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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

#181

Post by dang »

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…

Please don't take HN threads on generic nationalistic flamewar tangents. I'm sure you didn't intend it, but that's what this leads to, in the statistical case.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: we've had to ask you not to do this on HN more than once before. Please avoid it in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34492512 (Jan 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34073107 (Dec 2022)

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#182

Post by haldujai »

pupppet wrote: post #163
haldujai wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Canadian data is relatively poor quality Sure, no axe to grind here. Do tell us your impartial take.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with medical research but stating that available data is poor quality is an objective assessment. I provided a brief explanation in parentheses which you excluded for some reason.

I also provided a reference that is open access but here is the relevant section for you:

In Canada, there are no national data on the incidence or prevalence of silicosis. In the province of Alberta, where silicosis is a notifiable disease, health insurance data revealed 861 cases with at least one reported diagnosis of ‘silicosis’ during a period of 10 years from 2000. These results were based on raw data and not a secondary review of primary imaging and clinical information. Data from 2000 through 2009 showed that only 29 workers' compensation claims were accepted for silicosis in Alberta. Data from Quebec's compensation system revealed 351 compensated cases of silicosis between 1988 and 1998. Of note, workers who participated in regular surveillance had milder disease at the time of compensation.

The JAMA study is from 2019-2022. Data that is 20-30 years old is relatively poor quality.

Changes in medicine, workplace safety rules and occupational trends makes it hard to compare to silicosis rates in Canada to the US in order to assess the claims of the comment I replied to therefore I think the relative incidence described in this review article (from 2022) is inaccurate.

If you want to disregard my quality assessment, the discussion ends with the review article showing silicosis rates are 3x higher in Canada.

Can you elaborate on how any of this shows I have an axe to grind or that I’m biased?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#183

Post by thomastjeffery »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #147
cj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicare for the elderly, but we also have Medicaid for people in poverty ( Someone taken out of the workforce may qualify for that if they don’t already qualify for disability insurance or similar payments (although I’m not 100% clear if those are funded via private disability insurance or public programs)

Medicaid is not at all comparable to Medicare. First, Medicare pays a lot more to healthcare providers than Medicaid. Medicare pays more for more medications than Medicaid, and has fewer prior authorization requirements for those medicines. Fewer providers will accept Medicaid, and people using Medicaid will receive less or worse healthcare than those in Medicare. Second, Medicaid is administered by each state, and t…

The most obvious point: if they were equivalent programs, we would just include people under the poverty line with Medicare. Instead, we have a completely different program, managed by different people with different goals. Down to its very core, Medicaid is a political football.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#184

Post by eropple »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #68
eropple wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a wood shop, I wear a respirator constantly unless I've got the doors open and the fans on and I'm not going to be doing more than a one-off cut that afternoon. A properly fitted 3M 6800-series full-face respirator is pretty comfortable even for long periods and while wearing glasses. A 6200-series half-mask is even more comfortable, though a little awkward with glasses. The only problem is that a 6800-series…

Wearing a respirator mask is substantially more pleasant when you're just farting around your hobby shop (and only when the temperature is pleasant or cool), than it is when you're actually working at a productivity level expected of laborers, with heavy stone, in an industrial workshop, no matter the temperature and humidity. Try spending an hour in your shop constantly lugging heavy tools and wood around wearing th…

I mentioned the wood shop because I have expended considerably more energy in that shop and also in researching how to do so safely, but I've owned a property management company and personally I've done two house remodels where I did most of the demolition (and most things that weren't framing or plumbing) myself. I don't like to do it, but I am no stranger to spending hours at a stretch working in a half-mask, over my head, in Some Weather, in crawlspaces, attics, and basements.

Yes, I'm extremely fortunate that I can pay for help when needed, but I do quite a lot of my own work. So, if you're going to invent a guy to be mad at, maybe you should pick a softer target.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#185

Post by retrac »

pupppet wrote: post #163
haldujai wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Canadian data is relatively poor quality Sure, no axe to grind here. Do tell us your impartial take.

Canadian here who believes our labour safety standards are generally better than the USA (based on anecdote and experience, not data).

