Makes sense, this kind of work can have an extremely “toxic” anti-ppe culture that’s impossible to mitigate against without outright burning the industry to the ground. Fines and inspections are easy to dodge when everyone involved is trying to do so.
Hell I work in agronomy and it’s hard enough getting seasonal helpers to wear earplugs when riding ATVs all day. Then there was an old supervisor from a former oil change and tire repair shop job I had, who had hand shakes from nerve damage due to automotive chemical exposure, and he was actually comparatively decent about PPE, especially for helpers.
I work in the construction industry. We have about 1:10 ratio of “supervision” to contractors. Getting people to wear PPE is a constant, ongoing 12 hour a day battle. We kick about 1 person off site permanently, every day for something egregiously dumb. The contractor just sends them to another job. And of all the places I’ve worked, my current employer is one of the best, takes it very seriously.
I used to work in defence manufacturing, we initially had a very macho, play it by ear culture, now it's the complete opposite. You can and will be fired very quickly for not following health and safety rules.
This mainly came out of a series of lawsuits and happened industry wide (the fear of millions of dollars of compensation was enough to get all the players to get very serious)
Part of me feels like this is partially the government shirking it's duty to protect workers. Imagine if in the early days of aviation the government looked at the dangers of flight and the difficulty of wrangling pilots, and just threw it's hands up and banned all aircraft.
The logic here is that if an industry can only be made safe with strict PPE standards, but the market dynamics make it difficult to ensure compliance with those standards, then it is OK to ban the industry.
That seems a pretty concerning stance for small businesses. What's next? Ban microbreweries because they don't properly manage the risks of CO2 asphyxiation? Ban small-shop mechanics because they routinely get brake fluid on their hands?
Well-enforced safety regulations are a good thing for everyone. Banning small businesses because regulating them is hard seems... economically undesirable.
They’re not banning businesses. They’re banning a product which is causing deaths. Switch to a alternate product. It’s the same in your analogy of banning a toxic brake fluid.
Industrial manslaughter laws are a fine incentive to correctly manage the risks of CO₂ asphyxiation, because it is immediately apparent when your worker has been asphyxiated and the proximal cause is readily determined.
Silicosis takes years to appear so the proximal link is too weak for post facto punishment to have much deterrent effect. It is much more like asbestos in this way, which can also be safely handled but has also been banned.
Australian here. We recently had a kitchen bench top made from engineered stone installed. I was previously entirely oblivious to the risks involved. Suffice it to say that we would have chosen a different material had I known the health burden of inhaling the dust during preparation/cutting.
The contractor who installed the bench top for us was however very diligent in alerting us to what safety measures we should follow should any on-site cutting be required at our place. Which it wasn’t in the end. So at least he was aware that the sawdust is a major health hazard.
But that’s one contractor, which does not represent an entire industry. Engineered stone is fashionable and I imagine there are many black sheep out there doing it for cheap with under-trained or unsupervised personnel.
Would you think that imposing heavy fines, and perhaps even criminal penalties when workers are not properly informed, would be a better alternative to banning an economically advantageous product?
Not to be too glib but I think here the reasoning is that letting market forces duke it out (even with fines and penalties) is considered to not be fast enough compared to the number of people whose health is being put at risk.
Like here there are a bunch of people who have lung cancer now. And there's probably a bunch more who will get it from doing all the work up until now.
And this has been in the news for a while I think. I imagine that despite all of this, there's still stuff coming up. The first case was reported back in 2015. 8 years is a pretty long time to think "hey, maybe we should do stuff so our workers won't get lung cancer". The fact that that is not incentive enough is probably a signal that there's not really much left to do, honestly.
This is addressed in the linked source, although that wouldn’t be obvious if you’re not familiar with Australian work health and safety law:
> the re-emergence of silicosis in engineered stone workers is also due to a failure of compliance with existing WHS laws … PCBUs [persons conducting a business or undertaking, who are subject to WHS laws] have not done all that is reasonably practicable to eliminate or minimise those risks, and workers have not taken reasonable care for their own health and safety and that of others [which is a criminal offence]. Finally, there has been insufficient compliance and enforcement actions by WHS regulators to drive behaviour change in the sector … A lower silica content engineered stone is not expected to result in improvements in compliance. The features of the sector that have contributed to the current levels of non-compliance remain – the sector is comprised of mostly small businesses with few barriers to entry and a lower understanding of WHS obligations.
This is probably going to cause the price of large format porcelain bench tops down. They have less silica content than artificial stone and granite. I believe they are also cut to size off-site.
Not informed? You think that trades people were not properly informed to wear PPE at all times? I’m have a3D printer as a hobby and I wear all the PPE when sanding or spray painting.
These people know perfectly well they need to take precautions.
Also, bring back Asbestos, properly handled it is perfectly safe. Radium also gets a bad rap from the “think of the children” brigade. And don’t get me started on leaded fuel! What an overreach from the government on that one!
How dare these union thugs get in the way of clear economic progression that provides far more benefit than harm!
It's not like whatever the demand that the engineered stone currently fills suddenly disappears so those workers will be able to find other similar jobs.
> Earlier this year workplace ministers tasked Safe Work Australia, a government WHS agency, with investigating how a ban could work and whether low-silica engineered stone could remain on the market safely.
> The report found there was no safe level of silica, concluding: "The use of all engineered stone should be prohibited."
I don't understand this logic. Silica is also present in natural stone too! If they are not going to ban natural stone countertops, I don't get why the industry was not allowed to pursue low-silica engineered stone that met or exceeded real stone.
> Hoy said that long before stonecutters started struggling to breathe, the sheer amount of silica in many kinds of engineered stone — upwards of 90% — should have made it obvious that the material was risky to cut and grind, especially in workplaces without sophisticated measures to control dust.(1)
> But scientists and regulators have grown concerned about whether recommended strategies such as wet cutting, proper ventilation and wearing respirator masks can do enough to protect workers from dust so high in silica. Cal/OSHA officials have generally described silicosis as preventable, but also caution that with 93% silica(2) content, “safe use of engineered stone may not be possible” even with proper workplace practices.(1)
Studies looking into the issue have found non silica compounds cause issues too, and its the engineering process rather than the silica that causes the problem. This is why they haven't created an exemption for low-silica products.
> "It's not just about the silica, it's something specific about the engineered stone products that's causing such a significant issue in workers fabricating these products."
> "What we found ... was that the natural products we had in the panel of products that we assessed actually caused the biggest inflammatory response," Professor Zosky said.
I'm not sure why they are saying it's the engineering. Their own study says that natural stone products are worse than the engineered products!
It's probably there's a larger number of cases of silicosis from engineered products despite it being safer. And that's probably because it's easier to cut in the field so people do it more often.
Apparently the spike in cases in due to engineered stone. The FAQ gives various reasons why this may be the case, e.g. the generated particle size is different, and also it is easier to cut than natural stone so it may be processed by less skilled workers.
> I don't get why the industry was not allowed to pursue low-silica engineered stone
From what I can tell, the law itself allows for products under 1% silica. Now where did I read that ...
"According to the ministers’ communique, exceptions will be introduced for the removal, repair, minor modification or disposal of engineered stone installed before 1 July 2024, as well as for products with trace levels of silica under 1%."
Possibly the issue is more to do with the lower cost of the engineered material?
Like, when tobacco cost a megabuck per oz in Queen Elizabeth times people smoked a pipe once in a while and in the context of their high exposure to fireplace smoke it was no big deal. Fast forward to when cigarettes cost 10c/pack and the marketing guys are selling them to 8 year olds...now it's a huge health problem.
If you're only paying a small amount for the materials, most people will be a lot more price sensitive on installation, so there's a race to the bottom.
I think it has more to do with the explosion of use in the market, it's everywhere now (from McMansions to cheap apartments). It is was just cheap/expensive enough to replace laminated MDF benchtops.
Every one of them over zero is bad, but I was surprised how small the sample of active cases actually are. It would have been better to show the change year on year though.
I was surprised that the sample rate was so few, that is active cases.
Bunnings & Ikea recently stopped selling this product.
My guess is Bunnings probably wanted to stop competition.
So they probably lobbied the government for the full ban.
After all, you can't have the competition selling a popular product that they don't.
(Bunnings is like Australia's Home Depot or Lowe's)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This was caused by an alarming rise of silicosis cases in young “tradies” (Aussie slang for trade workers).
The government and various professional bodies tried to enforce the use of PPE when working with this material, but there has been a housing construction boom going on and a lot of corners were cut (hah!), resulting in young immigrant workers especially turning up in hospitals with lung cancer.
No matter how carefully you cut this stuff in a shop with a filtered HVAC, water sprays, and well-fitted respirators… there’s always that customer that just needs “one quick adjustment” on-site. One quick cut turns into one per day and a weird chest pain that just won’t go away.
So it’s been banned outright.
PS: Apparently engineered stone is mostly quartz (silica), whereas other bench top materials are typically other kinds of stone that don’t cause silicosis, or nowhere near at the same rate.
I was wondering why this material is so bad, it seems to be because it is mostly silica crystals. Without the resin holding it in place such a material wouldn't be possible.
90–93%: 99.9% pure silica in grits and powder form constitutes;
7–10%: Matrix of unsaturated polyester resin with catalysts to help with ambient temperature curing, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_stone
Technically you can safely handle it, just like technically you can have lead or even asbestos in a lot of places. But some poorly paid worker ends up with ruined health in the end, so I can totally understand the ban.
