The recent opera discussion made me remember the following trick for working in dusty environments.
When working with a floor treatment that is high in dust (covered in dirt, mulch, sand, etc.), we used a Hudson sprayer filled with a mixture of water, witch hazel, and eucalyptus oil. The water served as a suspension, the witch hazel killed off anything that might be growing in the floor treatment, and the eucalyptus oil (just a few drops is fine) served to keep the dust down and added a lovely sinus-clearing aroma to the air.