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Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

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Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#171

Post by CrazyStat »

haldujai wrote: post #153
DoughnutHole wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very dependent on the illness. From a cost perspective it’s best that people die suddenly. If I live a fairly healthy life into my 80s and die of a heart attack, I might not necessarily have cost my insurer that much, as opposed to if I suffer from a chronic illness for 10, 20, 30 years. Cancer is now usually not a sudden death sentence - treatment is good enough now that most cancers caught early can be trea…

> Cancer is now usually not a sudden death sentence - treatment is good enough now that most cancers caught early can be treated and patients often go through multiple remissions before it or a complication from treatment finally gets them. Small clarification - early detection is most often curative and cheap. The really expensive part is that several advanced stage cancers (even IV with widely disseminated metastat…

> Small clarification - early detection is most often curative and cheap.

> It actually provides a pretty good incentive for insurers to cover screening and early detection beyond what is mandated by law.

The evidence in favor of mass screening programs in the hope of early detection is actually weak to non-existent [1].

> In total, 2 111 958 individuals enrolled in randomized clinical trials comparing screening with no screening using 6 different tests were eligible. Median follow-up was 10 years for computed tomography, prostate-specific antigen testing, and colonoscopy; 13 years for mammography; and 15 years for sigmoidoscopy and FOBT. The only screening test with a significant lifetime gain was sigmoidoscopy (110 days; 95% CI, 0-274 days). There was no significant difference following mammography (0 days: 95% CI, −190 to 237 days), prostate cancer screening (37 days; 95% CI, −37 to 73 days), colonoscopy (37 days; 95% CI, −146 to 146 days), FOBT screening every year or every other year (0 days; 95% CI, −70.7 to 70.7 days), and lung cancer screening (107 days; 95% CI, −286 days to 430 days).

There are large institutions, both nonprofit and commercial, which stand to gain by convincing people that mass screening is useful and important. The available scientific evidence does not support their position.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#172

Post by grecy »

paulddraper wrote: post #169
mabbo wrote: post #39

What I find interesting when comparing the US the Canada on topics like these is that in Canada, there is self-interest in demanding workers be protected. Like beyond the fact that it's a good thing you do. Because we have a public health care system, funded by taxes, having a large number of young men out of the work force (not paying taxes) and using the health care system effectively means my taxes, everyone's tax…

> Because we have a public health care system, funded by taxes, having a large number of young men out of the work force (not paying taxes) and using the health care system effectively means my taxes, everyone's taxes, are higher. That is true with or without publicly funded healthcare.

You could argue that more sick people is good for the US economy, and it helps rich people get richer.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#173

Post by rafaelmn »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #160
rafaelmn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is based on the assumption that sugar causes obesity - I don't think there's any strong evidence for that, or that low carb diets work better for fat loss than low fat, from what I've seen both have same effect (calories equated) and both have equally terrible long term adherence/outcomes. Sugar seems like a nice villain but it's more likely that you'd have to tax any high calorie food that tastes good. And what…

If not sugar, then other causes should be taxed if the evidence supports that such taxes would have an impact. I'm not a policy expert myself. The best public investment to promote physical activity is designing cities to enable "the gym of life"! https://youtu.be/KPUlgSRn6e0?si=GDmrYq-XQtn9SaKx

Fair enough, guess my problem would be that since these things would be implemented by politicians it would end up being driven by fads/popular opinion, and without strong evidence (of which there's very little) you'd essentially be conducting population level experiments even if you wanted to be scientific (eg. food pyramid to the extreme)

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#174

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

haldujai wrote: post #133
mabbo wrote: post #39

What I find interesting when comparing the US the Canada on topics like these is that in Canada, there is self-interest in demanding workers be protected. Like beyond the fact that it's a good thing you do. Because we have a public health care system, funded by taxes, having a large number of young men out of the work force (not paying taxes) and using the health care system effectively means my taxes, everyone's tax…

Canadian data is relatively poor quality (mostly from the 90s) outside of Alberta (I expect QC and BC probably have the highest rates) but historically and estimates are that we have slightly higher incidence than the US. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/resp.14242 > There’s incentives for our government to protect workers from risks that will cost a fortune to fix. There are many examples where this…

> Note that public health system in Canada is not “free”.

I'm enough of a pedant to annoy the fuck out of most anybody who knows me, but really? Look, there is no "free" health care anywhere, but it's a term that has (perhaps unfortunately) become widely used as a synonym for, depending on your sensibilities "no charge at the point of service" and/or "socialized health insurance and health care coverage".

And Canada is certainly one or both of those.

The metric "well, they don't provide it for undocumented persons" is a weird one, as is the use of California as a counter-example.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#175

Post by sershe »

Anon1096 wrote: post #106
mabbo wrote: post #39

What I find interesting when comparing the US the Canada on topics like these is that in Canada, there is self-interest in demanding workers be protected. Like beyond the fact that it's a good thing you do. Because we have a public health care system, funded by taxes, having a large number of young men out of the work force (not paying taxes) and using the health care system effectively means my taxes, everyone's tax…

Perhaps unexpectedly, people dying are usually _cheaper_ for a healthcare system than healthy people. This has been studied a lot with smokers, basically people in old age cost far more than young people and thus a true cost-minimizing system would not be how you expect. Of course, we aren't trying to minimize cost so the premise is flawed.