Canadian data is poor quality. On any issue you might care to pick, the topic is better studied in the United States. I run into this all the time. For example, we make allocation decisions at a charity I volunteer at with, about what health problems unemployed LGBT people tend to have. We use data for American urban populations. The data doesn't exist for Canada, AFAIK. It's a smaller country! There's simply less research and statistic-taking done! It's a reasonable statement.

Besides -- commenting on the lack of good data usually implies the exact opposite of what you seem to think -- it is an admission by the poster that their argument is based on weak evidence.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#186

Post by lotsofpulp »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #183
lotsofpulp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicaid is not at all comparable to Medicare. First, Medicare pays a lot more to healthcare providers than Medicaid. Medicare pays more for more medications than Medicaid, and has fewer prior authorization requirements for those medicines. Fewer providers will accept Medicaid, and people using Medicaid will receive less or worse healthcare than those in Medicare. Second, Medicaid is administered by each state, and t…

The most obvious point: if they were equivalent programs, we would just include people under the poverty line with Medicare. Instead, we have a completely different program, managed by different people with different goals. Down to its very core, Medicaid is a political football.

Exactly, I guess my comment could have been much shorter.

I love how there is even an Additional Medicare Tax. The political lines in the US are very much old v young, but some of the young, especially politically active ones, vote with the old since they are among the wealthy young, and the rest do not participate enough, or do not have sufficient knowledge about how resources are being meted out and how they will be affected now and in the future.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#187

Post by readyplayernull »

trobertson wrote: post #78
jader201 wrote: post #26

Not long ago, we had our countertop replaced (from quartz to granite). They ended up having to make a cut in it while it was sitting in our kitchen. Our home was in a cloud of dust for several hours, and when the dust finally settled a day later, every surface imaginable was covered in dust. I’m pretty sure none of them wore masks when doing this. I honestly didn’t think to wear a mask either (since they weren’t and…

> Fortunately it was a granite countertop and not quartz. Granites are primarily composed of feldspar and quartz, which are both primarily composed of silica. Silica is the thing that causes silicosis, and when that granite was cut it was clouds of silica dust that covered your home. You were no more safe in that granite dust than you would have been in quartz dust.

Silica particles won't disolve in water, it's like breathing broken glass, and that's the main problem not limited to silica, but breathing ANY particle that harms your organs.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#189

Post by haldujai »

CrazyStat wrote: post #171
haldujai wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You’re looking at the wrong metric and misinterpreting the stats, not only is overall survival not a good metric for cancer screening none of the studies are sufficiently powered for OS.

What you want to do is look at stage at presentation, treatment costs by stage, and screening costs. These were done for nearly every recommended screening program.

The available evidence behind currently recommended screening programs unequivocally shows improved cancer-specific survival and earlier stage at diagnosis.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#190

Post by Natsu »

michaelt wrote: post #52
victorbstan wrote: post #4

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

> Nobody to blame but themselves. Well, it depends on the situation. If I, a factory owner, offer optional safety equipment that slows workers down a bit, but I also demand such high productivity that corners have to be cut - whose fault is it when the inevitable happens? What if I, a factory owner, provide optional basic safety equipment costing $30 per person, but the mask makes the goggles steam up and the boots a…

In my experience, most of what happens is that workers don't want to wear the gear because it's hot/uncomfortable and they're working really long hours and get tired and sloppy by the end of it.

I actually worked in such a factory, so this is based on direct experience, and what I saw was people cut corners mostly because they were tired after long shifts, though lack of comfort was also a factor due to the heat.

The employer did try to make everyone wear the gear and had inspections and most people wore most of the stuff most of the time, we even won a safety award at one point for going so long without any OSHA-recordable injury. But we weren't perfect and one day I helped bandage a guy who was airlifted after slicing his arm open in a really bad way, something the kevlar wrist protectors should have stopped.

So I would say that employers do try, to the limit they can, but all accidents happen during gaps. And the employees tend to have their own interests in comfort or cutting corners that sometimes conflict with their safety. More limited shifts and attention to comfort might help, but it's not always clear how to provide that.

You can still have things like the guy who got crushed by his forklift after rushing to dump a hopper of trash by doing something really dangerous while unloading it because he wanted to hurry and finish so he could go to his family for Christmas vacation. And it's not easy to stop that kind of thing, even if you do a lot of warnings and inspections to yell at people who don't do things right and pay attention to close calls.

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