Son of the Shining Dark

Some are concerned about the air quality at Burning Man. There's lots of dust, and the dust is made of hazardous materials: gypsum, silica, and iron. This will be my first year, and I wanted to learn about the risks. These are some things I found. TL;DR: I won't be skipping the burn due to the air quality issues, but I will be trying to keep my sleeping quarters relatively free of airborne dust, and aiming to wear a P100 mask when the wind gets above about 20mph.

I considered two main types of risk:

1. Silicosis
2. General risks from dust inhalation

Silicosis

Silicosis is a very unpleasant and potentially deadly lung problem that can occur due to exposure to large amounts of silica dust. It kills tens of thousands of people per year worldwide, mostly due to occupational exposure. However, it only kills about a hundred people per year in the United States. This difference is partly because here, workers are usually not exposed to silica levels above thresholds set by OSHA.

So how bad is the exposure to silica dust on the playa, compared to occupational exposure limits? In a 2019 Bureau of Land Management report on "Public Health and Safety at the Burning Man Event", the authors note:

OSHA thresholds vary from the EPA and are based on exposure during an 8-hour shift over the course of a 40-year career...

An air quality study was performed by government industrial hygienists during the 2018 Burning Man Event. The study found six samples exceeding the OSHA permissible exposure limits (PELS) for respirable crystalline silica and three exceeded OSHA PELS for total respirable dust. Crystalline silica is a contributing factor to silicosis of the lung and a known carcinogen naturally occurring on the playa surface... All samples exceeding PELS occurred with winds in excess of 18–20 miles per hour. It is recommended that all exposed employees use an N95 Respirator when winds are in excess of 18–20 miles per hour and reduce the use of open-air vehicles.

Based on this, I think it seems unlikely that attending Burning Man for a week every year poses a risk comparable to e.g. working in an industry with large amounts of exposure to silica dust, especially if one takes precautions during the dustiest time.

Dust Inhalation

Separate from silicosis, high levels of particulate matter of any kind pose a health hazard. You can find data from 2017 showing hazardous dust levels (both pm10 and pm2.5) basically the whole week. Allegedly there was a nearby wildfire that may have made these numbers look worse than normal, but let's assume they're representative. The concentrations of both pm2.5 and pm10, throughout the week, put the AQI solidly in the hazardous range at many times, once even exceeding the pm10 AQI scale. This is concerning! However, a quick check indicates that the health hazard (at least due to pm2.5) is about as bad as smoking 1 cigarette per hour. This is bad (equivalent to about 1 micromort per hour), but it's manageable. You can improve matters by wearing a protective face covering - especially a p100 or n95 mask.

Taken together, these hazards suffice for me to take extra measures to protect my lungs while at Burning Man, but not for me to skip the event entirely. My plan is to wear a p100 mask whenever convenient (especially when the wind is up), and to sleep in my car with MERV16 filter fabric taped over the windows.