Silica dust as deadly as asbestos
The council will investigate and prepare a report on a citywide ban.
The Mayor said everyone should expect to be able to go to “work in a healthy and safe workplace and go home to our love ones”, and has supported the CFMEU mooting for national bans of bench tops containing silica products, and the establishment of a national dust register and mandatory reporting.
Inhaling crystalline silica dust while cutting, grinding or drilling engineered stone used for kitchen or bathroom benches, can lead to silicosis, a debilitating, incurable and sometimes fatal occupational disease caused by exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS).
Mayor El-Hayek said that workers’ exposure to silica was a “national disgrace” with horrifying figures showing that around 500,000 people have been exposed to its dust, with an alarming 10,000 men and women expected to develop lung cancer.
“In fact, the world’s largest and most comprehensive study by Monash University, published earlier this year, revealed an alarming 25 per cent of people who worked with artificial stone bench worktops were affected by silicosis … and it will come as no surprise many of those workers are here in our city,” he said.
The State Government has also doubled penalties and prison terms, to better protect workers against dust diseases, while the Federal Government will meet in coming weeks to decide on a new regulatory framework or ban on manufactured stone.
Minister for Work Health and Safety and Industrial Relations, Sophie Cotsis, is “sick and tired of seeing lives unnecessarily lost and people being injured at work”, and said the new laws demonstrated just how seriously this Government took keeping workers safe in NSW.