One standard remedy for situations like this is to mandate that, if an employee gets silicosis for any reason, their employer must pay them some large sum of money. Regardless of whose fault it was. If cutting corners saves money, then corners will inevitably be cut - but if it’s made to be more expensive than being careful, suddenly it makes good business sense to get serious about workplace safety.
Construction companies pay out dividends, go bankrupt, and get re-founded by the owner's wife/cousin/son/etc every year or two here. Also they're more likely to be subcontractors than employees.
This is unworkable. You can't penalize a company because their employees did not follow the safety guidelines they promised they would or are legally obliged to follow. Especially when a large number of workers are self employed. You can send them bankrupt with a penalty, but then have to support the disabled worker with social security and health care.
And the reason for the ban, which I think many American readers are missing. The ban was demanded by the trade unions. While the union members could probably be relied on to use PPE appropriately, they would also have to charge for it. They would lose jobs to non-union shops doing things faster and cheaper, who pass the costs onto the public when untrained workers end up in the public health system and on disability pensions.
Seems like you should ban the manufacturing methods, not the end product. Like, if I invent a way to safely manufacture and do on-site adjustments of engineered stone, shouldn't I be rewarded by the market for it? The material itself is not harmful, just breathing the dust of it is, which can be said of a lot of things in a common household.
I've just had two engineered stone counter tops installed. In both cases (different companies) the fitters came and made a template from thick card of the exact size for the top. the tops arrived and fit precisely. One had to have holes for cut in, but I didn't hang around to see if they fitter used PPE
In my experience in Poland you leave the stuff that has to fit in the countertop at the stonemason's workshop and they measure/test fit everything there. My guy has a bunch of (perhaps?) old machines that all do the cuts flooded with something that resembles diamond tooling or grinding wheels.
The last time I speced something like this, they wanted exact measurements and the result arrived in exactly that shape and size. So I think you're right.
"Undamaged" is the key word there; asbestos at least seems very easy to damage. Is the same true for engineered stone? And even if you do damage it, I would expect it would not kick up enough dust to be a problem.
Exactly. Or more precisely, ban the net effect (putting the dust into the air), and then people can find the best alternative given that constraint, whether it's a better manufacturing/installation process that doesn't put the dust into the air, or a product that doesn't produce the dust in the first place.
This was considered but the problem is it’s very difficult to enforce in practice
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.
I don't think I've ever seen a tradesperson wearing PPE. Recent example: our neighbor had some stonework done, and these guys were just casually hanging out in clouds of cement and stone dust.
Wearing PPE is miserable. The respiratory masks that reliably keep silica out of your lungs are painful. My job involves working with silica powders and I can really only handle about 20-30 minutes decked out in my bunny suit, respirator, over eye goggles, gloves and disposable sleeves before I need to take a break for air. This is in a climate controlled environment with a minimally physical set of tasks.
Having workers wear PPE is the worst, last resort form of protection. Solutions like switching to safer materials and improving ventilation work much better in practice.
PPE is the last resort when other mitigation measures are inadequate, but positive-pressure respirators (either powered air-purifying or supplied-air) are really very comfortable. No face seal is required and you've got a constant flow of cool air. Spray painters, asbestos workers, media blasters and many welders will wear one for the majority of their working hours.
Engineered stone is undoubtedly more hazardous than natural stone, but (as the researchers quoted in this article suggest) there is no safe level of exposure to respirable crystalline silica. The problem of silicosis long pre-dates the advent of engineered stone and will remain even if the product is banned. If I were working with stone - engineered or natural - I'd want a respirator unless I was absolutely confident in the mitigation measures in place.
> Wearing PPE is miserable. The respiratory masks that reliably keep silica out of your lungs are painful.
I completely disagree. Is it less comfortable than not wearing a mask? For sure. Do I consider it a burden to wear a P100 respirator when dealing with silica? Nope.
My dude, wearing PPE sucks. I've been there, in a hot, humid, subtropical, sunny climate, full respirator, mask and overalls. Endless in and out to hydrate and get frsh air.
But the fact is, sufficient dust, of any material is dangerous. I have a friend who was hospitalized with a literal hole in his lung. Partially collapsed lung. He's under 35.
Hard work is hard, it's often uncomfortable, let's not pretend magic bullets are here. If anything they are, PPE is miraculous in what it protects against.
PPE is the wrong solution here. Tools that don’t produce dust are the right solution.
Wet tile saws and waterjets can cut stone (and engineered stone) with essentially no dust. An angle grinder with a dust shroud and HEPA filtered extractor (total cost starts around $400) can do the same thing a regular angle grinder does but with a lot less dust.
And one really can work all day in a pouch-style N95 mask. They don’t collect much more than 95% of fine dust, but they do work, they’re easy to fit, and they’re easy to breathe through. I would wear one for added protection if I were using an angle grinder with a dust extractor. (Although I might use a full mask respirator instead for eye protection. And PAPRs are pretty great if rather expensive.)
> PPE is the wrong solution here. Tools that don’t produce dust are the right solution.
"Essentially no dust" is not "no dust". There are no safe levels of silica that can be introduced to your lungs.
> And one really can work all day in a pouch-style N95 mask
N95 is basically the bare minimum in terms of filters. In my shop I have a shop vac with a tornado tumbler that attaches to tools for fine wood dust and a full face P-100 mask.
No profession experience, yet the pouch style I found both uncomfortable at higher temperatures and unreliable. So for a normally hobby/around-the-house work I use only half mask respirator Pretty much, it requires proper shaving to ensure it actually does something.
Angle grinders with dust extraction hoods are extremely effective. I've used one to cut tile, and to cut slits into walls... almost zero dust. It's incredible.
The 3M Auras m, especially the 9210, are really good. That’s what I’ve been wearing for the past 3 years. Comfortable, excellent filtering (I suspect they’d actually qualify as N99, but no one actually buys those. Also like how they come individually plastic wrapped (and folded flat). Makes it really easy to keep a couple in the car car and what not.
Are software devs who join unions getting paid more than those who do the classic either: (a) 2 year hops or (b) find a company that gives good rises to take you above market rate.
Union penetration is decidedly low in tech, and tech companies coincidentally have some of the highest cash reserves of any industry. People in tech often think, why should I join my union, I already get paid a lot! Bosses love that attitude.
Ridiculous like everything politicians do. They could ban installation that is not precut with machines, or the usage of tools without dust handling but banning the entire field is just crazy.
With today technology you can 3d scan the dimensions, water cut with automatic machines and only minor adjustments need to be done on site.
I spent 15 years as a "low paid worker" doing manual labour, and in my experience (which of course will vary), the lack of following PPE procedures is usually not due to the lack of PPE or procedures. In a factory setting or larger worksite, with managers and supervisors abound, it's relatively easy to enforce PPE standards. On a remote worksite where there is one or two people installing a countertop, for example, it's extremely hard. A company can provide all the PPE needed but it's up to the worker to actually use it.
I don't want to apologize for companies, as many will supply the bare minimum/cheapest PPE. Have you ever wore a n95 while doing physical labour? It really sucks.
On the other hand, I've worked on job sites where there was an unlimited budget for PPE. Don't like working in an N95? No issues ordering a $1200 battery powered forced air respirator mask. People would still not wear them sometimes.
For these reason I agree with banning things like this. Even with the best PPE in the world people are still not going to use it when it's an inconvenience/uncomfortable.
This speaks volumes about the level of confidence that the AU federal government has in its rank-and-file inspectors. Banning something outright is a concession that you aren't in control enough to use finesse, and must bludgeon people into compliance. Pay attention to who shows up to complain about this, those are the ones who stand to gain from a lax policy with leeway for corruption.
I recall seeing stuff about this in California, but I think that was more about people polishing the big slabs, this seems more about masons installing them?
But really terrible stuff, I know that's who the article focuses on, but it's just intrinsically, like mostly guys in their late 20s and 30s. If they have families, the kids are gonna be young, and then their lungs are just shot.
I don't remember if there was a water conservation angle to it, but there was discussion of using water for some measure of dust suppression, and they just didn't have it.
So is this basically what we would call quartz countertops in the states? I can't say that I've heard the term engineered stone.
Preaching to the choir but feels like this stuff should be phased out yesterday. The PPE is almost beside the point, though it feels lower h hyprocrite to me maybe because its closer to home. There's so many resources that inflict a toll e.g. metals coffee palm oil, but you don't think about them since the people are halfway around the world.
Installers and the folks back in the shops that cut the slabs for a particular job. Many are young, hardworking trades with limited English trying to give their young families a better life. Very sad. They didn’t know how bad it is, and I bet the contractor that owns the shop didn’t know until recently either.
Don't sensationalise it with "hard-working people with limited English". That's definitely not the people that were interviewed for media pieces here at least.
>They didn’t know how bad it is, and I bet the contractor that owns the shop didn’t know until recently either.
That's the issue. It wasn't well known or well talked about, and proper safety wasn't put in place.
Bloody hell wheat is both a drowning risk AND an explosive. Hell better ban that too!
People love to talk shit about California (I don't mean OP, but generally, and increasingly), but that state gets right as much as it gets wrong. And at least it fucking does something. It's expected to pass strict regulations tomorrow on the type of stonecutting that Australia is banning. That adds up because Australia is a country that likes to ban things and America is not. That holds true even in California, which is far more pro-commerce than people seem to pretend.
