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Comment by unclekev | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how banning it does anything to address the underlying problem of people wilfully ignoring PPE/safe working practices.

One of the "Suggested safer alternatives" is Granite which can have silica content up to 45% (Engineered stone being 95%+)

So instead of 2 years to develop silicosis it will instead take 4 years of working with the "safe alternatives"?

All the people who were cutting engineered stone with unsafe methods, are now just going to be cutting granite and other natural stone with the same safety practices that led to this being banned.

I really don't get it.

This whole "But we tried to enforce the safety standards on the industry" is a load of nonsense - How many businesses got fined or shut down for unsafe practices that caused silicosis for their staff? None.

The cycle will continue, and we'll be back here in 10 years when the "safe alternatives" are getting banned.

View on HN

It’s incredible how bad tradies are at PPE. When my solar panels were being installed on my house, the electrician was happily about to drill through asbestos cement eave lining before I stopped him, and at least made him put on a disposable P2 respirator mask I had lying around. But he still released asbestos fibres into the air and the ceiling cavity where his colleagues were working, and will have got it on his clothes and hair. How many times had he done it completely unprotected at other people’s houses without even thinking? (Australian houses often contain AC sheeting in houses built between the 50s to the 80s)

With silica it’s a similar story, we were moving in to an older office block that again had asbestos in the ceiling tiles, and I was wearing a respirator because again electricians had drilled it in a bunch of places (inside this time, ended up going through very expensive decontamination a couple of days later including ripping out and replacing half of the brand new carpet). Anyway, I was in the server room where an air-conditioner guy was installing a split system unit, and he asked me about it and I told him what was happened. He then said something like “Oh yeah, I definitely should have been more careful with that kind of stuff when I was a young fella”, and then proceeds to start drilling through the double brick wall (to install the piping to the outdoor unit) with no mask or hearing protection… Cutting brick and concrete releases silica into the air too, most tradies just give no thought to using proper PPE…

Sadly that's just the culture. I've seen apprentices laughed at by old timers and called pussies because they were taking basic precautions and wearing PPE. And then to fit in they themselves took on that same attitude.

It hurts me when I see my tradie trainee husband (at school to be an auto mechanic) skip PPE in places he really shouldn't (e.g. latex gloves when handling carcinogenic fluids). I don't really know as I can do much other than state my objections to deaf ears though.

Those fluids are carcinogenic to drink, not to get on your skin.

Don’t be a scold, show the benefit, which is it’s easier to clean up after work.

Also latex gloves cause latex allergies frequently, vinyl gloves can be a good alternative.

Buna nitrile is the goat

Yes thats it, I was thinking of nitrile not vinyl

For several years now I cannot wear a wristwatch on my left hand because of a sustained skin reaction to a mixture of automatic transmission fluid and gearbox "oil leak fixer". Don't be an idiot like me, wear the gloves.

Most are carcinogenic to _breathe_

Used engine oil is definitely carcinogenic.

https://roadmaponcarcinogens.eu/facts/used-mineral-oils/

Both my grandfather and father received identical forms of bladder cancer due to improperly handling solvents without PPE. It's preventable and stupid.

A similar situation exists with mostly men who work outside and refuse to wear hats or sunscreen but develop malignant melanoma at far greater rates than other groups.

The definition of stupid is someone who believes they can smoke 5 packs a day and not get cancer. But it's the inconsiderateness of someone who doesn't love their family enough to watch out for their own health to not leave them prematurely rather than hurry death along.

My dad worked construction from 15 to 65. I’m frankly amazed that he’s not developed skin cancer - he’s had a couple of suspicious moles removed.

He is also the only person I know who went cold turkey off a pack-a-day smoking habit, and years before indoor smoking bans and higher tobacco taxes. He gained a lot of weight that he’s never managed to shift, but he’s not touched a cigarette in over 30 years.

I’m sure he inhaled and handled plenty of other awful things on job sites without any pretense at PPE. He diligently wore a hard hat and steel-toed boots, and wouldn’t let any of his crews work without them. All I can guess is that he saw some gruesome, very preventable injuries, but vague figures on higher risk in old age just didn’t quite outweigh the inconvenience of PPE.

I walked past a guy using a pneumatic drill the other day. It was so loud I crossed the road to get away from it and my ears were ringing for a while after I'd passed him. He wasn't wearing any form of ear protection at all.

He can't have been much older than 20.

He could have been using small earplugs - I hope!

I think I permanently trained myself out of that by looking at some arc welding when I was about 8 years old. Looked pretty, and brighter than anything I had seen before. (sun, lightning, lasers, etc) Didn't seem to hurt or cause any immediate issues.

Realized how wrong I was when I woke up the next morning, felt like I had gritty sand in my eyes for two or three days.

The talk in the trade is that asbestos is way overblown and it mostly affected people installing it in ships for the Navy. They worked in tight spaces with lots of asbestos in the air, lining the ship and its pipes with it, all day every day.

I don't know how true that is but I've heard the same exact story from several different contractors. I do know that getting those linoleum/asbestos floor tiles ripped up will cost you a lot to get somebody to do it for you, but there aren't any real safety precautions you need to take since it isn't getting airborne, it's basically just pure profit for the contractor.

Many people underestimate the risks from asbestos as the disease can take 20-40 years to develop after exposure but it shouldn’t be underestimated.

Asbestosis killed over 3,600 people in 2015. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestosis

Asbestos has affected all sorts or people, not just in the Navy. A close relative of mine who was a plumber has been diagnosed with it and it is an awful disease.

