Comment by anon-sre-srm
2 years ago
It's the bozos working with the stuff without proper PPE.
I watched a grave marker carver absolutely bathing in dust with just a thin bandanna, I was in there for 5 minutes and was left choking in their hazardous work environment.
WitH sufficient PPE and dust control, it's not a problem. This is just barking up the wrong tree because they can't get workers to not be idiots, so they pick a scapegoat to ban at random. It's not fucking asbestos. It's apparent but ineffective motion by expediency.
> they can't get workers to not be idiots
Is it that or is it that someone doesn't want to pay for those industrial-scale air cleaners?
I got a little interested in particulate air quality during covid so I ran across the entrepreneurs selling them. You can probably make the air in a quarry as clean as in a surgery room, if you're willing to pay.
There is an easy, cheap and well-tested air cleaner: wet cutting, i.e. cutting under running water. All dust will be bound in the runoff, almost no airborne particles. But it is messy (often not doable indoors, because you splatter everything with rock slurry) and just a little more expensive gear than for dry cutting. So nobody does it...
Water is increasingly becoming something we can't waste as easily as before in many parts of the world.
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I don't think seeing one person do something can really compare to having a dedicated taskforce do 2 years of research into an industry, in terms of understanding risk and what practical options there are to manage said risk.
From the report:
> A total of 12 successful prosecutions have been reported since 2021, with many related to the uncontrolled processing (dry cutting) of engineered stone materials
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/202...