is it just me or does any one else get colds & sore throats after splitting wood with a log splitter

It seems every time I go out & have a wood splitting session with my log splitter, I end up with a sore throat & a cold the next day or the day after and am sick for a couple of weeks.

I am wondering if the wood has mold ,mildew & bacteria in it, especially the dust that sometimes waffs up
from the log when I split it.

I have been paying a local guy to delever wood rounds to me with his pick up truck & prehaps I should change guys and insist on freshly cut wood to split, even if I end up paying more for the wood.

I would guess that freshly cut wood might be less likely to make you sick from splitting the wood,
-___as opposed to some of the wood he sold me, only 3 months ago, that may be begining to turn rotten. ___-.

I am in the northeast, so rain every other day, & I notice that even healthy trees that I cut down myself, so that I know when they were cut, begin turning bad in 9 months outside in the rain & after 18 months are
on the edge or past the edge of being rotten.

That Is one reason why I wonder when I read about people on other posts talking about seasoning their wood outside for two years. Here it would all go rotten outside before the two years of seasoning could be compleated.


If any one has any ideas on these subjects, please chime in here.

Sick of / or from/ rotten wood.

I'm pretty sure that it is not the exhaust fumes because all I ever got from the exhaust fumes is a temporary headache when the wind was blowing the exhaust my way. Now, I sometimes run a 20 inch electric box fan on high to divert the exhaust fumes from me.

I seem to remember getting sick the first year as well when I was using a 4 ton 2 hp electric
log splitter that had no exhaust.

With a log splitter, as opposed to a sledge & wedge, your face is a lot closer to the log when it splits appart & you get the dust right up into your face.

With a sledge hammer & wedge you are at least at arms length when the log finally splits & the split is not an energetic snap that sometimes sends 1/2 of the round flying as a gas splitter sometimes does but instead a slowly enlongating crack that you need to continue driving the wedge down into. So hand splitting makes a lot less wood dust & does not spread it so far.

It might just be my weakened immune system from having cronic lymes desease but I think my chances of not getting sick are better with a freshly cut tree as opposed to wood I buy from some guy with a pick up truck as only he knows how long ago that wood was cut & how
close to rotten it is getting.

about 1/3 of the wood I bought from him was too rotten to split or to consider burning but it was still way cheaper than CS&D;. After all ,it was cut & delevered, but not split.

I am thinking a lot about what some one said about cutting trees in the winter & splitting in march or asap for burning 2 years down the road, if I can wait that long.

I have some smaller 30 ft softwood trees in mind to drop,cut & split.

the hardwood trees are 100 + ft monsters with 5 ft trunks & too close to the house to drop. They would take a proffessional tree topper with climbing spikes & block & tackle & bull ropes, to safely lower their limbs which are thicker than the trunks of the softwood trees
to the ground.

Probably cost way more to have them topped that the wood is worth. They are 100 yrs old monster
maple or oaks
only 30 ft from the house but they are 4 to 6 cord trees.

Which tree dropps eggcorns, they are those trees.

every year I look at them and say, if only I could drop them without crushing my house.