Silica Dust Hazards
An interactive research site for Virginia Tech showing what high-dust construction tools do to worker health when dust mitigation is skipped, and gathering field data from the industry.
In progress · launching soon
Virginia Tech
Web
Design, development, survey experience
The challenge
Crystalline silica dust is invisible until it isn’t: crushing, drilling, or grinding concrete, masonry, rock, or mortar releases particles that cause silicosis, lung cancer, COPD, kidney disease, and autoimmune disease. Virginia Tech’s researchers needed contractors and workers to actually feel that risk, then tell them how their crews handle dust in the field.
What we built
An educational microsite in Virginia Tech’s brand that walks visitors from “are your workers in danger?” to the answer: which everyday materials contain silica, which tasks release it, and side-by-side video of the same angle-grinding task with and without dust collection, where the difference needs no caption.
The site ends in a guided one-question-at-a-time survey on real-world dust practices (wet methods, suppression systems, controls on tools), feeding the research team structured field data instead of anecdotes.
Accessible by design
As a public university project, the site is being built to meet the accessibility standards Virginia Tech is held to: semantic structure, keyboard-navigable survey flows, captioned comparisons, and contrast-checked brand colors.