But the bigger point is that outside of Australia and California, a small but tragic number of working people will continue to die a rough and premature death because most states, countries, counties, whatever jurisdiction, don't have the basic competency and clear-sightedness to pass laws that cause no one true harm but save literal human lives.
Wow. I live in CA, and am starting on a remodel where I fully intended on using this stuff, having no idea it was harmful. In fact, I just assumed it must be better than digging/mining/cutting 'real' granite slabs and that this stuff would be both cheaper AND more responsible.
Regulations do more than regulate/ban things, they raise awareness. Just reading about the Australia ban had me thinking "I'll have to see what else we like to use instead" before I even got to your comment about the California ban.
Engineered stone is cheaper than "real" stone (granite) and sturdier than other alternatives (mostly wood-based materials). But no, the world won't end because of this ban. What people are getting worked up about is that stone has been worked on for centuries, and will also keep being worked on in the future, and there are proven methods of preventing silicosis while working on it (wearing PPE, vacuuming up the dust ASAP etc.), but the Australian government chose not to do anything about the culture of ignoring the dangers and instead took the short-sighted alternative of banning just one of the many possible causes of silicosis...
Ppe is available and the dangers known and in a short time there was a huge spike in sick workers starting shortly after it’s introduction . It’s clearly more dangerous stuff to work with then other materials that were in use.
I have to say the alternatives from the article are
significantly more expensive, not durable or silly (concrete)
Anyone had luck with one of the alternatives
I have a 1940s house with solid timber benchtops, yes they take a little more care (no hot pans) but from what I hear stone counters stain easily anyway. The nice thing about wood is you can just sand it back and refinish and it will look amazing again. Large slabs are pretty expensive these days so when installing a kitchen downstairs we went with finger jointed timber, was cheaper than stone and slightly more expensive than engineered stone.
Aesthetically they're ugly but stainless steel is probably the best in terms of cost, ease of maintenance and cleaning
Anecdotally, we have laminate benchtops which have been in place for ~30 years (long before we bought the house) and they're pretty much flawless, despite being treated pretty roughly. We're having the kitchen re-done soon and will go with laminate again.
Never had issues with laminate, apart from maybe single discoloration patch due to marinate. But that is life. There might be some tiny nicks, but they really aren't that visible.
Just live if with after few years. Nothing stays perfect when you use it.
We have something that was called Laminex Freestyle 10-15 years ago. I think it's a resin blend? Where it cracked, we were able to have that small area replaced and remelted so the seams are not visible. It's white and cops red wine, turmeric, etc all the time and has resisted staining.
I've had weird good luck with concrete, it was poured thick enough that the weight was causing the kitchen to sag.
The house was being sold by flippers trying to dress up a kitchen with structural mold issues, they thought concrete would be a cheap way to hide the damage.
Laminate is functionally fine. There's plenty of kitchens out there with it. Just doesn't look as nice (which is really shorthand for expensive) as stone.
Why is concrete silly? Concrete is can be a high end material. I guess you could treat to to make it waterproof (it is used in the bare weather after all!)
It is a little more mixed than that. Granite is generally cheaper and has better heat resistance. Granite is porous, so it stains and needs sealing every year or two. Quartz/artificial takes less maintenance, is a little stronger, so it is more scratch resistant.
My instinct is to distrust messing around with stones. Probably not a well informed take but since learning about asbestos I’m distrusting mineral wool insulation, and now this.
I recently had some countertops redone with a engineered quartz (and recycled glass and shell) veneer; The base was thick MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard).
This solves a few things
1. Significantly reduces stone transportation (import, from shop to location)
2. Reduces stone cutting (at 1/8" thickness, much quicker, easier to cut than 2" slab) (easier to fit in tight places, easier to fix with epoxy filler.
What about coal mining in Australia? Should they ban it too? It produces 80% of their electricity, and a low death rate from direct mining incidents, but a 26% increase in mortality compared to the general population most likely due to respiratory and stress-related issues.[0,1]
CWP (Coal Miner's Pneumoconiosis) is the long-term risk vs. the mining accidents, and it involves silicosis too. The US and Australia have lowered these statistics vs. China which is increasing.
Many people mix household cleaners that each contain ammonia and chlorine and create poisonous gases, but usually the concentration of the cleaners is sufficiently low enough to be more of a long-term health hazard, however, industrial cleaners can cause death, though rare, as in this case:
The solution is to boost safety practices, heavily fine the offenders, and educate the workers, not ban a product that in its final form is not just a "fashion finish", but a safe, practical, easy-to-clean surface with good durability and dimensionally stable over time.
> If a worker gets sick, they could sue for damages,
Maybe I’m misreading it, but from the article, comments here, and linked alternative readings (as well as very limited personal experience), the issue could be that the workers themselves are actively not participating in wearing PPE. I know this sounds like blaming the victim, but if that is truly what’s happening (and I’d appreciate information explaining the opposite), why should the workers get to sue someone else? Is the PPE not effective enough?
Or are you suggesting that allowing the employee to sue would create incentives for the employers to actually enforce the workers use PPE?
Silicosis is a type of fibrosis lung disease. My Dad had IPF a type of lung fibrosis disease.
Dad worked for the federal government in the Canadian Coast Guard for 35 years. He worked in ship engine rooms or on barges but also had odd jobs like painting. One job was to make boiler filters. He had to use a fluffy powder to make big "patties" flat filters. The powder had asbestos in it.
The I in IPF is idiopathic as in "don't know" but I'd say it was the filter powder. So even federal level there are terrible PPE policies or lack of enforcement. I'm sure Dad was under peer pressure or pressured into not caring or toughing it out type of attitude among his co-workers.
I often observe that PPE compliance in the U.K. is dramatically better than it is on the continent where I live. In part I think that’s a result of the concentration of the building contractor business and the (relatively) strong enforcement of workplace regulation at sites of large construction projects.
You’d be shocked in the U.K. if you saw someone scaffolding a building without a helmet. In the EU, you’re shocked if they are wearing one.
I live in the UK and used to be an electrician. What you say is for the most part true; on any commercial or industrial site or construction project, the building or site manager is going to come down hard on you if you're not using appropriate PPE. It's a liability and ass-covering thing: if you get injured (or indeed killed), even if it's entirely your fault and would have been avoided by using PPE, the manager is liable, and HSE will bury them. They know this, and they will expel you from the site if you don't comply.
That said, it's all a wash in residential. I've seen plenty of plumbers and heating engineers drilling walls without any eye or ear protection. I've seen plenty of heating engineers soldering copper pipes without a mask and in poor ventilation (e.g. tight cupboards). I've even seen other electricians installing meter tails into a live supply without any gloves, standing on conductive surfaces like surface drainage grates.
Which part of Europe? Ppe is very much mandatory with big fucking signs on every site displaying what is required where i am. And I mean every [legal] site*.
A site without a sign invites a lot of questions. When I had my building renovated, the builder tried to work without a sign....no chance!
By registering, and displaying the sign, it meant he had to follow the rules.
I never saw similar in the uk (for example on a house), but I also wasn't looking, despite labouring for several years there.
My kitchen has engineered stone, and the people who came to fit it took precautions - all cutting was done outside (it was raining, but they had a marquee that went up), heavy duty vacuums to suck up any dust, wet cutting and wearing the proper PPE.
There are already laws and regulations about employers having to provide the proper PPE - why not enforce that strongly instead of just outright banning a particular item?
When I had my ceramic counter top installed they first took complete laser measures of the kitchen, installed a temporary wood top and it was made and cut in a facility, I suppose with water jet and full protections, so absolutely no cutting on site with a grinder. Seems a better solution to force that than ban a stone type and let a marginally better other type free to use.
But, can they be imported? Asking because the need for engineered products is not going away, and just because a government wants something banned it does not mean it will be gone as history shown time and time again.
My guess is within a few months larger companies will just shift their production out of jurisdiction, and smaller ones go out of business.
Quote: "The federal government will also impose a ban on imported engineered stone to provide an "additional layer of enforcement and deterrence at the border", however the date has not been finalised yet."
imagine if we'd had these people around in the neolithic; it's well-known that potters often came down with silicosis from exposure to the silica in their clay bodies
they would have banned pottery
also isn't concrete technically 'engineered stone'
i'm puzzled how breathing granite dust instead of so-called engineered stone dust is supposed to be better for you
My guess is that evolution in general has adapted on some level to dust from granite. It was around before land based animals. Just like it has adapted to trace quantities of other poisonous and harmful stuff.
Engineered stone might not be exact analogy granite dust, but different in way that prevent these mechanism to be effective.
Engineered stone looks awful fake, changes color overtime, and can be damaged by a hot pan. Since its upsold as being better than the real thing often. There's a consumer fraud aspect to it too. I wouldn't ban it since there might be some situations where its the better product to use, and not just cheaper.
This is good news. Wood is more sustainable and can be more easily repaired and refinished anyway, the problem continues though is if it's replaced by other types of stone.
The root problem is obviously lack of protective equipment being used, but that's a universal workplace safety issue and that requires stricter laws.
Engineered woods like MDF use adhesives that contain formaldehyde which is a possible carcinogen. But people are dropping dead in their 30s from working with MDF (even if it is dangerous)
They should have just banned with the same penalties in this new law all in situ manual cutting of engineered stone, and instituted strict regulations on automated factory cutting.