This woman is dying from cancer caused by inhaling asbestos dust while washing her husband's work clothes. https://www.thompsonstradeunion.law/news/news-releases/asbes...

It’s also that relatively few people are affected. That’s approximately one in 100,000 people, twice as many people in the United States were murdered in 2015. It is really easy to know nobody who died from asbestos.

Yeah, but I don’t claim murder risk is overblown and run around badlands like I’m invincible.

Murder risk is negligible though. Especially if you aren’t directly involved in crime.

Murder risk is negligible because we do things about it.

My house has never burned down, therefor firemen, smoke alarms, and extinguishers are a scam. Got it.

No, murder risk is negligible not because you avoid going out, but because of law.

You conflated the two.

Is it because of law?

Making harsher laws doesn’t seem to reduce the murder rate. Having a death penalty doesn’t seem to stop the murders.

What are you talking about? Where is murder legal so you can compare the rates?

I did? Where did I say anything about not going out?

Is the risk of asbestos exposure when you work in construction as low as someone that doesn't?

Depends on your job - new construction shouldn't have anything to do with asbestos at all, but if you work on/demolish old buildings you might.

The only reason asbestos is becoming less and less deadly is that we banned it decades ago.

Why are averages relevant when these workers are not getting an average exposure to these materials?

I'm skeptical of the story. Husband wears asbestos ridden clothes all day, maybe wears PPE and what not, but we've tied it the cancer the wife has because of her exposure to the clothes while handling them in the wash?

Even if the husband took off his clothes, separately bagged them and then handed them to his wife to clean, it's hard to see how his exposure is less to the point where only she was diagnosed.

This is going to sound absolutely crazy to you, but you are just going to have to trust me:

Different people can have dramatically different reactions to identical things. Totally insane, right?

Given the article is from the law firm representing the client in the article, I 'm dumbfounded to see people jumping onboard in agreement and not drawing fair conclusions on causation.

Smoke usually means fire yes, but not always - could be someone heating oil on a pan.

I'm certainly on board with the belief asbestos increases likelihood of cancer. But so does driving through a dirty tunnel in peak hour traffic every day of your life. Quantifying which one were more likely to 'cause' your cancer is a not a straighforward thing.

Asbestos can cause lung cancer, but also asbestosis and mesothelioma, for both of which the only known cause is asbestos exposure.

I’ve heard of a number of these cases of wives of construction workers contracting these asbestos related diseases, it’s a population that had a higher chance of contracting them (just like construction workers themselves exposed to asbestos, of which there were many in this country). As I understand it, none of this is disputed by any of the medical science, epidemiology or experts in those fields…

Since asbestos is still around in various (mostly old) materials, it is possible to have additional exposure unknowingly, but it’s quite rare to contract something like asbestosis or mesothelioma without known exposure.

Basically asbestos presents an opportunity for things to go wrong and for you to get cancer. There isn't a discrete threshold where you have been over-exposed and now have cancer - think really shit lottery tickets.

So over a population you'd generally expect to see the incidence correlate to the level of exposure, but not in a way that precludes unusual shit like this.

My understanding is that there is not a very obvious dose response curve for mesothelioma. There are some people who had occupational exposure for their entire working life and don’t get it, while there are some people that had a small number of individual exposures and do get it. I think this is what drives a lot of people to dismiss the risks of asbestos. They work around the stuff and they work with people who work around the stuff and they don’t see people getting mesothelioma, so they assume it’s not a big deal.

I used to make a living scanning the lungs of people who were young enough to have been told the risks.

Official statistics (in Spain, which is where I'm from and have read them) don't agree with that. Plenty of construction workers and various related workers, like plumbers, etc. have died from asbestos.

As an anecdote, you could even die from asbestos from working at a TV station... The Spanish public TV station used asbestos as insulation in stages and apparently, when there were vibrations from loud sound, applauses, etc., dust particles fell on the workers and public. A famous TV anchor, José María Íñigo, died from that, as well as other workers from the station.

There are different varieties of asbestos. None are good for you, but some are far more deadly than others.

Western European countries (including Spain, I am guessing) and Australia tended to use the most dangerous varieties of asbestos - crocidolite and amosite. By contrast, North America and ex-USSR countries used the less carcinogenic chrysotile.

While blue asbestos was used in some applications, the vast majority of asbestos in Australian homes is chrysolite.

There were (and are) still many mesothelioma and asbestos deaths in tradesmen building with chrysolite containing products here, as well as people whose only known exposure was renovation of houses containing it.

I had some conversations with some folks who worked in asbestos removal. In the US, everyone who touches the stuff owns it forever. The bags used to pack it have the name, license #s and contact info for the company removing it. If the landfill decides 20 years from now that they no longer want it in their landfill, your company gets to pay to remove it and then dispose of it in a new landfill.

The general feeling was that every asbestos removal company goes out of business (dissolve, chapter 7) in order to escape the permanent liability of the stuff. At which point it now becomes a SuperFund issue.

I mean, you probably should disclose your property has asbestos to trades working on your house - and they probably would wear the right PPE. Lots of people are fine with small risks with regular materials like sheetrock on small jobs (cutting a hole or something). But really, that should've been disclosed to workers as they enter your property.

I honestly don’t think it would have made a difference - he was going to drill it anyway after I stopped him, I had to ask him to please use the respirator.

