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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

#311

Post by [deleted] »

bagels wrote: post #121
icegreentea2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was interested, but also didn't want to scrub through a podcast. Summary: Cass Sunstein was the administer of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The OIRA is given the remit to review drafted rules (ie regulations) that various federal agencies want to enact. The OIRA is supposed to perform an external cost-benefit analysis of the proposed regulations. OIRA is suppose to turn around ruling…

Thank you for collecting this. A couple years to draft & study some proposed regulation doesn't seem that heinous to me. It would make sense to not hastily publish a regulation that will last decades without really considering it and its effects well. They can be a source of lawsuits, and I would assume, you want it to be effective which can take some study.

[deleted]

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#312

Post by giarc »

rightbyte wrote: post #217
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…

When I do sand blasting a have a little box I do it in. With windows. I wonder why they don't have such an arrangement for the bench cutting. No matter the health hazard, it doesn't sound economical to cover a whole kitchen in dust for a two feet cut.

I bet there is a product that could be used, however I'm sure the installers think it's "just one more thing to carry around" when the faucet hole cut only takes a few minutes.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#313

Post by nemo44x »

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…

Don't worry about it. You were exposed to a very small amount a single time. It's the repeated exposure day after day that kills people. Saying that, yeah it's not nice. But the single exposure to dust isn't going to hurt you.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#314

Post by 1-more »

1letterunixname wrote: post #279

A lot of tradespeople refuse or ignore PPE. It's mostly macho men, the kind who don't go to the doctor, and smoke and believe it won't cause them cancer. Another fact: scant few men who work outside wear sunscreen. There were multiple generations of these kind of people on my mom's side of the family, and they inevitably died prematurely of preventable conditions. A modern example: I've seen gravestone engravers comp…

During the peak of covid, the NY Times made a video showing hospital workers loading dead bodies into the refrigerated trucks that served as expanded morgues for Brooklyn Hospital Center (by Fort Greene). Online skeptics pointed out that it must be crisis actors, for one of the workers was wearing his mask below his nose. Only thing I could think of was "have you never been to a jobsite?" I got called a pussy for wanting eye protection from the guy welding 15 feet from me.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#315

Post by CalRobert »

quacked wrote: post #310

One of the frustrating things about modernity as a westerner is that I don't feel the need for the standard of living that all of these incredible-but-dangerous advances in modern science and technology have granted us. I don't need faux-stone counters cut by Central Americans, I don't to eat as varied a diet as is available, I don't need to travel anywhere over 45 mph or internationally, I don't need A/C on 95% of s…

I want to trade all the fancy shit I don't need for a ten hour work week and more time to do what I want, but annoyingly we've made artificial scarcities of essentials like housing, and codified forty hour weeks as the norm, making this hard.

You're right that it's more common in Europe. When I go back to the US life feels so insanely gluttonous. Driving a studio apartment three miles to get a coffee is lunacy

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#316

Post by ttfkam »

charles_f wrote: post #55

Tangentially related, there's this copper mining museum in BC (1) in what used to be one of these corporate towns where you lived and died. They do a quick demo of the equipments they used back in the day, in a pre cut hole. Even with your hands on your hears it's painful, teeth chattering - and they don't even really hit the rock. People working in there weren't wearing any sort of hearing protection and became deaf…

> Thinking about the kind of life they had terrorizes me. I don't get how, for the longest time, people were fine with that.

A non-trivial number of these mine workers were arrested on trumped up charges like "vagrancy" for not having a job or "trespassing" for walking along a railroad. They would often be sold to companies as convict lease (cheap) labor. Essentially slave labor long after the Civil War since the 13th Amendment has the slavery loophole where it's allowed as long as you're convicted of a crime.

This disproportionately affected freed slaves in the South but was an issue for everyone everywhere since it introduced a profit motive to manufactured charges and inflated sentences. The extent that it predominantly affected Black folks and poor white folks had a lot to do with public sentiment not doing anything about it for a very long time.

To a not-small-enough extent, the same conditions exist today where labor can be coerced for little to no pay among the prison population, many of whom have been threatened with obscenely long sentences being shortened by accepting plea deals even when innocent or with extenuating circumstances. For-profit prisons often make the situation worse by further incentivizing incarceration on a larger scale.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#318

Post by nemo44x »

iancmceachern wrote: post #275

They just made the wrong choice in architecting their process'. They had different priorities then. Engineered stone is created, it's not like natural stone, we don't have to cut it. They also have the choice to cast it, net shape. They just need to redo their whole schema, they need to reconfigure their process to customize the engineered stone before its solidified, not after.

> They just need to redo their whole schema, they need to reconfigure their process to customize the engineered stone before its solidified, not after.

That's not viable. They are cut only after the actual physical space has been built (carpentry mainly) because measurements have to be taken then since nothing is perfectly true/plumb/square. Today the turnaround is about a week for the material to be cut and then installed. Sending it off to the manufacturer to create to spec would not only add several weeks to the process but significant expense.

Stone (both natural and engineered) can be cut safely. These shops just haven't been. Proper respirators, ventilation, and wetting will create a safe space to work in.

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