Holes on the other hand tend to be done in the field. But, people don't wear PPE even though it's simple and easy to do.
Not only is it stupidly messy, it's less precise, dangerous, and often the crews are too careless to protect the inside of the cabinet boxes (where the slug of stone that's being cut from the top will drop and bounce around).
And even if something is off, the drywall should be gouged to make the slab fit, rather than stone being cut onsite.
I give up. Everything is screwed.
Your job is temporary, but please wear a respirator. :-)
Do everyone a favor and call OSHA on your last day. Nothing about this sounds "okay".
I’ve never seen someone cut a countertop on site. They do it in a shop. (Why didn’t Australia instead ban all countertop cutting in shops that doesn’t use dustless tools?)
Hmm, I just looked it up. Home Depot sells the tool for under $30.
I would NOT recommend this to anyone though. At the time, the turn time and expense of having the counter removed, altered at a proper shop, redelivered and installed was prohibitively expensive.
This is in contrast to cutting dry, which causes all the swarf to fly into the air.
So the exposure isn’t zero, but it’s low. It would be interesting to see if it registers on a particle counter (Plantower, etc).
are you saying that wearing the PPE is simple and easy to do, or did you mean they don't wear PPE because the job is so simple and easy to do?
You see it in factories too, where workers will disable safety devices just to save them a tiny amount of movement.
My 8yo son came out to see what was going on, looked at the workers doing the cut without masks, and said "silicosis ain't no joke" and went back inside. I've taught him well.
So not everything he says is wisdom beyond his years...
Maybe we should mandate people wear PPE, but if they decide to flaunt the rules and risk their health for no reason, I just don't really feel all that sympathetic.
"Safe Work found that while silicosis cases could emerge in several industries, the numbers were "disproportionate" among engineered stone workers. Engineered stone workers also suffered a faster disease progression and were more likely to die from it, the report said."
A mandate isn't really necessary. Everyone involved has every incentive to cut stone in a shop rather than in the field.
The problem is people don't wear PPE. Guess what? Everyone already has a mandate to wear PPE.
Sometimes you can't fix stupid.
Asbestos can get into your air through accidental damage to insulation, or in the case of lead, paint chipping or pipes aging can do the trick. This is just something that happens incidentally through the regular lifetime of the material, not because someone decided to do something to it.
Opening up a dry wall on the other hand, will inevitably dust up the whole house.
You can still find it all over the place in things like cabinet pulls, door handles, and even ceramic tile.
Gas welding the material results in lead fumes. There is a big quarrel about the usage of lead in water pipe connector brass parts going on in the EU.
The product is generally installed onsite in a fast paced building industry that doesn’t have time/room to do it properly and often no supervision (1-2 often independent trades doing the installs) to ensure the appropriate measures are actually taken.
The risk has already been known for a while and in practice still lots of “YOLO” onsite cutting without even respirators.
This reeks of unnecessary heavy-handedness that hurts everyone. The specified natural alternative (granite) is nearly half silica and is a known health hazard.
All this regulation does is allow sloppy work that'll kill people a little more slowly.
There's already an automatic process for this. They get silicosis.
But I agree, this would be good.
But I think the decision here is basically that, in practice, it's very difficult to actually get people to follow the required practices, in practice. As has been shown in practice.
I feel for the people who were early in the industry who had no idea this could happen to them, but now that it's known, if a contractor doesn't feel like taking appropriate precautions, then they get what they deserve.
Banning an entire industry because people cut corners is just dumb.
It doesn’t just affect them. Everyone nearby gets exposed. People who come later to clean get exposed. Customers can get exposed.
asbestos was banned for similar reasons, or are you saying that it shouldn’t have been banned either because of “people cutting corners with ppe” - it too is perfectly safe when handled safely
But I, personally, am happy to accept the 'Human Factors' side of reality.