In the commercial case we had also very clearly told them that it was asbestos containing but there was some miscommunication to the workers, so they just drilled all these holes…

Anyway, at the end of the day, while there are rules for commercial buildings to have asbestos registers, I wouldn’t expect every homeowner to know what every part of their house is made of, but at the same time, basically every building built for a period of more than 60 years in Australia contains (or contained) asbestos containing materials - so it’s a pretty scary lack of training or ignoring of the risks for somebody working in the building industry to not take even basic precautions when at least 1/3 or so of the houses these people are working in contains asbestos. For the solar guys, the eaves are the most likely place for it to exist, because even when houses have been pretty extensively renovated inside and had a lot of the AC sheeting removed indoors (as mine has), or might not have had asbestos sheeting inside originally (plaster was more expensive, so a more premium finish), it’s one part that was very likely to have still been AC sheeting (since it was mould resistant) and much less likely to have been replaced with non-asbestos fibreboard in the meantime.

Sadly no better here in Germany, which surprised me. In the UK health and safety is much more extreme. Here in Germany it’s rare to see workers taking any kind of safety precautions

My dad, who is permanently sunburnt from his half century in construction (and wasn’t terribly into most other safety measures against abstract risks), tsk-tsks the laxity of German road crews allowing workers to wear shorts in the summer. Sturdy jeans go a long way as basic leg protection, and he couldn’t imagine any construction worker in much hotter Texas forgoing them, no matter how much they have to be yelled at about hardhats.

The main thing I noticed in Germany was open construction sites with little to protect pedestrians walking through, lack of any kind of masks when working with fumes or dust, no ear protection, and no hardhats.

But still the "real men" on UK building sites and trades shun PPE. It's just a dumb man thing. I often wonder if they think every day there's a chance of a woman seeing and thinking how manly and hot they are for not even needing wimpy protection. Here the construction vehicles have a green flashing light on to indicate that the user has a seat belt on. They get round that by just buckling up then sitting on the belt. Tbh that one seems a bit silly but there's probably a good reason for it.

Perhaps, though still my experience seeing building sites in the UK still seems to have way more health and safety and risk assessments. As I said in the other comment, in Germany it's not rare at all to see road workers with heavy machinery, fumes, and dust, who are wearing no ear protection, no goggles, no mask, and no hard hat. That would be an extremely rare sight in the UK.

I was recently in Malta and saw a bloke in shorts and t-shirt start angle grinding into the pavement in the middle of a busy road. Definitely would never see that in the UK.

Sadly that is not an uncommon sight around where I am in London, where there is a high number of Eastern European tradespeople who either know no better or simply don't care.

Doubt it has anything to do with women. More like poor long term risk assessment leading to immediate tasks and short term goals being prioritized over more abstract longer term goals.

You've probably crossed a road at a non-ideal location right? Because you had somewhere to be and you figured you were paying attention - the risk was managed. Same dynamic basically.

I've seen some behavior on German job sites that blows my mind as an Australian (and from this discussion it's pretty clear Aussie tradies aren't saints).

Zero compliance with hard hats, straddling a 4th story window without fall protection, incredibly sketchy scaffolding, dust everywhere etc. I was half expecting a worker fatality at some point.

Though I'm not sure I'd blame the Germans (other than for very lax oversight) it was an entirely Eastern European work crew. Which seems to be the case for many job sites around here. Bunch of young folks hustling for money to take home with zero regard for health and safety.

There's a lot of people living in really old substandard houses with Asbestos here in Canada too. The decline of the middle class, and economy where a new house costs 1 million, while the average salary is 59k made it nearly impossible for people to afford to build a new house. So the vas† majority of people in old homes will be stuck in them.

Asbestos is fine if you dont drill/breathe it. If its fire insulant between drywall it was never proven to be health issue. Its not like its radioactive or something

Okay well you clearly have a great life with a lot to live for, but that's not really the case for everyone. How about you don't judge people you're calling "tradies" for how they decide to live their lives.

Did you even read the article? These people are very young, and deeply regret the way they decided to live their lives. And tradies is not some kind of slur, it's how they refer to their colleagues across the trades. And wtf is up with just assuming these people who don't wear PPE don't think they have a great life with a lot to live for, there's literally a 35yr old dude with 3 loving kids in one of the pictures of affected persons.

Sorry if that was off base, I'm not in a good place right now.

Sorry you're feeling bad, hope you get out of it soon. I'm a bit tired working two jobs and a baby at home so I probably went in a bit too hard as well.

NRK had a great article about this recently:

https://www.nrk.no/vestland/xl/kvartsstovet-som-gjer-folk-sj...

Seems to work fine in Google Translate.

> All the people who were cutting engineered stone with unsafe methods, are now just going to be cutting granite and other natural stone with the same safety practices that led to this being banned.

> I really don't get it.

Before engineered stone took off like crazy people were already cutting natural stone, working as stone masons, working at BGC quarries (stone mining, crushing, grading, delivery).

After engineered stone became fashionable the rates of silicosis in under 35 year old tradespeople spiked in a sharply noticable way.

After the engineered stone ban things will likely return to previous levels of "it happens but it's acceptably rare".

For whatever reason ( . . . insert theory . . . ) engineered stone manufacture and cutting is much much much worse wrt health issues.

For whatever reason your desk bound rational rule of thumb doesn't track against the data.

Not saying those figures aren't valid, but isn't it also possible that the increased affordability of man-made stone meant that these workers were doing more "stone" installations as opposed to tile or other options?

Hmm, this isn’t crazy.

IIRC in the nineties and earlier, porcelain tile countertops were very common. Granite and marble were exotic.

Porcelain is high in silicates, but not so high in silica. Glaze is (I think) amorphous, like glass. And your average tile installer cuts with a wet saw.