Interestingly or unsurprisingly considering we're still accidentally importing building materials and even toys filled with asbestos from China. Add vapes to that it feels like there is almost zero regulation on importation of dangerous goods.
My kitchen has engineered stone (Silestone). The seller told me that as long as I followed some basic precautions like not putting hot things directly on it, it would last for a long time without visible wear. Basically they sold it as extremely hard, the most durable material. The truth is that 10 years later, treating it very well, the edge is full of chips (some of them rather large) that for all I know appeared spontaneously, without hitting it with anything. In my previous home, a rented flat with a cheap granite countertop, it remained intact after around 10 years of much less careful usage (although, to be frank, it was ugly as hell... But there is aesthetically nice granite as well, I think).
I was already decided to not buy engineered stone again because it seems to basically be overhyped crap to scam uninformed people like me with. If apart from that it causes such health hazards... Good riddance if they ban it.
Any Aussies to confirm this isn’t some sort of lobbying stunt?
It does not make much sense to me that engineered stone would be much worse than natural stone on the regard of silicosis, and I highly doubt the natural stone industry is any more compliant in protection equipment and worker safety.
This sort of smells like natural stone industry fighting back to recover ground they lost to the engineered stuff, but being on the opposite side of the World it’s impossible for me to understand this beyond conspiracy theorizing.
> Any Aussies to confirm this isn’t some sort of lobbying stunt?
Yeah there was a recent visit by rock-rich Croatian foreign ministry that heavy handed its small Aussie counterparts and pressured them on banning a whole industry :)
quarry workers probably get silicosis...from cutting natural stone?
MDF is still legal - and is horrible material
*most building materials are toxic
wtf has been achieved here? Seems like someone has buddies in industry and has lobbied for a ban on offshore produced building material to keep "honest local industries afloat"...ffs.
Trade unions were involved in the push for the ban. So, rather than cynical motives, it might actually just be regular old "the health and safety of workers" behind it.
I'm not sure why I'm getting these downvotes, but my point is that concrete is far more of a silica containing building material than engineered stone but for which there is probably far less political gumption to meaningfully regulate.
Probably because the ban is likely better thought out than a flippant comment that, I guess, assumes the powerful anti-silica lobby (?) is much stronger than the poor downtrodden anti-concrete lobby (??).
Silica is one of the most common minerals on earth. Any type of stone countertop has a potentially dangerous amount of inhaled. Just use a dust mask when cutting/grinding stone or when around people who are. If anything, synthetic countertops could (but currently is not) be made to have very low levels of silica, but people should still not be breathing them in.
I'm not a huge fan of government overreach like this. Workers should have refused to work with the material if it were truly dangerous, and the free market would have eventually pushed engineered stone out, giving way to innovation for a better, safer material.
> Workers should have refused to work with the material if it were truly dangerous
They did -- several months ago. The relevant unions members voted to refuse to work with engineered stone at all, if it was not banned outright by the government, which is what happened yesterday.
I'm not a huge fan of government overreach either. Children should have refused to work if child labor was truly bad, and the free market would have eventually pushed child labor out, giving way to better, more ethical labor practices.
Did you get raised reading only economic and game theory texts? Real people in the real world don't have as much agency as you'd like to think. Sometimes you take the job that you can get. See Amazon warehouse workers.
A lot of good feedback in this thread that is making me reconsider my opinion, but to answer this specifically, no. I didn't have much of a thought on economic theory until I started frequenting this message board and I was enamored by the liberties offered by the free market as spouted by highly rated HN posters, as well as essays and long-form articles that have been highly upvoted on this site.
b) At least here in Australia the government any by extension taxpayers will have an increased health care burden because of this. Therefore it is entirely justified to limit its use.
My understanding is that a countertop won't release silica dust unless you cut it with power tools, unlike exposed asbestos which releases fibers with much less effort.
You are confused. This is a severe health risk which has already destroyed peoples lives, not an issue of theoretical economics, hence you got downvoted. Government is doing its job. Better and safer materials already exist.
Well, if you call it "government overreach" it's hard to be a fan.
> Workers should have refused to work with the material if it were truly dangerous, and the free market would have eventually pushed engineered stone out, giving way to innovation for a better, safer material.
I think you need to consider this from a game theory perspective. Sometimes there are systemic negative outcomes that can only be addressed with systemic mitigations. Governments/the law serve a purpose by establishing the ground rules in which the market operates. How you structure those rules changes systemic outcomes.
Without the ground rules, UFC would devolve into people just shooting each other.
That's incredibly uncompassionate.
And how is this government overreach? The government worked with the industry, and this saga has had years for engineered stone to be "pushed out". What if it took another 20 years and thousands of young people with lung cancer to reach that end? I don't see how that's worth it.
You get it - when someone is hand to mouth, their theoretical market freedoms are pretty limited, particularly in this field when everyone else is using the same materials.
It's very much worth reading the full reasoning within the SafeWork decision (page 56):
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/202...
SafeWork's view is that the industry is too much of a non-compliant mess to recommend any other option apart from a complete ban.
Makes sense, this kind of work can have an extremely “toxic” anti-ppe culture that’s impossible to mitigate against without outright burning the industry to the ground. Fines and inspections are easy to dodge when everyone involved is trying to do so.
Hell I work in agronomy and it’s hard enough getting seasonal helpers to wear earplugs when riding ATVs all day. Then there was an old supervisor from a former oil change and tire repair shop job I had, who had hand shakes from nerve damage due to automotive chemical exposure, and he was actually comparatively decent about PPE, especially for helpers.
I work in the construction industry. We have about 1:10 ratio of “supervision” to contractors. Getting people to wear PPE is a constant, ongoing 12 hour a day battle. We kick about 1 person off site permanently, every day for something egregiously dumb. The contractor just sends them to another job. And of all the places I’ve worked, my current employer is one of the best, takes it very seriously.
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I used to work in defence manufacturing, we initially had a very macho, play it by ear culture, now it's the complete opposite. You can and will be fired very quickly for not following health and safety rules.
This mainly came out of a series of lawsuits and happened industry wide (the fear of millions of dollars of compensation was enough to get all the players to get very serious)
Part of me feels like this is partially the government shirking it's duty to protect workers. Imagine if in the early days of aviation the government looked at the dangers of flight and the difficulty of wrangling pilots, and just threw it's hands up and banned all aircraft.
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The logic here is that if an industry can only be made safe with strict PPE standards, but the market dynamics make it difficult to ensure compliance with those standards, then it is OK to ban the industry.
That seems a pretty concerning stance for small businesses. What's next? Ban microbreweries because they don't properly manage the risks of CO2 asphyxiation? Ban small-shop mechanics because they routinely get brake fluid on their hands?
Well-enforced safety regulations are a good thing for everyone. Banning small businesses because regulating them is hard seems... economically undesirable.
They’re not banning businesses. They’re banning a product which is causing deaths. Switch to a alternate product. It’s the same in your analogy of banning a toxic brake fluid.
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Industrial manslaughter laws are a fine incentive to correctly manage the risks of CO₂ asphyxiation, because it is immediately apparent when your worker has been asphyxiated and the proximal cause is readily determined.
Silicosis takes years to appear so the proximal link is too weak for post facto punishment to have much deterrent effect. It is much more like asbestos in this way, which can also be safely handled but has also been banned.
All things in context. In this case, it’s a luxury good with a ready alternative.
The cause for poor health-and-safety conduct appears to be cultural, rather than "market dynamics"
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Australian here. We recently had a kitchen bench top made from engineered stone installed. I was previously entirely oblivious to the risks involved. Suffice it to say that we would have chosen a different material had I known the health burden of inhaling the dust during preparation/cutting.
The contractor who installed the bench top for us was however very diligent in alerting us to what safety measures we should follow should any on-site cutting be required at our place. Which it wasn’t in the end. So at least he was aware that the sawdust is a major health hazard.
But that’s one contractor, which does not represent an entire industry. Engineered stone is fashionable and I imagine there are many black sheep out there doing it for cheap with under-trained or unsupervised personnel.
Would you think that imposing heavy fines, and perhaps even criminal penalties when workers are not properly informed, would be a better alternative to banning an economically advantageous product?
Not to be too glib but I think here the reasoning is that letting market forces duke it out (even with fines and penalties) is considered to not be fast enough compared to the number of people whose health is being put at risk.
Like here there are a bunch of people who have lung cancer now. And there's probably a bunch more who will get it from doing all the work up until now.
And this has been in the news for a while I think. I imagine that despite all of this, there's still stuff coming up. The first case was reported back in 2015. 8 years is a pretty long time to think "hey, maybe we should do stuff so our workers won't get lung cancer". The fact that that is not incentive enough is probably a signal that there's not really much left to do, honestly.
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This is addressed in the linked source, although that wouldn’t be obvious if you’re not familiar with Australian work health and safety law:
> the re-emergence of silicosis in engineered stone workers is also due to a failure of compliance with existing WHS laws … PCBUs [persons conducting a business or undertaking, who are subject to WHS laws] have not done all that is reasonably practicable to eliminate or minimise those risks, and workers have not taken reasonable care for their own health and safety and that of others [which is a criminal offence]. Finally, there has been insufficient compliance and enforcement actions by WHS regulators to drive behaviour change in the sector … A lower silica content engineered stone is not expected to result in improvements in compliance. The features of the sector that have contributed to the current levels of non-compliance remain – the sector is comprised of mostly small businesses with few barriers to entry and a lower understanding of WHS obligations.
