What protects the collector
Updated
The field risks are physical and the workshop risks are chemical, and the specimens themselves are a third category that surprises people.
Two very different risk sets
Outdoors: impact, falls, heat, loose ground and old workings.
Indoors: dust, acids, and a small number of genuinely hazardous minerals.
In the field
Eye protection whenever a hammer is used, without exception. Rock chips are the standard injury.
A hard hat under anything overhanging.
Gloves and boots with ankle support.
Water, which is the actual safety equipment in desert collecting.
And a rule against entering old workings, which is what kills collectors. Unsupported ground, bad air and vertical openings under debris.
In the workshop
Dust is the cumulative one. Dry cutting, grinding and brushing produce respirable silica, and silicosis is a real occupational disease of lapidary work.
Cut wet, extract at the source, and wear a fitted particulate mask for dry work.
Acids need ventilation, eye protection, gloves and somewhere to put them down.
Ultrasonic cleaners and air abrasives both throw material.
Hazardous specimens
This is the part collectors underestimate, and museum guidance is explicit about it.
Asbestiform minerals: chrysotile, crocidolite, amosite and the fibrous amphiboles, are carcinogens. Do not brush, cut or handle them dry, and house them sealed.
Radioactive species, uranium minerals chief among them, need distance, limited handling and separate storage rather than a display shelf.
Arsenic-bearing species such as orpiment and realgar, and lead-bearing species, are toxic by ingestion and by dust.
Soluble toxic species, which are hazardous if handled wet.
The practical measures are ordinary: wash hands after handling specimens, do not eat at the bench, keep hazardous material sealed and separate, and flag it in the catalog and on the label so whoever inherits the collection is not surprised by it.