Rural Mainers are accustomed to the challenges of mud season, when snow-covered dirt roads, driveways and farm fields turn to brown goop.

But urban Mainers suffer this time of year from a different inconvenience: sand season.

This occurs when homeowners, municipalities and private crews remove tons of sand that has been spread on highways, parking lots and driveways during the winter.

There’s no way around it; it’s simply a lot of dirty work that must be done in the first few weeks of spring.

The season is marked by the great clouds of dust rising from parking lots as crews broom or blow sand into piles for removal. A portion of the dust invariably goes airborne and likely becomes another property owner’s problem.

It is remarkable in Maine how often the people doing this work do so without the benefit of either a dust mask or hearing protection.

It’s disturbing to see a person wearing a commercial backpack-style blower walking through a virtual dust storm with a screaming two-cycle motor a foot or so away from their ears, all without either a particle mask or hearing protection.

A spokesman for Maine’s federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration office in Augusta said regulators are well-aware of the problem, and they will occasionally send a compliance officer to check on a complaint.

But dust enforcement in parking lots is nearly impossible. As soon as an OSHA representative shows up, the employees don masks or are temporarily assigned to other work.

The dust threat must be measured in order to issue a citation, and the clouds of dust disappear when inspectors arrive.

Road dust can contain microscopic particles of sand, but also concentrations of everything else that ends up on parking lots, including dirt, oil and exhaust residue.

Different types of sand are used, some of which is of quartz origin and can break down into crystalline silica and ultimately cause a chronic disease called silicosis.

This occurs when microscopic particles of silica enter the tiny air sacs in the lungs. That causes scarring, which ultimately reduces breathing capacity. This is a common hazard in quarrying, mining, stone-cutting and sand-blasting, and the disease kills on average about 250 Americans a year.

Once in the lungs, any irritant — from wood dust to silica — can cause problems in as little as two hours or as long as 10 years in the future. And the foreign substance is extremely difficult or impossible to remove.

The OSHA spokesman said even when employers provide hearing and dust protection, employees will often wear the devices for awhile and then set them aside.

“There are the young invincibles who think they will never be affected, then you have the older workers who say, ‘I’ve always done it this way and I always will.’”

He pointed out that OSHA immediately sent a trailer full of dust masks to the ground zero site after 911 and even fit rescuers with the free masks. Yet, many of the workers refused to use them and, as a result, some now suffer from lung problems.

While parking lot sweepers are likely to move on to other duties in a few more weeks, it is still worth remembering that most people only get one set of lungs and ear drums.

Wearing a mask and hearing protection can be a temporary hassle. But lung or hearing damage can become a permanent impairment.

rrhoades@sunjournal.com

The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and the editorial board.