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This doesn’t take into account the realities of people in that industry.
It’s highly fragmented, dominated by men and specifically younger men, who self-select for a high tolerance of risk and a low tolerance of rules.
By the time they find out that they’re not invulnerable and rules exist to protect them, it’s too late.
People are dying slow, painful and horrific deaths because fines have not worked to dissuade these companies. Bans are the only option left.
This is probably going to cause the price of large format porcelain bench tops down. They have less silica content than artificial stone and granite. I believe they are also cut to size off-site.
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A lot of manual workers ignore protective equipment even after training and while constantly supervised
Not informed? You think that trades people were not properly informed to wear PPE at all times? I’m have a3D printer as a hobby and I wear all the PPE when sanding or spray painting.
These people know perfectly well they need to take precautions.
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Also, bring back Asbestos, properly handled it is perfectly safe. Radium also gets a bad rap from the “think of the children” brigade. And don’t get me started on leaded fuel! What an overreach from the government on that one!
How dare these union thugs get in the way of clear economic progression that provides far more benefit than harm!
Some stay this is also the case in the United States.
To protect the workers we must fire them.
Several construction workers' unions campaigned to get this ban in place.
The only party in opposition were the engineered stone vendors.
It's quite certain the workers can make/fit countertops from other materials as well.
It's not like whatever the demand that the engineered stone currently fills suddenly disappears so those workers will be able to find other similar jobs.
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> Your request has been blocked.
> Earlier this year workplace ministers tasked Safe Work Australia, a government WHS agency, with investigating how a ban could work and whether low-silica engineered stone could remain on the market safely.
> The report found there was no safe level of silica, concluding: "The use of all engineered stone should be prohibited."
I don't understand this logic. Silica is also present in natural stone too! If they are not going to ban natural stone countertops, I don't get why the industry was not allowed to pursue low-silica engineered stone that met or exceeded real stone.
The engineered stone is almost entirely silica.
> Hoy said that long before stonecutters started struggling to breathe, the sheer amount of silica in many kinds of engineered stone — upwards of 90% — should have made it obvious that the material was risky to cut and grind, especially in workplaces without sophisticated measures to control dust.(1)
> But scientists and regulators have grown concerned about whether recommended strategies such as wet cutting, proper ventilation and wearing respirator masks can do enough to protect workers from dust so high in silica. Cal/OSHA officials have generally described silicosis as preventable, but also caution that with 93% silica(2) content, “safe use of engineered stone may not be possible” even with proper workplace practices.(1)
(1) https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-19/why-cali...
2. https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA37...
Studies looking into the issue have found non silica compounds cause issues too, and its the engineering process rather than the silica that causes the problem. This is why they haven't created an exemption for low-silica products.
> "It's not just about the silica, it's something specific about the engineered stone products that's causing such a significant issue in workers fabricating these products."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-05/study-finds-safety-co...
From the link:
> "What we found ... was that the natural products we had in the panel of products that we assessed actually caused the biggest inflammatory response," Professor Zosky said.
I'm not sure why they are saying it's the engineering. Their own study says that natural stone products are worse than the engineered products!
It's probably there's a larger number of cases of silicosis from engineered products despite it being safer. And that's probably because it's easier to cut in the field so people do it more often.
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Apparently the spike in cases in due to engineered stone. The FAQ gives various reasons why this may be the case, e.g. the generated particle size is different, and also it is easier to cut than natural stone so it may be processed by less skilled workers.
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/safety-topic/hazards/cr...
> I don't get why the industry was not allowed to pursue low-silica engineered stone
From what I can tell, the law itself allows for products under 1% silica. Now where did I read that ...
"According to the ministers’ communique, exceptions will be introduced for the removal, repair, minor modification or disposal of engineered stone installed before 1 July 2024, as well as for products with trace levels of silica under 1%."
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/13/engin...
Yes, that is a massively higher hurdle than natural stone has to meet.
Possibly the issue is more to do with the lower cost of the engineered material?
Like, when tobacco cost a megabuck per oz in Queen Elizabeth times people smoked a pipe once in a while and in the context of their high exposure to fireplace smoke it was no big deal. Fast forward to when cigarettes cost 10c/pack and the marketing guys are selling them to 8 year olds...now it's a huge health problem.
If you're only paying a small amount for the materials, most people will be a lot more price sensitive on installation, so there's a race to the bottom.
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That just seems like a policy that punishes the poor. It's like banning commercial flights for greenhouse gas reasons but letting private jets fly.
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I think it has more to do with the explosion of use in the market, it's everywhere now (from McMansions to cheap apartments). It is was just cheap/expensive enough to replace laminated MDF benchtops.
I suggest people look at the actual numbers -> https://lungfoundation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/NSP...
Every one of them over zero is bad, but I was surprised how small the sample of active cases actually are. It would have been better to show the change year on year though.
I was surprised that the sample rate was so few, that is active cases.
if this was an american decision, i'd suggest the natural stone lobby was better than the engineered stone lobby.
We really don't have the same overt paid lobbying here (aka bribery) that you have in the US.
Don't get me wrong our politicians are just as morally bankrupt and self-serving, but it doesn't happen at the same coordinated scale.
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Bunnings & Ikea recently stopped selling this product. My guess is Bunnings probably wanted to stop competition. So they probably lobbied the government for the full ban. After all, you can't have the competition selling a popular product that they don't. (Bunnings is like Australia's Home Depot or Lowe's)
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It was pushed by the trade unions, who currently install and work with both products.
it does sound like mining companies protecting their business
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.
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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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> 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?
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> 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.
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.
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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.
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Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
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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...
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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> 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.
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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.
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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.
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> 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.
This was caused by an alarming rise of silicosis cases in young “tradies” (Aussie slang for trade workers).
The government and various professional bodies tried to enforce the use of PPE when working with this material, but there has been a housing construction boom going on and a lot of corners were cut (hah!), resulting in young immigrant workers especially turning up in hospitals with lung cancer.
No matter how carefully you cut this stuff in a shop with a filtered HVAC, water sprays, and well-fitted respirators… there’s always that customer that just needs “one quick adjustment” on-site. One quick cut turns into one per day and a weird chest pain that just won’t go away.
So it’s been banned outright.
PS: Apparently engineered stone is mostly quartz (silica), whereas other bench top materials are typically other kinds of stone that don’t cause silicosis, or nowhere near at the same rate.
I was wondering why this material is so bad, it seems to be because it is mostly silica crystals. Without the resin holding it in place such a material wouldn't be possible.
90–93%: 99.9% pure silica in grits and powder form constitutes; 7–10%: Matrix of unsaturated polyester resin with catalysts to help with ambient temperature curing, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_stone
Technically you can safely handle it, just like technically you can have lead or even asbestos in a lot of places. But some poorly paid worker ends up with ruined health in the end, so I can totally understand the ban.
One standard remedy for situations like this is to mandate that, if an employee gets silicosis for any reason, their employer must pay them some large sum of money. Regardless of whose fault it was. If cutting corners saves money, then corners will inevitably be cut - but if it’s made to be more expensive than being careful, suddenly it makes good business sense to get serious about workplace safety.
Construction companies pay out dividends, go bankrupt, and get re-founded by the owner's wife/cousin/son/etc every year or two here. Also they're more likely to be subcontractors than employees.
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This is unworkable. You can't penalize a company because their employees did not follow the safety guidelines they promised they would or are legally obliged to follow. Especially when a large number of workers are self employed. You can send them bankrupt with a penalty, but then have to support the disabled worker with social security and health care.
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And the reason for the ban, which I think many American readers are missing. The ban was demanded by the trade unions. While the union members could probably be relied on to use PPE appropriately, they would also have to charge for it. They would lose jobs to non-union shops doing things faster and cheaper, who pass the costs onto the public when untrained workers end up in the public health system and on disability pensions.
Seems like you should ban the manufacturing methods, not the end product. Like, if I invent a way to safely manufacture and do on-site adjustments of engineered stone, shouldn't I be rewarded by the market for it? The material itself is not harmful, just breathing the dust of it is, which can be said of a lot of things in a common household.
Do you think that folks will install it on site without cutting it?
I've just had two engineered stone counter tops installed. In both cases (different companies) the fitters came and made a template from thick card of the exact size for the top. the tops arrived and fit precisely. One had to have holes for cut in, but I didn't hang around to see if they fitter used PPE
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As far as countertops go, field cuts are rather uncommon. Laser templating works well.
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.
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In my experience in Poland you leave the stuff that has to fit in the countertop at the stonemason's workshop and they measure/test fit everything there. My guy has a bunch of (perhaps?) old machines that all do the cuts flooded with something that resembles diamond tooling or grinding wheels.
Even if they did cut on site, is that any worse than cutting natural stone?
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The last time I speced something like this, they wanted exact measurements and the result arrived in exactly that shape and size. So I think you're right.
If you mandate that it has to be ordered to fit from the production facility, then yeah it's probably safer.
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Asbestos and lead are also minimal risk undamaged in-situ. Both are now banned, and for good reason.
One difference is that stone countertops are not a danger to homeowners or people doing future basic renovation.
