431–440 of 542 posts
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.
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.
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...
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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…
For comfort you'd probably want to get a positive air pressure mask. Those things are wildly underrated. Can even stick on a volatiles filter when relevant.
Bonus points for being able to easily just run an external air hose feed into the helmet when working in environments that don't kill you if you dare to take the helmet off in an emergency.
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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.a…
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 de…
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.
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?
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Weirdly enough, The article hints that the legislation won't ban natural stone. What alternatives are there to engineered stone? * Natural stone
It’s not weird. Natural stone has been used forever and it was only after engineered stone entered the market they started to see a sharp rise in silicosis cases. Why ban a product that wasn’t causing the problem?
I don't understand how you could possibly draw this conclusion based on the evidence we have.
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> 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...
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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.
The toxic (but cheaper) stuff will be manufactured offshore
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 sto…
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…
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.
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 sto…
I'm usually all for worker protection, but this is really ludicrous. What next? Banning saws because people keep cutting off their fingers?