What engineering and technological shifts since the early 2000s have made a 0.5 mg/m³ flour dust exposure limit achievable in modern flour mills?
Full disclosure: I am an economist (working at a not-for-profit) without any sort of expertise in industrial hygiene or engineering.
A 2003 study (Karpinski, 'Exposure to inhalable flour dust in Canadian flour mills') concluded that a large-scale flour milling facility could not practically reduce personal flour dust exposure levels below the ACGIH threshold of 0.5 mg/m³ without forcing workers into respirators for entire shifts. At the time, standard operations like packing and sweeping routinely caused ambient dust spikes well over 5.0 to 10.0 mg/m³.
As of December 2026, Australia will have a new regulation that locks in a strict, nationwide 0.5 mg/m³ Workplace Exposure Limit (WEL) for inhalable flour dust.
I am trying to understand what sort of specific engineering, material science, automation, etc. breakthroughs have occurred over the last two decades to bridge this massive gap.