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"Undamaged" is the key word there; asbestos at least seems very easy to damage. Is the same true for engineered stone? And even if you do damage it, I would expect it would not kick up enough dust to be a problem.
Asbestos was banned but lead is still used in many things.
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Wood dust is also dangerous... Basically you should just try to breath air and not solids
Exactly. Or more precisely, ban the net effect (putting the dust into the air), and then people can find the best alternative given that constraint, whether it's a better manufacturing/installation process that doesn't put the dust into the air, or a product that doesn't produce the dust in the first place.
This was considered but the problem is it’s very difficult to enforce in practice
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.
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Yes. They should have just banned or limited dry cutting. Cutting stone wet, with running water, produces practically no dust whatsoever.
I don't think I've ever seen a tradesperson wearing PPE. Recent example: our neighbor had some stonework done, and these guys were just casually hanging out in clouds of cement and stone dust.
Wearing PPE is miserable. The respiratory masks that reliably keep silica out of your lungs are painful. My job involves working with silica powders and I can really only handle about 20-30 minutes decked out in my bunny suit, respirator, over eye goggles, gloves and disposable sleeves before I need to take a break for air. This is in a climate controlled environment with a minimally physical set of tasks.
Having workers wear PPE is the worst, last resort form of protection. Solutions like switching to safer materials and improving ventilation work much better in practice.
PPE is the last resort when other mitigation measures are inadequate, but positive-pressure respirators (either powered air-purifying or supplied-air) are really very comfortable. No face seal is required and you've got a constant flow of cool air. Spray painters, asbestos workers, media blasters and many welders will wear one for the majority of their working hours.
Engineered stone is undoubtedly more hazardous than natural stone, but (as the researchers quoted in this article suggest) there is no safe level of exposure to respirable crystalline silica. The problem of silicosis long pre-dates the advent of engineered stone and will remain even if the product is banned. If I were working with stone - engineered or natural - I'd want a respirator unless I was absolutely confident in the mitigation measures in place.
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> Wearing PPE is miserable. The respiratory masks that reliably keep silica out of your lungs are painful.
I completely disagree. Is it less comfortable than not wearing a mask? For sure. Do I consider it a burden to wear a P100 respirator when dealing with silica? Nope.
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It sounds like what you're saying is that we should ban your job to keep you from harming yourself, and you just find a new profession.
Is a pouch/duckbill style N95 mask adequate for your work? I find them much more comfortable.
Or a PAPR if your job is willing to pay for one.
My dude, wearing PPE sucks. I've been there, in a hot, humid, subtropical, sunny climate, full respirator, mask and overalls. Endless in and out to hydrate and get frsh air.
But the fact is, sufficient dust, of any material is dangerous. I have a friend who was hospitalized with a literal hole in his lung. Partially collapsed lung. He's under 35.
Hard work is hard, it's often uncomfortable, let's not pretend magic bullets are here. If anything they are, PPE is miraculous in what it protects against.
PPE is the wrong solution here. Tools that don’t produce dust are the right solution.
Wet tile saws and waterjets can cut stone (and engineered stone) with essentially no dust. An angle grinder with a dust shroud and HEPA filtered extractor (total cost starts around $400) can do the same thing a regular angle grinder does but with a lot less dust.
And one really can work all day in a pouch-style N95 mask. They don’t collect much more than 95% of fine dust, but they do work, they’re easy to fit, and they’re easy to breathe through. I would wear one for added protection if I were using an angle grinder with a dust extractor. (Although I might use a full mask respirator instead for eye protection. And PAPRs are pretty great if rather expensive.)
> PPE is the wrong solution here. Tools that don’t produce dust are the right solution.
"Essentially no dust" is not "no dust". There are no safe levels of silica that can be introduced to your lungs.
> And one really can work all day in a pouch-style N95 mask
N95 is basically the bare minimum in terms of filters. In my shop I have a shop vac with a tornado tumbler that attaches to tools for fine wood dust and a full face P-100 mask.
This is the one: https://parcilsafety.com/products/pd100-full-face-respirator
Here's the full filter list: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0128/4037/0235/files/Full_...
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>pouch-style N95 mask
No profession experience, yet the pouch style I found both uncomfortable at higher temperatures and unreliable. So for a normally hobby/around-the-house work I use only half mask respirator Pretty much, it requires proper shaving to ensure it actually does something.
Angle grinders with dust extraction hoods are extremely effective. I've used one to cut tile, and to cut slits into walls... almost zero dust. It's incredible.
Saves a lot of cleanup time too!
Honestly, a huge innovation in the quality and comfort of respirators would be a massive safety revolution.
If we can make earbuds comfortable enough so that people can wear them 8 hours a day, there's got to be something to do for breathing.
The 3M Auras m, especially the 9210, are really good. That’s what I’ve been wearing for the past 3 years. Comfortable, excellent filtering (I suspect they’d actually qualify as N99, but no one actually buys those. Also like how they come individually plastic wrapped (and folded flat). Makes it really easy to keep a couple in the car car and what not.
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Duckbill N95s are pretty amazing. I've worn one for 24h+
I work for one of the union organisations (the ACTU) that pushed for this ban.
Software devs are notoriously anti-union. Software companies notoriously have huge cash reserves that didn't go into the pockets of those devs.
Join your union.
If you're in Australia you can start the process, here: https://www.australianunions.org.au/join/begin-join/#/
Are software devs who join unions getting paid more than those who do the classic either: (a) 2 year hops or (b) find a company that gives good rises to take you above market rate.
The good news is you can do both of those things and still be a member of a union! And additionally, there's lots of evidence to suggest that union members get paid more https://www.australianunions.org.au/factsheet/union-members-...
Union penetration is decidedly low in tech, and tech companies coincidentally have some of the highest cash reserves of any industry. People in tech often think, why should I join my union, I already get paid a lot! Bosses love that attitude.
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Solidarity brother, from a Professionals Australia member.
Solidarity forever!
Ridiculous like everything politicians do. They could ban installation that is not precut with machines, or the usage of tools without dust handling but banning the entire field is just crazy.
With today technology you can 3d scan the dimensions, water cut with automatic machines and only minor adjustments need to be done on site.
Sure. And asbestos is safe if handled correctly. But it never works out that way. Costs are cut. Companies want to make more profit.
And who pays? The low paid workers.
I spent 15 years as a "low paid worker" doing manual labour, and in my experience (which of course will vary), the lack of following PPE procedures is usually not due to the lack of PPE or procedures. In a factory setting or larger worksite, with managers and supervisors abound, it's relatively easy to enforce PPE standards. On a remote worksite where there is one or two people installing a countertop, for example, it's extremely hard. A company can provide all the PPE needed but it's up to the worker to actually use it.
I don't want to apologize for companies, as many will supply the bare minimum/cheapest PPE. Have you ever wore a n95 while doing physical labour? It really sucks.
On the other hand, I've worked on job sites where there was an unlimited budget for PPE. Don't like working in an N95? No issues ordering a $1200 battery powered forced air respirator mask. People would still not wear them sometimes.
For these reason I agree with banning things like this. Even with the best PPE in the world people are still not going to use it when it's an inconvenience/uncomfortable.
the industry was given an opportunity to implement improvements.
it didn't.
This speaks volumes about the level of confidence that the AU federal government has in its rank-and-file inspectors. Banning something outright is a concession that you aren't in control enough to use finesse, and must bludgeon people into compliance. Pay attention to who shows up to complain about this, those are the ones who stand to gain from a lax policy with leeway for corruption.
I recall seeing stuff about this in California, but I think that was more about people polishing the big slabs, this seems more about masons installing them?
But really terrible stuff, I know that's who the article focuses on, but it's just intrinsically, like mostly guys in their late 20s and 30s. If they have families, the kids are gonna be young, and then their lungs are just shot.
I don't remember if there was a water conservation angle to it, but there was discussion of using water for some measure of dust suppression, and they just didn't have it.
So is this basically what we would call quartz countertops in the states? I can't say that I've heard the term engineered stone. Preaching to the choir but feels like this stuff should be phased out yesterday. The PPE is almost beside the point, though it feels lower h hyprocrite to me maybe because its closer to home. There's so many resources that inflict a toll e.g. metals coffee palm oil, but you don't think about them since the people are halfway around the world.
Installers and the folks back in the shops that cut the slabs for a particular job. Many are young, hardworking trades with limited English trying to give their young families a better life. Very sad. They didn’t know how bad it is, and I bet the contractor that owns the shop didn’t know until recently either.
Don't sensationalise it with "hard-working people with limited English". That's definitely not the people that were interviewed for media pieces here at least.
>They didn’t know how bad it is, and I bet the contractor that owns the shop didn’t know until recently either.
That's the issue. It wasn't well known or well talked about, and proper safety wasn't put in place.
Bloody hell wheat is both a drowning risk AND an explosive. Hell better ban that too!
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> I recall seeing stuff about this in California
People love to talk shit about California (I don't mean OP, but generally, and increasingly), but that state gets right as much as it gets wrong. And at least it fucking does something. It's expected to pass strict regulations tomorrow on the type of stonecutting that Australia is banning. That adds up because Australia is a country that likes to ban things and America is not. That holds true even in California, which is far more pro-commerce than people seem to pretend.
But the bigger point is that outside of Australia and California, a small but tragic number of working people will continue to die a rough and premature death because most states, countries, counties, whatever jurisdiction, don't have the basic competency and clear-sightedness to pass laws that cause no one true harm but save literal human lives.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11969381/california-regulators-to-...
