The generation of dust during the handling of high-temperature materials, which fall or impact contact surfaces, can be a significant source of danger for the health of operators. A greater knowledge on the effective control of these falling and impact processes must be illustrated. This paper presents recent experimental research on the characteristics and dust generation rates of materials of different temperatures during the free falling process. The results show that when experimental conditions are the same, the high-temperature material has a larger dispersion radius and a smaller impact velocity compared to the ambient-temperature material. In all cases, the first fugitive dust rate (eta(w)) which is produced by falling process increased as the material temperature (7) increased. The second fugitive dust rate (eta(s)) which is emitted by impacting process and the total dust rate (eta(r)) which consists of eta(w) and eta(s), all decreased sharply at first with increasing T, after which the eta(s)-T curves has a gentle sloping section but the eta(r)-T curves increases slightly. In addition, a comprehensive analysis of the factors contributing to dust generation is also included in this paper. It was found that the effect of temperature on dust generation was more obvious with increasing percentage of the first fugitive dust. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.