Sometimes it's difficult to sort through the latest conventional wisdom and match it with observation. Wood dust and its dangers appears to be one of the tougher pieces of conventional wisdom.
It's obvious, even from the questionable post-hoc "study" of woodworkers and lung disease that the asbestosis/silicosis model is inappropriate. Inorganic particles do actual observable mechanical damage to the lungs. Literally death by a billion cuts. It's also obvious that the inhalation of cellulose is not the proper model. "Brown lung," or byssinosis, an asthma caused by occupational exposure to cellulose dust, and here we're talking large amounts of visible dust by workers in the cotton and rope-making industries (yep, hemp can be bad for you) over many years, would seem a better model, but it does not produce the same set of problems as experienced by wood-workers in the infamous study.
Studies done after the OSHA survey have failed to validate the original, though if the assumption is made that exposure to the chemicals in wood and used in woodworking are the culprit, things begin to fit the pattern. So it appears that it's not the dust which is the danger, but the fumes from chemicals, as wood-workers in sawmills sawing large quantities of softwood are the most affected, even those sawing or stacking wet wood, where dust is not likely to become airborne other than briefly. If you think sanding dust is fine, consider how much finer terpene and phenol molecules are.
So what does it mean to us as turners? Dust is annoying, but what we can smell is most dangerous, because smell is a chemical sense. What the dust carries, especially in dark, extractive-loaded durable woods like the tropical species which are loaded with biological insecticides and fungicides, can cause asthma, allergies, and even permanent damage. Won't stop our passion for such exotics, of course, but probably doesn't cause as much problem as neglecting to put on that charcoal cartridge when spraying or applying solvent finishes in close quarters. Still, we need not agonize over dust in the shop. It only becomes really dangerous to us when we track it upstairs onto the spouse's territory.