Wow. I live in CA, and am starting on a remodel where I fully intended on using this stuff, having no idea it was harmful. In fact, I just assumed it must be better than digging/mining/cutting 'real' granite slabs and that this stuff would be both cheaper AND more responsible.
Regulations do more than regulate/ban things, they raise awareness. Just reading about the Australia ban had me thinking "I'll have to see what else we like to use instead" before I even got to your comment about the California ban.
Is this stuff really so loved that we absolutely must have it, even if we aren't entirely sure what in it causes these effects?
Is there really absolutely no other options available? That is we will now go hungry as there is no more tables in world to prepare our food on...
Engineered stone is cheaper than "real" stone (granite) and sturdier than other alternatives (mostly wood-based materials). But no, the world won't end because of this ban. What people are getting worked up about is that stone has been worked on for centuries, and will also keep being worked on in the future, and there are proven methods of preventing silicosis while working on it (wearing PPE, vacuuming up the dust ASAP etc.), but the Australian government chose not to do anything about the culture of ignoring the dangers and instead took the short-sighted alternative of banning just one of the many possible causes of silicosis...
Ppe is available and the dangers known and in a short time there was a huge spike in sick workers starting shortly after it’s introduction . It’s clearly more dangerous stuff to work with then other materials that were in use.
It’s not short sighted to save lives
I'm strongly in favour of banning engineered stone countertops because they are extremely tacky.
No arguing against the ban
I have to say the alternatives from the article are significantly more expensive, not durable or silly (concrete) Anyone had luck with one of the alternatives
* Natural stone * Porcelain * Laminate * Tiles * Concrete * Wood/Timber
I have a 1940s house with solid timber benchtops, yes they take a little more care (no hot pans) but from what I hear stone counters stain easily anyway. The nice thing about wood is you can just sand it back and refinish and it will look amazing again. Large slabs are pretty expensive these days so when installing a kitchen downstairs we went with finger jointed timber, was cheaper than stone and slightly more expensive than engineered stone.
Aesthetically they're ugly but stainless steel is probably the best in terms of cost, ease of maintenance and cleaning
The problem I had with wood countertops is that little area behind the sink that is almost always wet.
Either from your sponge, turning off the faucet with wet hands, or just splash back, it always is wet.
Then the wood gets moldy or rots or is disfigured.
My parents have stone. I hate it. Very noisy in a high pitched unpleasant way.
Engineered stone (what is being banned) doesn't stain either.
Anecdotally, we have laminate benchtops which have been in place for ~30 years (long before we bought the house) and they're pretty much flawless, despite being treated pretty roughly. We're having the kitchen re-done soon and will go with laminate again.
I’ve been in my house for 27 years, and the laminate is basically perfect still, with absolutely no special treatment. Incredibly impressed.
Never had issues with laminate, apart from maybe single discoloration patch due to marinate. But that is life. There might be some tiny nicks, but they really aren't that visible.
Just live if with after few years. Nothing stays perfect when you use it.
We have something that was called Laminex Freestyle 10-15 years ago. I think it's a resin blend? Where it cracked, we were able to have that small area replaced and remelted so the seams are not visible. It's white and cops red wine, turmeric, etc all the time and has resisted staining.
I've had weird good luck with concrete, it was poured thick enough that the weight was causing the kitchen to sag.
The house was being sold by flippers trying to dress up a kitchen with structural mold issues, they thought concrete would be a cheap way to hide the damage.
Concrete isn't silly at all. (Google it) I actually prefer it to most of the other options.
Isn't the problem with concrete that it's porous?
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The best alternative isn't even listed: stainless steel. There's a reason commercial kitchens prefer it.
It can also me cheaper, as you don't need a solid slab of it, a 1-3mm plate of stainless glued to MDF will do.
Laminate is functionally fine. There's plenty of kitchens out there with it. Just doesn't look as nice (which is really shorthand for expensive) as stone.
Why is concrete silly? Concrete is can be a high end material. I guess you could treat to to make it waterproof (it is used in the bare weather after all!)
Requires tons of sanding, similar issue as cutting the stone.
Granite countertops are cheaper, more durable and have better thermal resistance than artificial stone ones.
It is a little more mixed than that. Granite is generally cheaper and has better heat resistance. Granite is porous, so it stains and needs sealing every year or two. Quartz/artificial takes less maintenance, is a little stronger, so it is more scratch resistant.
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Granite countertops can be radioactive, so we should ban granite countertops as well.
And produce plenty of silica and mineral dust.
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Porcelain seems like the best option here.
For a benchtop? Sounds like one dropped pan away from disaster
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My instinct is to distrust messing around with stones. Probably not a well informed take but since learning about asbestos I’m distrusting mineral wool insulation, and now this.
I recently had some countertops redone with a engineered quartz (and recycled glass and shell) veneer; The base was thick MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard).
This solves a few things
1. Significantly reduces stone transportation (import, from shop to location)
2. Reduces stone cutting (at 1/8" thickness, much quicker, easier to cut than 2" slab) (easier to fit in tight places, easier to fix with epoxy filler.
3. Reduces waste if and when it is shipped off.
What about coal mining in Australia? Should they ban it too? It produces 80% of their electricity, and a low death rate from direct mining incidents, but a 26% increase in mortality compared to the general population most likely due to respiratory and stress-related issues.[0,1]
CWP (Coal Miner's Pneumoconiosis) is the long-term risk vs. the mining accidents, and it involves silicosis too. The US and Australia have lowered these statistics vs. China which is increasing.
Many people mix household cleaners that each contain ammonia and chlorine and create poisonous gases, but usually the concentration of the cleaners is sufficiently low enough to be more of a long-term health hazard, however, industrial cleaners can cause death, though rare, as in this case:
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/tragic-accide...
The solution is to boost safety practices, heavily fine the offenders, and educate the workers, not ban a product that in its final form is not just a "fashion finish", but a safe, practical, easy-to-clean surface with good durability and dimensionally stable over time.
[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-19/history-of-safety-in-...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6266950/#:~:tex....
In 2022, coal-fired electricity was 55.9% of the combined NEM and SWIS generation (and it is trending down).
need more what-about-ism,
There are more options than just "ban" and "don't ban".
You could pass a law imposing strict liability all the way up the supply chain, up to and including the importers.
If a worker gets sick, they could sue for damages, maybe even punitive damages, from their employer, any middlemen, and the importer.
If you align the incentives right, companies will figure out how to enforce PPE usage.
> If a worker gets sick, they could sue for damages,
Maybe I’m misreading it, but from the article, comments here, and linked alternative readings (as well as very limited personal experience), the issue could be that the workers themselves are actively not participating in wearing PPE. I know this sounds like blaming the victim, but if that is truly what’s happening (and I’d appreciate information explaining the opposite), why should the workers get to sue someone else? Is the PPE not effective enough?
Or are you suggesting that allowing the employee to sue would create incentives for the employers to actually enforce the workers use PPE?
then you surrendered enforcement to only those with market exploited money....whose incentive is to fight against rather than enforce it...
This is why governments tend to enforce as they tend to minimally align with protecting the individual since they loose tax revenue if they do not...
Thats one of reasons why LLC (Limited Liability Company) was invented.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawks_Nest_Tunnel_disaster
"The Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster was a large-scale incident of occupational lung disease as the result of the construction of the Hawks Nest Tunnel"
Silicosis is a type of fibrosis lung disease. My Dad had IPF a type of lung fibrosis disease.
Dad worked for the federal government in the Canadian Coast Guard for 35 years. He worked in ship engine rooms or on barges but also had odd jobs like painting. One job was to make boiler filters. He had to use a fluffy powder to make big "patties" flat filters. The powder had asbestos in it.
The I in IPF is idiopathic as in "don't know" but I'd say it was the filter powder. So even federal level there are terrible PPE policies or lack of enforcement. I'm sure Dad was under peer pressure or pressured into not caring or toughing it out type of attitude among his co-workers.
I often observe that PPE compliance in the U.K. is dramatically better than it is on the continent where I live. In part I think that’s a result of the concentration of the building contractor business and the (relatively) strong enforcement of workplace regulation at sites of large construction projects.
You’d be shocked in the U.K. if you saw someone scaffolding a building without a helmet. In the EU, you’re shocked if they are wearing one.
I live in the UK and used to be an electrician. What you say is for the most part true; on any commercial or industrial site or construction project, the building or site manager is going to come down hard on you if you're not using appropriate PPE. It's a liability and ass-covering thing: if you get injured (or indeed killed), even if it's entirely your fault and would have been avoided by using PPE, the manager is liable, and HSE will bury them. They know this, and they will expel you from the site if you don't comply.
That said, it's all a wash in residential. I've seen plenty of plumbers and heating engineers drilling walls without any eye or ear protection. I've seen plenty of heating engineers soldering copper pipes without a mask and in poor ventilation (e.g. tight cupboards). I've even seen other electricians installing meter tails into a live supply without any gloves, standing on conductive surfaces like surface drainage grates.
Which part of Europe? Ppe is very much mandatory with big fucking signs on every site displaying what is required where i am. And I mean every [legal] site*. A site without a sign invites a lot of questions. When I had my building renovated, the builder tried to work without a sign....no chance! By registering, and displaying the sign, it meant he had to follow the rules. I never saw similar in the uk (for example on a house), but I also wasn't looking, despite labouring for several years there.
