Great. Now ban PFAS products
Australia to ban engineered stone
351–360 of 542 posts
Re: Australia to ban engineered stone
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
may i ask where you live? I’ve worked outdoor construction as a teen for a while, even up till now, I’ve never seen mist sprayers in use round here in Germany.
Western Norway. The rock here is high in quartzite I hear, maybe that's got something to do with it? Surely you use mist sprayers during building demolition though? That's where I first saw them.
yeah, i think they are pretty standard for demo work around the world afaik. Very interesting, Germany tends to be hellishly strict on building codes and such, but PPE is seriously lacking over here. It bred the mother of all toxic cavalier attitudes.
Re: Australia to ban engineered stone
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 c…
Official statistics (in Spain, which is where I'm from and have read them) don't agree with that. Plenty of construction workers and various related workers, like plumbers, etc. have died from asbestos. As an anecdote, you could even die from asbestos from working at a TV station... The Spanish public TV station used asbestos as insulation in stages and apparently, when there were vibrations from loud sound, applause…
There are different varieties of asbestos. None are good for you, but some are far more deadly than others.
Western European countries (including Spain, I am guessing) and Australia tended to use the most dangerous varieties of asbestos - crocidolite and amosite. By contrast, North America and ex-USSR countries used the less carcinogenic chrysotile.
Re: Australia to ban engineered stone
#354Ridiculous 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.
Re: Australia to ban engineered stone
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
> 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...
Re: Australia to ban engineered stone
#356Is 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...
I'm strongly in favour of banning engineered stone countertops because they are extremely tacky.
Re: Australia to ban engineered stone
#357It'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.
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?
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!
Re: Australia to ban engineered stone
#358It'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.
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?
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.
Re: Australia to ban engineered stone
#359It'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.
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.
Re: Australia to ban engineered stone
#360This 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.