Marble is mostly calcium carbonate. Granite contains lots of quartz.

Engineered stone is easy to cut on site. Real cheap to work with that's why it beat Porcelain.

I don't think Porcelain is as dangerous.

Porcelain is also easy to cut with a tile saw, and tile saws make very little dust. Porcelain tile doesn’t look fun to cut with a dremel or angle grinder.

Edit to just link the article rather than my silly speculation about particle sizes and types:

Reference: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/resp.14625

"The qualitative comparison of in vitro responses between the categories of particles we examined revealed some interesting patterns. Firstly, the ES dusts were the most potent stimulus in inducing cytotoxicity and pro-inflammatory responses in epithelial cells while the standard silica sample was particularly toxic to macrophages. All particles (ES, BM,NS and standard silica) showed some potential to promote IL-8 (CXCL8) and TNF-α production in macrophages, as well as IL-1β, with the exception of natural stone. These observations are consistent with our overarching hypothesis that particle characteristics are key drivers of the lung cell response and, therefore, the risk of disease. In more in-depth analyses with a focus on ES dusts, we found that the quartz concentration was significantly associated with the inflammatory response in macrophages. This is an important observation as there has been consistent rhetoric regarding the crystalline silica content of ES being the key driver of the high disease prevalence. 7,39Indeed, crystalline silica has been shown to be related to the dose-dependent macrophage accumulation response,40aggravated inflammatory cell infiltration, thickened alveolar walls and enhanced expression of collagens. 41However, the relationship between quartz and the macrophage inflammatory response was not the sole driver of the cellular responses we observed."

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Cute but lacking depth.

If you feel that way, take it up with:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/resp.14625

https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA37...

and the tradies getting physical reactions in their lungs from the dust.

OK, fair, and tragic, but is the only solution banning it entirely? What about requiring PPE?

There are a whole lot of jobs that are safe when done properly and unsafe, when not done properly. It seems as if they are punishing an entire industry for not knowing what they didn’t know.

Cutting stone and keeping 100% of it out of your lungs is nearly impossible, especially when you are working in uncontrolled environments like someone's kitchen that is being renovated.

The PPE available for this sort of work is just not up to the job.

Making driving 100% safe is nearly impossible, but we drive cars built to good crash standards with seatbelts, ABS, AEB, etc. People still die on the roads, but these safety features reduce risk to an acceptable level. Likewise, using decent PPE won't 100% eliminate risk, but it will greatly improve it. Just because PPE isn't 100% effective doesn't mean you shouldn't use it.

The other kind of obvious solution with engineered stone is to avoid cutting it at the installation site. If it's cut to spec at the factory in a controlled environment (surely not that difficult in this age of CAD design etc), you wouldn't be blasting dust around during installation.

You inadvertently make a good point that driving should probably be taxed a lot heavier in most places.

It's reasonably safe for other people in cars, but it's hell for pedestrians, wheel-chair users and cyclists. So much so, that we have re-organised our whole society around avoiding this danger. Eg kids don't play on the streets anymore.

I agree with this. But perhaps a lot of it is just perception? In my country pedestrian deaths have fallen dramatically since the mid-1980s, by about 80%, despite the size of the vehicle fleet getting much larger. Were there more pedestrian deaths in the 1980s because more kids played on the streets? Or because cars and drivers were less safe and less aware of the risks? It certainly wasn't because there were more cars!

Cars and streets have also been getting safer here: advanced pedestrian and cyclist-aware AEB is already in many cars - and becomes mandatory in all new cars in Europe from July 2024. Streets are getting safer with better designs (more choke points, raised pedestrian crossings, etc), and speed limits being reduced in urban/residential areas.

Of course, details depends on the country in question.

I'm mostly worried not so much about the actual number of casualties, but about the avoidance actions people engage in, ie not playing outside.

Why not use other materials?

Modified acrylic or compact laminate?

That will save lives.

Although good materials, acrylics and laminates are not quite as durable as engineered stone countertops. They tend to show more wear over time, and are more prone to damage from extreme heat etc. Some may consider the look and feel of stone to be more "premium".

But of course they're cheaper and lighter and probably still cheaper than stone even if you end up replacing them a couple of times over the lifetime of the kitchen...

Polished concrete is another decent alternative to engineered stone, although again perhaps not as durable.

Polishing, sanding concrete will produce tons of tiny dust particles just as cutting the stone.

Yes, but the dust from concrete or natural stone doesn’t seem to be anything like as dangerous as the dust from engineered stone.

(You still should use PPE and avoid inhaling it, of course!)

Don't know about 2000+ grit polishing concrete, it's likely to be wet sanded but still. The particles would be a lot finer.

The 'engineered' stone is just very fine dust along with binders.

You can repolish an acrylic top and it looks brand new. Most professionals should only take an hour or two to do it.

Geopolymer to the rescue!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000888460...

I thought all you had to do was use water with the saw and wear a respirator. Am I misinformed?

No, you're not misinformed, but some people will conflate a non-perfect protection with 'protection is useless'

It's just bog standard denialism

> Cutting stone and keeping 100% of it out of your lungs is nearly impossible, especially when you are working in uncontrolled environments like someone's kitchen that is being renovated.

I'm building a house, and I have a stone countertop installed. None of the cutting was done on-site. All the work was done in a specialized workshop.

I believe it’s always done that way in the US when you order granite or other stone countertops. Cutting large heavy slabs on site isn’t efficient.