My kitchen has engineered stone, and the people who came to fit it took precautions - all cutting was done outside (it was raining, but they had a marquee that went up), heavy duty vacuums to suck up any dust, wet cutting and wearing the proper PPE.
There are already laws and regulations about employers having to provide the proper PPE - why not enforce that strongly instead of just outright banning a particular item?
When I had my ceramic counter top installed they first took complete laser measures of the kitchen, installed a temporary wood top and it was made and cut in a facility, I suppose with water jet and full protections, so absolutely no cutting on site with a grinder. Seems a better solution to force that than ban a stone type and let a marginally better other type free to use.
But, can they be imported? Asking because the need for engineered products is not going away, and just because a government wants something banned it does not mean it will be gone as history shown time and time again.
My guess is within a few months larger companies will just shift their production out of jurisdiction, and smaller ones go out of business.
Quote: "The federal government will also impose a ban on imported engineered stone to provide an "additional layer of enforcement and deterrence at the border", however the date has not been finalised yet."
imagine if we'd had these people around in the neolithic; it's well-known that potters often came down with silicosis from exposure to the silica in their clay bodies
they would have banned pottery
also isn't concrete technically 'engineered stone'
i'm puzzled how breathing granite dust instead of so-called engineered stone dust is supposed to be better for you
My guess is that evolution in general has adapted on some level to dust from granite. It was around before land based animals. Just like it has adapted to trace quantities of other poisonous and harmful stuff.
Engineered stone might not be exact analogy granite dust, but different in way that prevent these mechanism to be effective.
the studies cited in other parts of this thread found granite dust to be more damaging to lungs, not less so
Engineered stone looks awful fake, changes color overtime, and can be damaged by a hot pan. Since its upsold as being better than the real thing often. There's a consumer fraud aspect to it too. I wouldn't ban it since there might be some situations where its the better product to use, and not just cheaper.
This is good news. Wood is more sustainable and can be more easily repaired and refinished anyway, the problem continues though is if it's replaced by other types of stone.
The root problem is obviously lack of protective equipment being used, but that's a universal workplace safety issue and that requires stricter laws.
Saw dust causes lung cancer, so we should definitely outlaw using wood.
Engineered woods like MDF use adhesives that contain formaldehyde which is a possible carcinogen. But people are dropping dead in their 30s from working with MDF (even if it is dangerous)
They should have just banned with the same penalties in this new law all in situ manual cutting of engineered stone, and instituted strict regulations on automated factory cutting.
TIL (U.S.resident) that Australians call a kitchen countertop a bench.
Interestingly much of the engineered stone comes from Chinese factories.
Interestingly or unsurprisingly considering we're still accidentally importing building materials and even toys filled with asbestos from China. Add vapes to that it feels like there is almost zero regulation on importation of dangerous goods.
[1]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-09/asbestos-found-in-imp...
[2]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-14/australian-building-s...
Engineered stone ... why did the article not explain what is in detail?
In the U.S., Corian is a popular brand of engineered stone. Pretty common for kitchens and bathrooms.
Corian isn't engineered stone under the Australian definition. It's explicitly mentioned as a safe(r) alternative.
"quartz" countertops.
My kitchen has engineered stone (Silestone). The seller told me that as long as I followed some basic precautions like not putting hot things directly on it, it would last for a long time without visible wear. Basically they sold it as extremely hard, the most durable material. The truth is that 10 years later, treating it very well, the edge is full of chips (some of them rather large) that for all I know appeared spontaneously, without hitting it with anything. In my previous home, a rented flat with a cheap granite countertop, it remained intact after around 10 years of much less careful usage (although, to be frank, it was ugly as hell... But there is aesthetically nice granite as well, I think).
I was already decided to not buy engineered stone again because it seems to basically be overhyped crap to scam uninformed people like me with. If apart from that it causes such health hazards... Good riddance if they ban it.
Any Aussies to confirm this isn’t some sort of lobbying stunt?
It does not make much sense to me that engineered stone would be much worse than natural stone on the regard of silicosis, and I highly doubt the natural stone industry is any more compliant in protection equipment and worker safety.
This sort of smells like natural stone industry fighting back to recover ground they lost to the engineered stuff, but being on the opposite side of the World it’s impossible for me to understand this beyond conspiracy theorizing.
> Any Aussies to confirm this isn’t some sort of lobbying stunt?
Yeah there was a recent visit by rock-rich Croatian foreign ministry that heavy handed its small Aussie counterparts and pressured them on banning a whole industry :)
looks like the appropriate time and place for a safety standard, strange decision
Great. Now ban PFAS products
Dangers from PFAS are mostly speculative and inferred. Silicosis is proven and real. Totally different things.
this is so dumb...
quarry workers probably get silicosis...from cutting natural stone? MDF is still legal - and is horrible material *most building materials are toxic
wtf has been achieved here? Seems like someone has buddies in industry and has lobbied for a ban on offshore produced building material to keep "honest local industries afloat"...ffs.
Trade unions were involved in the push for the ban. So, rather than cynical motives, it might actually just be regular old "the health and safety of workers" behind it.
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I'm not sure why I'm getting these downvotes, but my point is that concrete is far more of a silica containing building material than engineered stone but for which there is probably far less political gumption to meaningfully regulate.
There is solid evidence in Australia associating a sharp rise in silicosis in tradesmen with the use of engineered stone.
Is there any such evidence in Australia associating such a thing with concrete at the same high risk levels?
This is a data driven decision.
You appear to have made a quip unsupported by medical data.
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Probably because the ban is likely better thought out than a flippant comment that, I guess, assumes the powerful anti-silica lobby (?) is much stronger than the poor downtrodden anti-concrete lobby (??).
fair dinkum mate. I reckon we got enough rocks scattered all over the country as is.
Seems like you should just wear a dust mask
I just got an engineered stone counter installed. No wonder my pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is acting up!
Silica is one of the most common minerals on earth. Any type of stone countertop has a potentially dangerous amount of inhaled. Just use a dust mask when cutting/grinding stone or when around people who are. If anything, synthetic countertops could (but currently is not) be made to have very low levels of silica, but people should still not be breathing them in.
Do you really think this wasn't considered?
I'm not a huge fan of government overreach like this. Workers should have refused to work with the material if it were truly dangerous, and the free market would have eventually pushed engineered stone out, giving way to innovation for a better, safer material.
> Workers should have refused to work with the material if it were truly dangerous
They did -- several months ago. The relevant unions members voted to refuse to work with engineered stone at all, if it was not banned outright by the government, which is what happened yesterday.
https://www.australianunions.org.au/2023/10/24/unions-vote-t...
I'm not a huge fan of government overreach either. Children should have refused to work if child labor was truly bad, and the free market would have eventually pushed child labor out, giving way to better, more ethical labor practices.
Did you get raised reading only economic and game theory texts? Real people in the real world don't have as much agency as you'd like to think. Sometimes you take the job that you can get. See Amazon warehouse workers.
Obviously not, a trained economist would know about market failures.
A lot of good feedback in this thread that is making me reconsider my opinion, but to answer this specifically, no. I didn't have much of a thought on economic theory until I started frequenting this message board and I was enamored by the liberties offered by the free market as spouted by highly rated HN posters, as well as essays and long-form articles that have been highly upvoted on this site.
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a) It is truly dangerous. On par with asbestos.
b) At least here in Australia the government any by extension taxpayers will have an increased health care burden because of this. Therefore it is entirely justified to limit its use.
My understanding is that a countertop won't release silica dust unless you cut it with power tools, unlike exposed asbestos which releases fibers with much less effort.
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The trade union movement says ban engineered stone or we will Media Release - October 24, 2023
https://www.actu.org.au/media-release/the-trade-union-moveme...
You are confused. This is a severe health risk which has already destroyed peoples lives, not an issue of theoretical economics, hence you got downvoted. Government is doing its job. Better and safer materials already exist.
> the free market would have...
With the exception of vivid imaginations, there is no free market to speak of.
Well, if you call it "government overreach" it's hard to be a fan.
> Workers should have refused to work with the material if it were truly dangerous, and the free market would have eventually pushed engineered stone out, giving way to innovation for a better, safer material.
I think you need to consider this from a game theory perspective. Sometimes there are systemic negative outcomes that can only be addressed with systemic mitigations. Governments/the law serve a purpose by establishing the ground rules in which the market operates. How you structure those rules changes systemic outcomes.
Without the ground rules, UFC would devolve into people just shooting each other.
That's incredibly uncompassionate. And how is this government overreach? The government worked with the industry, and this saga has had years for engineered stone to be "pushed out". What if it took another 20 years and thousands of young people with lung cancer to reach that end? I don't see how that's worth it.
Workers often don't have much choice, even if they knew the harm being done to them.
Markets have market failures like externalities and information asymmetry
The free market hasn’t been paying for the healthcare costs so far, so I don’t see why it should get to decide what is safe or not safe to use.
australia's experience with asbestos would indicate otherwise.
You're saying a worker should just quit their job on the spot...? And pay for rent and food....how...?
You get it - when someone is hand to mouth, their theoretical market freedoms are pretty limited, particularly in this field when everyone else is using the same materials.
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"the free market would have eventually pushed engineered stone out"
Lol.
Is this satire?
It’s your brain after too much HN
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