31
votes
Medical researchers report that the workers who make quartz countertops are dying of lung disease at a young age
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Fancy quartz countertops are killing people who make them, doctors say
- Published
- Jul 24 2023
- Word count
- 883 words
Quartz workers having lung trouble? Sounds like silicosis. skims article Yep, it's silicosis.
I do ceramics as a hobby and we have the same danger. Silica particles (the primary component in quartz, clay, and glass) are essentially micro-knives. As you breathe it in, it accumulates in your lungs and slowly, with every breathe, cuts into your lung tissue. Most people who die of silicosis die from drowning on their own blood, unable to breathe in any oxygen. Anytime you are working with a dry silica-based material, you need to be wearing a respirator to ensure you don't breathe in all of that particulate.
The article contains a picture of a guy cutting a quartz board, with billowing clouds of silica dust in the background. That environment is insanity. It will guarantee rapid onset silicosis (which is exactly what these researchers are warning about).
OSHA has standards around working with silica, and it looks like these companies aren't following them. Furthermore, every silica supplier provides an SDS (Safety Data Sheet) which advises on how to safely use silica. Here's a random silica SDS (PDF) - section 1 is product identification, and section 2 is hazards and how to avoid harm. Section 7 repeats section 2, essentially saying "Minimize silica dust. If there is dust, wear a respirator. Mop, don't vacuum."
As far as I'm concerned, business owners who allow working environments similar to what's shown in the picture should be arrested on felony charges. It's manslaughter via criminal negligence.
Agreed. Sadly there's also a lot of "nah i don't need that" behavior around protective equipment. I can sorta get the "look i don't need a helmet/high vis vest i'll be in and out" mentality, because you're at least theoretically aware of the danger, but I've met too many people who won't wear masks/respirators/eye protection, which are all scenarios where you're NOT going to be able to asses the damage/react and unable to protect yourself. Worse it can build up slowly over time so you get enough time to THINK it's not doing anything to you, and by the time you know it is you're, at best, functionally crippled when it comes to the rest of your life.
It may be beyond that. If they're aware of the danger it could be depraved indifference, which elevates it to murder in some states.
Basically, if you knowingly and intentionally do something dangerous enough with no regard for the safety of others, that indifference to human life can be treated as malice aforethought in a resulting death.
In some states it's treated as second-degree murder.
Silicosis has been a bit of a hot topic in Australia and particularly in my region over the last year or so - just recently the Territory I work in (the ACT) has changed its WHS laws due to how many cases are now appearing. The ACT now mandates wet cutting for engineered stone, strongly suggests wet cutting for any other high silica content material (some form of dust control is now required regardless), and requires anyone working on a construction site to complete a course about the dangers of silica dust. That last one in particular was a little controversial due to not just being restricted to the obvious workers (e.g. stonemasons), so there were huge numbers of people having to do a half day course even if they weren't disturbing silica as part of their job.
So I've got both a heath and safety degree, and a lapidary (stone cutting and polishing) hobby. I've worked with and designed processes for handling a variety of unpleasant substances.
It strikes me that the quartz countertop cutting process, if not all the polishing, could be made a great deal safer by wet cutting to control dust.
Countertop cutting should preferably be done in a shop environment where the spray and washings from cutting can be captured, rather than distributed so widely that hand cleanup of dust residues is required. This is how lapidary jewelers, professional cemetery stone engravers, etc. manage rock dust. It may take extra effort to transport and assemble finished countertop pieces at the job site, but it's not worth people's lives to avoid that effort.
The kind of neglectful abuse of untrained workers and inadequate equipment reported is just a money grab in an unregulated construction industry.