Do you have a reference for this? This was a weak hunch for me before but I always assumed I was wrong based on e.g. insurance rates. If insurance prices it higher, it must be more expensive to cover?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#176

Post by LegitShady »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #102
DoreenMichele wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, Canada doesn't share a border with Mexico and some portion of these Latino "day workers" are illegal immigrants. Day workers are often paid under the table and when I have read other stories about them, they tend to include medical horror stories like "So, this guy cut 3 of his fingers off and they didn't even take him to the ER. They just returned him to the place where they had picked him up." This…

Canada doesn't have a border with Mexico, but it does have its share of undocumented and under-protected workers. > While there are no accurate figures representing the number or composition of undocumented migrant population in Canada, estimates range between 20,000 and 500,000 persons > Research suggests most undocumented individuals live in large urban centres and typically work in seasonal and informal sectors, s…

Canadas temporary foreign worker program means you don't need to illegally hire day workers, you just keep the wages low enough that nobody will take the job and then tell the government you need to bring in foreign workers - not for professional or technical work, not for picking in the fields, but for working at McDonald's and tim Hortons.

They also allow international students at diploma mills to work 40 hrs a week, above the table.

It's a sham.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#177

Post by will5421 »

albert_e wrote: post #79
dml2135 wrote: post #27

Not surprised. Back in my artist days, the studio I rented was in a building with a countertop business on the first floor. The extent of their safety measures were blowing the dust out into the back alley. Most workers rarely, if ever wore masks, and the inside of the shop was absolutely covered in dust. The dust would make it up to me on the second floor, everything in my studio would accumulate a thin layer just a…

> everything in my studio would accumulate a thin layer just a week or so after cleaning I wish I ONLY had to clean the surfaces once a week. In my country and city unfortunately -- even though I dont live near a major road or construction site -- dust is everywhere. Within 24 hours or less of wiping clean, you can see a visible layer of dust on any horizontal surface in home.

Do you know what dust this is? Is it natural? May I ask what country you’re in?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#178

Post by thomastjeffery »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #131
mabbo wrote: post #39

What I find interesting when comparing the US the Canada on topics like these is that in Canada, there is self-interest in demanding workers be protected. Like beyond the fact that it's a good thing you do. Because we have a public health care system, funded by taxes, having a large number of young men out of the work force (not paying taxes) and using the health care system effectively means my taxes, everyone's tax…

> Because we have a public health care system, funded by taxes, having a large number of young men out of the work force (not paying taxes) and using the health care system effectively means my taxes, everyone's taxes, are higher. The US healthcare system uses private insurance, implying that more use of the healthcare system raises everyone's premiums. And people without insurance then go to emergency rooms which ar…

That incentive is obfuscated, though. Every insurer exists as an invisible boundary where cost is not passed to others.

On top of that, insurance is optional. There is no guarantee a person will get affordable care. That's the entire point of the system! If there were a guarantee, it would be indistinguishable from Canada (and practically every other country's) single payer healthcare system.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#179

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #32
fzeroracer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, protective gear (actually protective gear, not thin dust masks) is expensive. The workers cant afford it, and the businesses want to save the money. There's some small margin of workers who have access to protective gear but don't wear it, but in reality for most workers it's the job of the company to provide it and train workers to use it.

Your employer should provide you with all the tools you need to do your job safely. Weirdly enough, that doesn't apply to car mechanics which seem to be dead set on bringing their own tools to work.

I worked in day labor for less than two days. Day labor is, needless to say, low-skill and high-turnover. But there are still dangerous jobs to be done. My job involved directing a wet-vac to pick up water, inside a store, while the other guy was grinding or something that needed to be wet down.

I am a nerd and my glasses were falling off from the sweat. I think I was wearing a pair of work boots which may be required. But the guy giving me orders on-site was not my employer. These clients are well-aware that day laborers may not be back tomorrow. So why give us durable safety equipment that costs money? The day labor office is my employer, but they may not be accurately informed about the safety requirements of the client and the site. They may require us to purchase safety equipment at own expense, but if we don't know what the site requires, or how long we will be there, that's an up-front expense we are unwilling to part with.

Day laborers are one step up from the guys hanging out in Home Depot parking lots, whereby they are legal to work in these United States, but can't get a job anywhere else.

So it's a 3-way tug-of-war of vagueness and parsimony, and it always just ends up being nod-nod, wink-wink, do the best you can.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#180

Post by will5421 »

Arcanum-XIII wrote: post #140
victorbstan wrote: post #4

A lot of workers don’t wear protective gear. By choice. Nobody to blame but themselves.

I know a bit about the welding industry and and it’s a lack of education, macho attitude, bad habit “I know by smell/touch/sound that it’s going well” and of course management not making it mandatory. Working with respirator is not the fun part of the day, for sure. And mask/gloves slows you down. But well being able to breathe and see at the end the day without the worst sunburn of your live helps ;)

People weld without welding masks?!
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