I think that’s simply untrue. You’re not cutting the stone in kitchens, it’s cut at the warehouse and transported to the kitchen. In the US we’ve regulated this and while our record isn’t 100% safety due to non-compliance (which is always the case) we’ve got a much lower rate than Australia despite presumably selling a lot more of it.

PAPR is fine? and available?

Exactly, silica is not the problem. Silica is everywhere, we don't wear PPE to drive down a dirt road.

It's the silica plus the adhesive additives combined in your lungs that does the damage.

Maybe. Or it's the dose, which sounds quite high when working with engineered stone.

Or the size of the particles. Cutting engineered stone has been shown to generate large quantities of extremely fine particles (< 1 µm). Cutting natural stone or driving on a dirt road, the typical particle sizes are much larger.

Why isn’t it being cut wet? Surely if dust is the problem, water is the solution.

If done properly, probably.

> In February 2021, a WorkSafe Inspector attended the workplace and observed an employee using a powered abrasive polishing tool to abrasively polish a slab of white coloured stone which was from the brand Stone Ambassador. The tool was being used without the required control measures in place. Instead, the employee was applying water to the stone from a bottle with a small hole in the lid when the tool was in use.

Yes, it is. There's an ABC article about this, they interviewed one particular business owner who has gone to great lengths to get good equipment which cuts engineered stone with wet saws which don't generate dust, and has worked hard to instill a culture of safety with his workers. Nobody working there has silicosis.

As per the rest of the comments here, it just seems that most tradies would rather literally die than implement any reasonable safety precaution.

It's the bozos working with the stuff without proper PPE.

I watched a grave marker carver absolutely bathing in dust with just a thin bandanna, I was in there for 5 minutes and was left choking in their hazardous work environment.

WitH sufficient PPE and dust control, it's not a problem. This is just barking up the wrong tree because they can't get workers to not be idiots, so they pick a scapegoat to ban at random. It's not fucking asbestos. It's apparent but ineffective motion by expediency.

I don't think seeing one person do something can really compare to having a dedicated taskforce do 2 years of research into an industry, in terms of understanding risk and what practical options there are to manage said risk.

> they can't get workers to not be idiots

Is it that or is it that someone doesn't want to pay for those industrial-scale air cleaners?

I got a little interested in particulate air quality during covid so I ran across the entrepreneurs selling them. You can probably make the air in a quarry as clean as in a surgery room, if you're willing to pay.

There is an easy, cheap and well-tested air cleaner: wet cutting, i.e. cutting under running water. All dust will be bound in the runoff, almost no airborne particles. But it is messy (often not doable indoors, because you splatter everything with rock slurry) and just a little more expensive gear than for dry cutting. So nobody does it...

Water is increasingly becoming something we can't waste as easily as before in many parts of the world.

it is a closed loop

From the report:

> A total of 12 successful prosecutions have been reported since 2021, with many related to the uncontrolled processing (dry cutting) of engineered stone materials

https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/202...

> Exactly, silica is not the problem

It is. The air-driven rock drills were called "widowmakers" by miners because of silicosis that quickly reaped its operators.

> Silica is everywhere, we don't wear PPE to drive down a dirt road.

Silica down the road is not in the form of fine dust.

> For whatever reason ( . . . insert theory . . . ) engineered stone manufacture and cutting is much much much worse wrt health issues.

My theory: engineered stone allowed us plebs to get stone benches. Previously we had stainless, Formica and other bench tops that were less toxic to work with.

Tooling and PPE are part of the problem but not all of it. People who clean up job sites are also getting sick:

> "We actually not only saw people who were directly cutting and grinding the stone, but we saw people who were just sweeping up the work site after the stone had been cut," says Rose. "They were exposed to the silica particles that were suspended in the air just with housekeeping duties."

So, basically everyone needs to wear a P100 all the time when on site until the site has totally been cleaned up. In a manufacturing environment, if you're on the floor you wear a mask and there must be a dust collection system and tools that perform dust collection or mitigation. In this case that'd be water saws.

Read the threads here, a lot people don't like wearing respirators. The outcome isn't surprising.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/10/02/7660282...

There’s got to be ways to cut stone that don’t involve people sweeping up the dust with a broom. Water jets, wet saws, or even just a water mister and a wet/dry vac with a filter is going to be much better than just going about the same process with a different stone that they hope won’t be as bad on their lungs.

The sad state of australian industry is that there's very little investment in tooling, plant and equipment.

Businesses don't want to invest, and even if they do, they find it hard to find any financing as banks don't want to lend. It makes such tooling expensive, and thus a lot of small businesses don't (or can't) upgrade their tooling.

Same in the US. People die cutting stone countertops. Nobody gives a shit

Contractors with brooms are a huge pet peeve of mine at a construction site. Seriously, WTF? You take all the dust and re-suspend as much of it as possible into the air?

Every construction site should have a HEPA-filtered vacuum with a filter bag. (The bagless kind is to be reserved for special cases that need it, and people should wear respirators when emptying it, TYVM.). Brooms are for non-vacuumable debris only, and subcontractors should be reminded of this regularly.

Keeping dust down with water sprayers should be a thing. Also, there should be particulate counters and VOC sensors all around sites to indicate what level of PPE is non-obvious but needed.

I've noticed that a lot in public outdoor construction where I live the last ~10 years. Whenever there's the slightest chance of dust, they have giant water mist spraying machines in addition to the PPE.

may i ask where you live? I’ve worked outdoor construction as a teen for a while, even up till now, I’ve never seen mist sprayers in use round here in Germany.

