I am honestly very sorry to hear your story, and that you are affected by CA. I wouldn't wish what I've experienced on anyone, not a soul, even my enemy. It is a MISERABLE existence, to suffer from that kind of thing day in and day out.I believe you 110% Jon!
Before I got back into woodworking the only respiratory/allergy issues I suffered was the annual sage brush pollen.
When I got back into woodworking I didn't notice anything right away, but over time began having some minor issues. Then one night I had issues with labored breathing. I had done CA finish, polishing and Renaissance Wax with no protection. An inhaler (Albuterol) helped, but time is what it really took (days).
Since then I have realized that I absolutely am impacted by CA fumes and the fumes from the Microcrystalline waxes like Renaissance Wax.
I am no longer willing to do anything with CA finishing and the subsequent polishing and waxing without my 3M half face respirator with the pink/yellow N100/VOC canisters. The only thing I do in my shop without it is wet sanding, and then only if I haven't been generating dust before. I simply isn't worth the short term misery or the long term impact.
As noted in a previous post on mine in this thread, I run an air cleaner with a 1 micron bag filter and my dust collector with a MERV 15 canister on it at all times.
Before I retired, I was in the building environments business and spent 35 years in the construction of new and renovation of existing buildings and can guarantee you that air quality is no hoax.
I have worked around labs, hospitals, clean rooms and Bio Safety Labs up to and including BLS3, BSL3+, BSL3AG, and BSL4 (only a few in the world).
PPE is no joke. It saves lives. PERIOD. Certain things were (and still are) zero tolerance for us, that means you get caught working without the proper PPE, you are terminated immediately. It doesn't matter if you didn't get hurt, you are out.
Anyone in my shop wears all of the proper PPE or they don't get to work in my shop. When I teach people to do things in the shop, I spend a significant time on shop, tool, and material safety.
You want to gamble on your safety and heath, that is your business, and outside of my own shop, I can't stop you, but natural selection will eventually resolve the issue.
I've been rather dismayed by all the "CA is safe!" proclamations all over the place. Just about anywhere you find information about CA, it is always proclaimed its safe. However, when I had my issues, and since, I've spent a lot of time researching the chemistry of CA curing and what's actually going on. The fumes, in particular usually contain a high degree of Formaldehyde. This is primarily what burns your eyes, if you get them exposed to the fumes, and is labeled a notable carcinogen by the US NTP. Safe? My god. There are also proclamations about CA only negatively affecting "about 5% of the population", however anecdotally, nearly everyone I've met who uses CA, has problems when they use it (and I spend a fair amount of time at the local hobby shops and wood working stores where people use CA glues all the time). The truly insane thing is, most of them STILL don't seem interested on wearing a respirator...they seem content to suffer the consequences of exposure, which is always heavy breathing issues and stinging eyes. Color me baffled, but, to each their own.
PPE is no joke. Its not just about wood dust, either. We as woodworkers work with all manner of other kinds of noxious and toxic chemicals as well. Even if you believe wood dust has no health impacts (demonstrably false!!), there are still plenty of other things floating around a woodshop that are carcinogenic or otherwise dangerous. Its just good sense, to protect yourself.
The notion that the statistics don't measure up, is also fallacious in a lot of ways. What are the statistics based on? So many things that we supposedly have had reliable statistics for for decades, are being proven utterly incorrect and wrong in more recent years. Consider the EPA allowances for toxins, poisons, and carcinogens in water supplies. The "statistics" were supposedly extremely solid, however more recent studies have shown just how insane the allowable levels are for CHILDREN, and in many cases also for adults. The allowable toxicity levels in water supplies are nuts when you account for the tolerance of children, and this has been known for years, but...nothing is done, and jokes are made about it all.
