When Will We Ever Learn? Silicosis is emerging as the decade’s most problematic occupational health threat. E/Professor Odwyn Jones and C/Professor Bill Musk, explain why. We well recall that beautifully poignant song, Where Have all the Flowers Gone and the refrain about the young men’s lives lost in droves during the last world war. The futility of wars was wonderfully captured in that other line, which asked the eternal question, “when will we ever learn?” The same can be said about the terrible toll some of our industries have on the lives of their employees, most of them young men. Let us, therefore, relate the sad story of the situation prevailing now in our artificial stone (AS) benchtop industry and, sad to say, even in some of our operating mines. Wherever there’s silica dust in the air breathed by employees or contract workers, there is always the risk of silicosis, a dreadful disease which at the very least is debilitating and, at worst, a death sentence, and yet it’s totally preventable. The onus is on our regulators and employers to carry out their duties as defined in the OSH Regulations 1996, efficiently and with real purpose.
Current situation WorkCover Queensland has recorded 164 worker compensation claims for silicosis from workers in the AS benchtop industry. In Victoria there have been 28 claims for silica-related conditions since 2018, and 15 workers have died from the disease since 1985; SafeWork NSW has had 12 silicosis claims and Tasmania has had 5 cases (The Guardian, August 17, 2019). In WA, six workers have been diagnosed with the disease, so far, five from the benchtop industry and one from the mining sector (UNIONSWA/ adsa, July 2019), but the portents are that many more are in the pipeline both here and nationally. The current workplace exposure level for fine silica dust of 0.1 mg/ m3 of RCS (< 5 microns) has been in place since 1983. However, SafeWork Australia, knowing that AS contains around 90% silica,
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operations by carrying out these tasks in an enclosed area with its own exhaust system.
Compensation claims
roughly double that in normal granite, is currently in the process of reducing the limit to 0.05 mg/ m3, to be implemented across all industries as soon as practicable. However, the Victorian Trades Hall Council has recently released an even more stringent approved safety standard of 0.025 mg/m3, as an eight-hour TWA (in keeping with the USA silica exposure standard).
Control measures There is a suite of precautionary measures which employers should have in place, and their implementation and use should be overseen by government-appointed regulators. These measures include: • Water suppression as practised in wet cutting. • Good local exhaust ventilation to minimise the exposure of workers to RCS dust. • The use of appropriate personal protective equipment such as respirators etc. All states and territories, apart from the ACT, have already banned the practice of dry cutting, which has led, in large measure to the recent spate of AS accelerated silicosis (The Guardian, August 17, 2019). Without complicating matters, the solution is as easy as making sure workers, be they employees or contract workers, do not inhale the very fine RCS dust, and consideration should be given to isolating the workers from the cutting, grinding and polishing
WorkCover WA’s fact sheet points out the hazards to workers who are exposed to RCS from dry cutting, grinding, sanding and polishing stone benchtops and during installation. It also advises that to obtain compensation, workers need the independent Industrial Diseases Medical Panel (IDMP) to make a final and binding determination on various questions, including the diagnosis of work-related silicosis, the extent of the worker’s capacity for work and level of impairment. Furthermore, the initial steps to make a workers’ compensation claim requires the claimant to: • Obtain a Certificate of Capacity from the worker’s GP with a provisional diagnosis of silicosis, • Complete a workers’ compensation claim form, and • Give the claim form, Certificate of Capacity and medical test result to the employer, who will then forward the claim to their insurer within five days. Support for workers diagnosed with silicosis and those who suspect they are developing symptoms of the disease can obtain support services and/or advice from a range of organisations including Beyond Blue, MensLine Australia, Lifeline Australia and Silicosis Support Network (an offshoot of Asbestos Disease Support Society). The Silicosis Support Network can provide sufferers access to its own social worker, as well as a range of information ranging from medical specialists, lawyers and allied health care professionals. The network has published some detail of the situation in Queensland where among the 168 diagnosed with the disease, more than 20 men, including one 22 years of age, have been diagnosed with “progressive massive fibrosis” (PMF), often referred to as “end stage disease”, which is a death sentence.
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