Western Norway. The rock here is high in quartzite I hear, maybe that's got something to do with it?

Surely you use mist sprayers during building demolition though? That's where I first saw them.

yeah, i think they are pretty standard for demo work around the world afaik. Very interesting, Germany tends to be hellishly strict on building codes and such, but PPE is seriously lacking over here. It bred the mother of all toxic cavalier attitudes.

For indoor construction, a water sprayer seems like a mistake. It would turn all that only-mildly-nasty dust into hard-to-remove goo, not to mention making wood soggy and damaging gypsum and other materials.

The problem with “always wear a p100” is that they’re not comfortable in an unventilated uncooled house which is where a lot of construction happens. If everyone is wearing one you also need to take more breaks which eats into time to do the job.

The industry is set up so you only get paid for doing the job. If doing it unsafely means doing it faster or being more comfortable then a lot of small time contractors will take that short term gain despite the long term risks.

I don’t know how we incentivize doing the right thing more here.

> The problem with “always wear a p100” is that they’re not comfortable in an unventilated uncooled house which is where a lot of construction happens. If everyone is wearing one you also need to take more breaks which eats into time to do the job.

Also, solutions that require people to consistently do uncomfortable things are not realistic; we know they will fail to comply - just like we would - and they will get sick.

Also, they come up with post-hoc rationalizations that justify them not doing the uncomfortable thing.

The error they make is thinking that only "they" - other people - do these things.

The same people probably work out at the gym ironically! But covid showed that people can wear masks alot.

Lots of people refused and caused lots of deaths.

A paper Covid mask is nowhere near as uncomfortable as a p100!

You make it illegal to do the wrong thing and have surprise audits. Losing your license is a pretty strong motivator to do it properly.

How do you do a surprise audit in a customers house?

You pass a law giving a class of inspector the right to enter premises where building works appear to be progressing. You strictly limit what they are permitted to observe and record and require recording of reasonable suspicion. Refusal to grant entry is itself an offence.

Approaches like this would work but are also a huge can of worms.

>You pass a law giving a class of inspector the right to enter premises

In most countries (and I'd expect to include Australia), there cannot be a blanket invasion of privacy - and it'd require a court order. The amount of paper would would be ridiculous, then what if I do that on my own, or I used a cousin to do it for me, for free?

Like I said, can of worms. There are no easy solutions.

The customer would be made to sign a contract allowing random state inspection.

> what if I do that on my own, or I used a cousin to do it for me, for free?

You and your cousin could decide to go and mud wrestle crocodiles, but we'd still ban opening an amusement park where that was offered to members of the public.

As the customer of a builder, I would very much approve of someone making sure said builders work wasn't dogshit.

Seriously, who in their right mind is going to deny entry to an auditor making sure that your builder isn't an idiot?

I mean, if we can't incentivize doing the right thing by teaching people that they'll die of a respiratory disease in their 30s if they don't wear their PPE, then honestly, that's life. If people choose to do their job in a way that gives them high risk of bad health outcomes, that's on them.

Certainly if workers are being coerced into not doing the right thing, that's a problem, and employers need to be fined into oblivion if they pull that crap.

If it's uncomfortable or takes longer to do it safely, that cost should be passed on to the person paying for the work.

You implicitly lay responsibility on the worker first, then on the employer, then on the customer.

Perhaps if the order of responsibility were reversed, it would lead to better outcomes.

It would be ridiculous to have any responsibility on the customer.

The only feasible order is government, employer, then worker. The government is tasked with the making the rules and surprise inspections, and the rest follows from there.

Well, the customer also has a lot of power. They can decide to hire a company (if available of course) that encourages/forces their workers to use PPE, even if it's a little more expensive (and maybe also takes longer) instead of just going for the lowest bidder...

How would a customer verify that? They are supposed to also monitor the worksite? And be knowledgeable about consistent work and the type of PPE it requires?

It's not really that hard to understand PPE requirements.

Is it dusty? Wear a mask.

Is it loud? Hearing protection.

And everyone should wear shoes with steel caps.

If you see someone with a bandana over their mouth in sandals you know they are unsafe. They know it too. This is not something that is difficult to understand.

And then what? The customer takes pictures and reports them to the government? Fires them? What if there is a dispute, the laborer takes the customer to court for false claims?

Who polices the customer? The logistics of making everyone a cop make no sense to me.

You are overthinking it.

If you see your contractor not using PPE, you just tell them to put it on. Just like you'd tell him to do it properly if you saw him cutting corners somewhere else.

Contractors want to get paid, so they generally tend to do what the person paying the bill asks them to do.

For comfort you'd probably want to get a positive air pressure mask. Those things are wildly underrated. Can even stick on a volatiles filter when relevant.

Yeah, those helmets that are basically face shields with optional hard hat and neck hood are generally speaking fairly comfortable: wide FOV, zero difficulty breathing, and an entire face shield (not just eye "shield") almost casually integrated. As long as you're working where you dare to go without full-on SCBA, a high-enough-tier variant of the e.g. 3M face shield helmets will suffice.

Bonus points for being able to easily just run an external air hose feed into the helmet when working in environments that don't kill you if you dare to take the helmet off in an emergency.

This is what I wear for carpentry/wood working. It's almost identical to the mask I wore in the military for CBRN just different filters and far lighter. Suggestion to look for masks that have larger outter and inner seals if you have glasses or low cut facial hair/stubble respectively as they'll continue to seal.

I believe 3M makes a mask that pretty much doesn't have a seal at all, instead relying on the positive air pressure to keep crap out. That has always seemed like the best solution comfort-wise to me. Anything that seals to the face will end up sweaty at the seals. Should work with basically any variety of lush woodworking beard too.

