs on the biggest tractors all the smaller tractors are open. I don't know that I have a respiratory problem though I do know it does affect me more than it seemed to 30years ago. I also have exposure to chemicals spraying.

Is that what they used to call farmers lung? I had similar problems for several years back when I was milking cows in a stanchion barn. I didn't have a hay barn yet and was unrolling bales that were stored outside and figured I was getting a fair amount of mold from them. Add farming with an open tractor and breathing dust from dirt and hay, and I had respiratory problems that wouldn't quit.

It helped a lot after I went to an air conditioned cab and built a hay barn. The dairy cows have been gone for almost 20 years. I had time left to heal up. I know I keep beating this horse, but using the elliptical was what finally got me so I can take a deep breath without coughing.

I know what you're going through.

I have the same problems. To many years of the mounted corn picker, a few years of an open combine, round baling with a fender tractor and an accident with some chemicals. I now wear a good mask as often as possible. When combining small grains or soybeans I wear the same mask I paint with a 3M with the screw on filters. Even wear the cheap ones when unloading straw or bedding the cows. I always did my best to make sure my sons wore good masks when doing dirty jobs but they seem to think they will always be ok. Doctor gave me special meds to take through a breathing machine when I have attacks. I also wear hearing protection but started a little late on that. Tom

Better than a face mask is a respirator.

X2, I keep a respirator in my truck and both pole barns.
Any dust and grass mold sets my sinuses off.
One reason I bought a Kubota with a cab.
My neighbor has a John Deere lawn mower with a cab.
He's a farmer too.

40 years foundry and 30ish years tobacco. Still breathing okay but dont take much to run out of breath

When we were young,we didn't give it a thought about hearing protection or wearing a mask. I am 64 turning 65 in march.Now have asthma and lot of breathing issues. Never smoked.Worked in a feed mill and farmed my whole life.I consider my self lucky I need to use inhalers each morning and carry two inhalers in my pocket at all times.The main reason I consider myself lucky is because I was exposed to silo gas when I was 17. My lungs are messed up because of that. Alot of doctors have looked at my xrays and told me they have never seen someone alive after being exposed to it.

My only problem is hearing. We didn't know to protect our ears back then. I have tried to get the young guys to wear hearing protection, dust masks, ect but they don't listen. I know one guy about 40 went to asthma doctor with our boy. See him on jobs cutting concrete with a demo saw no mask, smoking a cigarette. He is completely covered in concrete dust.

If you can't breath with a respirator on, invest in a better respirator. One with larger filters will have less breathing resistance, and changing filters regularly is also important in reducing breathing resistance.

You can also invest in a powered respirator which has a belt pack battery fan to push fresh air to you and there are airline fed units readily available as well.

Protect yourself now or have a really bad future. Same goes for letting the machines do the lifting so you don't wreck your back.

You have told my story same conditions and treatments from the med community

I have also came to the conclusion that this is the way it will be until the end ,, its tough to not be able to breath right

With me it is the isocyanate hardener in urethane paint. I used just a couple gallons of paint to spray one tractor. I knew it was recommended to use an air supplied respirator but wasn't going to spend the money to use it once. My idea was to use a standard respirator and paint the tractor outside. I paid attention to which way the wind was blowing and held my breath when downwind from the paint. That ended up not being enough and got enough of it to cough for the last 14 years.

Generally the young refuse to listen to the advice of "old fogeys" and think they are invincible. By the time they realize they are not invincible it is too late. I've been around grain dust, herbicides, animal barn dust and probably a whole lot of other risky stuff but still breathing ok. I almost always wore a dust mask in grain because the dust just irritated my lungs from day one.