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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

#341

Post by alex_lav »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #338
alex_lav wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employers must provide PPE. Firing skilled laborers harms both the employer and the employee. > Workers must wear it or be let go. Firing skilled laborers harms both the employer and the employee. > This is not hard. It seems very hard.

Regulators and liability lawsuits it is then I suppose. Those will be harmful to businesses and workers as well, but powered by media reporting and the public sphere.

Where they'll continue to come up with half measures and platitudes, yes. Because it's a very hard problem to solve and enforce. Glad we agree!

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#342

Post by hindsightbias »

bjnewman85 wrote: post #317

the incurable disease in the title is greed in the hearts of others that values the lives of these people less than the shiny things they make for rich people

There won't be anyone left after 10 years of culling:

> It finds that each year homeowners remodel upwards of 10.2 million kitchens — roughly one in 10 of all households — and 14.2 million bathrooms, two of the most important rooms in a home. Further, annual new home construction adds roughly 1 million kitchens and 2.3 million bathrooms to the marketplace

National Kitchen + Bath Association (NKBA)

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#343

Post by asdefghyk »

pseudosavant wrote: post #331
goalieca wrote: post #322

> Pale dust rose around them as they worked. Many went without masks. Some had water spurting from their machines, but others had nothing to tamp down the powder rising in the air. Safety regulations need to be put in place with the cheapest being a good quality respirator.

A scenario I have encountered many times is having someone doing work for me, they don't bring some basic safety gear like earplugs or masks. I have plenty of earplugs and masks though. Buy I can never get them to actually use them. They'd rather hear that jackhammer at full volume apparently? As a musician, it especially kills me to watch people destroy their ears. These workers are often too young to appreciate goo…

Why does music volume, not just get reduced to safe level?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#344

Post by AnthonyMouse »

elzbardico wrote: post #303
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today the leading cause of death is heart disease. In that era it was infectious disease. You could have a cushy job doing numbers work in a city and still die of tuberculosis from being in close quarters. People were fine with it because everything was terrible. In the century between the 1850s and 1950s we went from not even having radio communications or the germ theory of disease to building nuclear submarines an…

It is perfectly possible in a competitive market to have terrible work conditions. While the average conditions tend to improve over time, not all workers are in a good bargain position viz-a-viz employees. There are information assymetries, transaction costs for changing jobs, short-term biases, market failures and a lot of other issues in the real world. This view also assumes that skills are perfectly replaceable,…

> This view also assumes that skills are perfectly replaceable, that there's no cost for requalifying for another profession, and that this is instantaneous or that people have some magical way to offset the opportunity costs of requalification while they train for another job.

It does not assume any of these things. The cost of switching jobs is not required to be zero. What it does is provide a ceiling for what the existing employer can get away with.

They may be able to get away with paying you 5% below market or subjecting you to an inflexible schedule and it isn't worth changing jobs to one that doesn't do that, but if they try to make you use equipment that will kill you then you just walk right out the door.

Moreover, this is why a competitive market is important -- if you're qualified to be a steel worker but the steel industry is a monopoly, you can always learn to be an aircraft mechanic, but that takes time. Whereas if the steel industry has 10,000 companies in it, you go and work for one of the others using your existing skill set. Which reduces what employers can get away with.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#345

Post by WalterBright »

CalRobert wrote: post #315
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

> Driving a studio apartment three miles to get a coffee is lunacy

It sure is. I have a cheap drip coffee maker that I drink from all day, at a cost of a few cents a cup. Dirt cheap.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#346

Post by nickff »

Timshel wrote: post #340
nickff wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many workers resist using safety equipment, even when it is provided to them, and they are shown how to use it. This is common for fall protection too. Safety regulations requiring provision of equipment may not get the job done. For all we know, safety equipment was available.

I don't know, if you employ peoples to do a job with a such a risk to their lives, IMO it's your responsibility to ensure that protection is used not just provided.

It’s often not that easy. Would you fire someone who you knew was on the verge of being evicted, or a single parent trying to support their children? What about when the employees are unionized, and the union takes the side of the non-compliant laborers?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#347

Post by ReactiveJelly »

CalRobert wrote: post #315
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

We could definitely build more housing. But "Meditations on Moloch" suggests that Malthusian traps might be inevitable. Why work ten hours when a political enemy like Russia or China might work 40 hours or 80 hours and then nuke you?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#348

Post by WhatsTheBigIdea »

Some interesting things about silicosis are...

1) The ancient Greeks and Romans knew about the hazards of breathing dust, and knew that stone workers were particularly at risk.

2) The name Silicosis was coined in 1870 by Achille Visconti who was studying lung disease in hard-rock miners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis

3) Silicosis can be entirely avoided by cutting stone (and silicon bearing ceramic materials) with a "wet cut"... literally just add water!

So, this danger has been known to stone workers for 2 millennia, protection is cheap, effective and readily available, and yet people are still falling prey to it.

I have personally witnessed professional counter top installers working in obviously unsafe ways, who have actively & energetically refused face masks, water dust collection, and vacuum dust collection (which is far less effective).

This is an article about human frailty, not about some new threat.

It is an important point that human callousness towards the well being of others seems to be self emergent. Clearly the people at the top of the stone cutting industry in LA are not investing in training their new young workers in proper technique.

How can this be addressed? I don't know. It seems Adam Smith and Karl Marx have both failed to leave us useful guidance on the subject.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#349

Post by asdefghyk »

From Google "......Silicosis is the oldest known occupational lung disease. Ancient Greeks were familiar with lung disease in quarry workers (Hippocrates) and the fact that ..... " Amazing this issue has not been addressed - starting with education - maythis material needs to be banned ????

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#350

Post by nickff »

marcinzm wrote: post #329
nickff wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many workers resist using safety equipment, even when it is provided to them, and they are shown how to use it. This is common for fall protection too. Safety regulations requiring provision of equipment may not get the job done. For all we know, safety equipment was available.

I tell a worker that I expect them to do N amount of work per hour or be fired. They need the money to pay their families for basic life necessities. N is the amount they can do if working at peak efficiency for that hour. I picked that number by design. Wearing a mask is uncomfortable and causes excess sweating which makes them 5% less efficient. If they weak a mask they output 0.95*N and I will thus fire them. They…

Have you ever worked or managed in a situation like this? It's usually not as easy as you seem to think. I have worked in these situations and know managers who have this kind of issue. The managers worry, and try to get people to comply, but it's tough when only a minority comply, especially because one has to enforce so many different requirements.
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