> a lot people don't like wearing respirators.

Uh... tough shit? If you'll most likely get an often-fatal respiratory disease from not wearing your respirator, and you still don't wear your respirator, maybe that's just Darwin in action there.

Banning the entire thing is just dumb, assuming there are actually PPE and mitigations that will keep people healthy. If people don't follow the safety rules, they should be fired. If companies don't implement the safety rules, they should be fined a significant portion of their revenue.

If following the safety practices means it costs more to do a particular thing, then the people paying for that thing should pay more.

The trade off in this regulation is young people dying vs middle class people being able to afford a countertop that looks a bit more expensive than it actually is.

I wonder instead of these diesel or whatever bans. Why not mandate that everyone wears sufficient PPE 24/7. I mean protecting your health instead of removing source seems entirely reasonable in that mindset.

I'm amazed at the person cited in the article who worked in administration at a quarry, developed silicosis and didn't know what it was. That suggests it's not just people willfully ignoring PPE practices, it's that they genuinely have no clue how dangerous rock dust is.

From the report (page 56):

Exposure to RCS from engineered stone causes silicosis typified by a faster onset and more rapid progression than that caused by RCS [Respirable crystalline silica] from other sources, including natural stone.

When engineered stone is processed, the dust generated contains higher levels of RCS, and that RCS has different physical and chemical properties that likely contribute to the more rapid and severe disease. There is also evidence to suggest that other components of engineered stone may contribute to the toxic effects of engineered stone dust, either alone or by exacerbating the effects of RCS.

...

The increased risks posed by RCS from engineered stone, increased rate of silicosis diagnosis amongst engineered stone workers, and the faster and more severe disease progression amongst this group, combined with a multi-faceted failure of this industry to comply with the model WHS laws means that continued work with engineered stone poses an unacceptable risk to workers. The use of all engineered stone should be prohibited.

https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/202...

Agreed - I'm surprised the Aussie version of OSHA isn't the one taking care of this problem. I feel really bad for the early workers who didn't know getting affected. That's downright terrible.

But I imagine there's a method of safely working with this material. And, there's ALWAYS going to be hazardous materials - you can't ban them all. You raise the standard of the people working with materials. This feels like - oh melting steel is too hot and can be dangerous - we'll ban melting steel.

NOW, if it's like asbestos and the end consumer can get affected then I 100% agree with this ruling.

> But I imagine there's a method of safely working with this material.

You can read the report if you'd like, basically they weighed up a bunch of options. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/202...

> NOW, if it's like asbestos and the end consumer can get affected then I 100% agree with this ruling.

It is - the final fitment is usually on site with dry cuts made contaminating the area it's installed in.

thanks I appreciate the link. Looks like the one we're interested in this thread is Option 4 (also 5b to cover other things like granite). They did a pretty good laying out the details.

I've worked previously as a firefighter, a lot of the stuff that we do can be considered high risk. PPE is incredibly important however there are several issues I have noticed while working with PPE.

1. PPE can get in the way of being efficient.

From personal experience this is one of the most painful things. Engineers design equipment to meet requirements. The people setting these requirements are often bureaucrats who have no knowledge of what it feels like to be doing the manual labor. Some of them may never have even handled any heavy machinery in their life - the end result is you end up with unergonomic tools. Since, the workers are not the ones paying for the tools, the upper management will select things that hit their own KPIs. Some how you are expected to hit unrealistic throughputs with tools that dont work well with your PPE. End result is most people will neglect PPE and find ways around it.

2. PPE upkeep

One has to keep equipment in good condition. Using boots with holes is not going to be a good idea. Corporate culture however is such that they make replacing PPE very painful, in part because PPE is ridiculously expensive in certain contexts. Good managers and supervisors will make sure their crew has safe equipment but often have to take the blame if they overspend. Lazy managers/supervisors will make it a nightmare if anything gets damaged. Unfortunately the number of lazy supervisors far outstrips good supervisors. This can result in things like black markets for PPEs.

3. Workplace culture

It can be "manly" to do things in an unsafe manner. This takes a lot of work to solve but the best way to solve it is by trying to inculcate a culture where people don't cause suffering for others just because they suffered. There is no need to "pay forward" a malpractice. If someone abused you earlier for conforming to something, that doesn't give you the right to abuse your junior. The problem is people who do this kind of change often go unnoticed.

> I really don't get it.

I have no insight into Australia's workings here, in California this kind of WTF can happen in the sort of situation where there is an industry that is being disrupted/destroyed by the 'thing' in question and as a result a way is found to make the 'thing' bad (but not in a way that just says "It makes other options noncompetitive but in a way you can't argue with." Health issues are the go to straw man in that case.

You absolutely could create big fines for the contracting and construction companies that sold an engineered stone solution which would protect the workers as it would be noncompetitive to not follow the rules and risk a huge fine. But that wouldn't help the granite and stainless steel countertop folks would it? Or the contractors that install granite or stainless steel.

> One of the "Suggested safer alternatives" is Granite which can have silica content up to 45% (Engineered stone being 95%+)

> So instead of 2 years to develop silicosis it will instead take 4 years of working with the "safe alternatives"?

It isn’t a good idea to assume linear effects, especially with biology.

Specially when stuff you are comparing something rather novel basically existed before animals moved on land. Stone formations wearing down can causing dust has happened for hundreds of millions of years, if not billions. Biological systems are quite adapted to this type of exposure.

Just like heavy metals, some poisons, and some radioactivity.

I believe people work in mines develops silicosis all the time. Isn't this exactly where we found silicosis exists? Cutting natural stone didn't seems to be a 100% safe-proof option in my opinion.

Medical data shows that people who work in mines develop silicosis some of the time.

Cutting natural stone is not a 100% safe occupation (like almost every occupation).

The specific difference here in the case in Australia is that since Engineered Stone first entered the Australian market in the early 2000’s medical data shows a significant rise in silicosis cases.

It's not that Before Engineered Stone was 100% safe,

it's that Post Engineered Stone appears to be considerably less safe.

Maybe it's the resin, maybe it's the particle size that's so uniform, maybe it's a coincidence . . .

> So instead of 2 years to develop silicosis it will instead take 4 years of working with the "safe alternatives"?

I’m not sure it works like that?

With many things, a lower dose gives more time for repair mechanisms so the effect of a reduction could be outsized. I’d like to see some data.

Also, granite is likely more expensive. So less of it will be used.

The engineered stone is just powder held together with plastic resin, isn't it?

Maybe it cuts so easily that they skip using water.

The Australian government has 2 levers. Tax or Ban.

Their reasons are usually bullshit, such as their Vape ban, which implies that border farce cant keep nicotine out of the country in this one specific product category.

Good point. Government talks big about regulation and how much they care, but when examined, look! They bend right over for business.

The opposite. The trade unions pushed this through.

I came to the same conclusion.

Year ago I was cleaning my flat after renovation, there was lots of dust settled everywhere and my first thought was - how do I protect my lungs? There were many one-time-use face masks in hardware store, but those masks did not look like good enough- mainly because of lack of filter. So I bought slightly more expensive aparatus with proper filters. Yet, trademen who were doing the work did not care, they were not wearing anything to prevent dust from being inhaled. I felt so bad for them that I was vacuuming whole place each evening when they were gone (including walls), so at least they would start with no dust... Still, I was wondering how much of their future suffer will be because I was not asking them to protect themselves...

They know the risks, if they choose to be idiots that's on them.

Invest in some good PPE that doesn't get in the way. I have an air-fed mask I use when spraying lacquer, I do woodworking as a hobby. My small shop is set up with two different filtration systems to keep dust and VOC out of the air. I refuse to use isocyanate catalyzed compounds because of the health implications.

Completely anecdotal but my father in law is a stone mason at 75 years old, working since 16 and wears zero PPE. Not even ear muffs on a large cutting machine the size of an SUV. Wears open toe sandals. Incredibly, he is insanely fit, not an ounce of hearing loss, and works full time to this day. I helped him lay a stone wall this year and I dare say he’s possibly stronger than me at almost half his age.

It’s honestly remarkable.

That's just statistics. 5 out of 6 people playing Russian Roulette will be perfectly fine, and will tell you how safe it is.

Both hearing loss from bangs and lung degradation from dust is probably very hereditary?

>One of the "Suggested safer alternatives" is Granite which can have silica content up to 45% (Engineered stone being 95%+)

>So instead of 2 years to develop silicosis it will instead take 4 years of working with the "safe alternatives"

I doubt that the connection is linear. Half the silica doesn't mean double exposure time has the same effect.

> I don't understand how banning it does anything to address the underlying problem of people wilfully ignoring PPE/safe working practices.

maybe it's because the "underlying problem" they are trying to address is people contracting and dying from silicosis

I'm usually all for worker protection, but this is really ludicrous. What next? Banning saws because people keep cutting off their fingers?

Someone hasn’t read up on the sawstop lawsuits and suggested laws in the area.

I mean if people break the law there's no need for the law? Speeding is illegal and kills many. The alternative, driving slower, is not perfectly safe. I guess the Germans don't criminalise speeding?

It’s a lot easier to get a one to three month driving ban in Germany for speeding than in the US, and a driving ban in Germany means “you may not drive at all.”

20 mph over gets a one month driving ban plus about a 200 EUR fine.

Only the longer, rural stretches of Autobahns still have unlimited speed, and your insurance probably has the condition that they won’t pay out if you were going over the national recommended limit (130 km/h, or about 80 mph)

It’s a looser driving environment than most of its neighbors (Switzerland is covered in speed cameras), but it’s nowhere near the nationwide speed track a lot of Americans imagine it is.

Get caught speeding enough, and you can lose your license for longer, or even for life. Driving is a privilege in Germany - there’s always the bus and train, or somewhere to move that has them.

just saying, Germany enforces speeding laws DAMN strict. We have radar cameras ("Blitzer") and random police patrols with handheld or mobile equipment.

The only thing different here is that we don’t have a general speed limit, if sections of the autobahn meet the safety requirements, they can be marked unrestricted. You can drive as fast as you want there, but the majority of sections are limited to 130km/h due to steep(ish) curves, visibility, traffic and noise pollution guidelines.

That said, we do love our Autobahn and there ARE quite a few unrestricted sections left, my favorite is the A30. All open, starting at the NL border up until Osnabrück.

It's really frustrating to be bathing in these holier-than-thou attitudes on the Internet these days. I've noticed the language on social media is also getting worse. I really enjoy the people you can meet on the internet, but the flippant disrespect is really hard for me to accept as normal. OP your comment is not the worst of them, but it seems to be indicative of a trend. I wish you well.

It is a kind of "cope" mechanism I think. One is essentially blaming the victims so that you won't get depressed.

In the extreme case they only feel sorry for animals or small children, since they are always innocent.

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