With demolition projects on the rise in many areas, employers need to watch out for the dangers of worksite-pervasive silica dust
Unfortunately, it’s not a totally unusual sight for a WorkSafeBC inspection officer: She is at a worksite and sees a worker coming out of building or a draped area where some smoothing work is being done. The employee is nearly covered in dust.
The site isn’t using the right measures in the area to ensure proper ventilation, workers aren’t wearing the right personal protective equipment and they are working long hours, trying to get a project finished. All the while exposing themselves to silica dust, said Colin Murray, the senior manager or prevention and occupational disease initiatives for WorkSafeBC.
Yet, every year in British Columbia claims related to exposure to crystalline silica — a dust that comes from disturbed rock — barely trickle in. The number of claims related to the hazard sit at single digits in the province’s claim reporting system, said Murray.
“We have very few claims for silica in our system, but we know there’s far more people getting exposed to silica dust because we see it,” he said. “Our officers are out there, inspectors are out there, they’re seeing it every day at these bad work locations.”
Silicosis is a disease caused by the prolonged breathing of crystalline silica dust. The fine particles deposited in the lungs cause thickening and scarring of lung tissue. Crystalline silica exposure has also been linked to lung cancer, according to WorkSafeBC.
Construction functions including sawing concrete, demolition, cutting or dressing stone, renovating façades, hydro blasting concrete and dry sweeping are among the activities WorkSafeBC has identified as possibly hazardous, where employees could be exposed to silica dust.
B.C. has had a flurry of activity in the construction sector of across the province, especially in the last three to four years. On a daily basis, there are people grinding and drilling and doing other tasks that cause silica dust, said Murray.
Silica and mining
In the Yukon, the risk of exposure isn’t likely to come from construction sites, but the territory’s mining industry, said Kurt Dieckmann, director of occupational health and safety, Yukon Workers’ Compensation Health and Safety Board.
“For us it is actually still in the mining industry,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of large demolitions, like large concrete buildings and stuff being demolished.”
For employers in the mining industry and other industries where silica exposure is likely, companies are required to have a plan.
“All exposures don’t lead to industrial disease,” he said. “But what we do want to know is, if there are exposures, that companies have to have a plan.”
Personal protective equipment should be used in all instances where there is the potential for exposure to silica, but the equipment shouldn’t be the company’s only line of defense against the dust.
It should be used in conjunction with other methods including engineering controls such as machines that wet down dust as its being made, said Dieckmann.
“If you’ve got only one control and it fails you’ve kind of lost.”
Like the Yukon, B.C. also requires exposure control plans. Yet, many worksites in B.C. still do not have one, said Murray.
“We are seeing more sites with plans, from large employers mostly,” he said, adding that B.C. inspectors are looking to medium and smaller employers to develop plans now to comply with the legislation and to protect their workers.
WorkSafeBC has had an awareness program about silica dust for the past three years. It’s something the province has been doing despite a lack of claims because it doesn’t want silicosis to become the asbestos of the future.
“Just because we haven’t seen the claims in the systems yet, does not mean to say you are not going to see claims in the future,” he said. “And you have to look after worker health. It’s not just about having a disease, it’s about having workers going home with the level of health to their families at the end of the day.”
Murray suspects one of the reasons for such low numbers is misdiagnosis.
“A lot of the time we feel it’s being misdiagnosed because… we don’t have the correlation between how many workers and the types of people being exposed versus the number of claims in the system.”
Workers may go to the doctor when they don’t feel well. The doctor will ask if the worker smokes and, if the response is yes, then silicosis may not be discovered, said Murray.
“Automatically the doctor says ‘It’s just smoking you’ve got to cut down on your smoking’,” he said. “But realistically a lot of the time it’s not just smoking that’s doing that. Some of the times it can actually be silica dust as part of a daily routine in the workplace.”
But the situation may not be as bad as it seems despite the high exposure rates Murray describes.
A 2010 study from the UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research found data that silicosis incidence decreased from 2.3 cases to 0.3 cases per 100,000 people from 1992 to 2006.
The study took data from physician visits, hospital discharge and workers’ compensation data, said one of the study’s authors, Paul Demers, who is now the director the Occupational Cancer Research Centre, in Toronto.
“What we see are the rates have been dropping over time, that silicosis isn’t as common now as it used to be,” he said.
“We know that compensation doesn’t catch every case and probably catches only the worst cases and, even then, it’s based upon whether a person tries to file for compensation or not and the co-operation with their physician and other factors like that.”
“Certainly there are more cases out there than you would suspect just by looking at death certificates or by dealing with workers’ compensation,” he said. “We saw evidence that there is still a lot of silicosis but what we did confirm is that in fact the rates of silicosis are dropping, even when you look at those other sources of data.”
The site isn’t using the right measures in the area to ensure proper ventilation, workers aren’t wearing the right personal protective equipment and they are working long hours, trying to get a project finished. All the while exposing themselves to silica dust, said Colin Murray, the senior manager or prevention and occupational disease initiatives for WorkSafeBC.
Yet, every year in British Columbia claims related to exposure to crystalline silica — a dust that comes from disturbed rock — barely trickle in. The number of claims related to the hazard sit at single digits in the province’s claim reporting system, said Murray.
“We have very few claims for silica in our system, but we know there’s far more people getting exposed to silica dust because we see it,” he said. “Our officers are out there, inspectors are out there, they’re seeing it every day at these bad work locations.”
Silicosis is a disease caused by the prolonged breathing of crystalline silica dust. The fine particles deposited in the lungs cause thickening and scarring of lung tissue. Crystalline silica exposure has also been linked to lung cancer, according to WorkSafeBC.
Construction functions including sawing concrete, demolition, cutting or dressing stone, renovating façades, hydro blasting concrete and dry sweeping are among the activities WorkSafeBC has identified as possibly hazardous, where employees could be exposed to silica dust.
B.C. has had a flurry of activity in the construction sector of across the province, especially in the last three to four years. On a daily basis, there are people grinding and drilling and doing other tasks that cause silica dust, said Murray.
Silica and mining
In the Yukon, the risk of exposure isn’t likely to come from construction sites, but the territory’s mining industry, said Kurt Dieckmann, director of occupational health and safety, Yukon Workers’ Compensation Health and Safety Board.
“For us it is actually still in the mining industry,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of large demolitions, like large concrete buildings and stuff being demolished.”
For employers in the mining industry and other industries where silica exposure is likely, companies are required to have a plan.
“All exposures don’t lead to industrial disease,” he said. “But what we do want to know is, if there are exposures, that companies have to have a plan.”
Personal protective equipment should be used in all instances where there is the potential for exposure to silica, but the equipment shouldn’t be the company’s only line of defense against the dust.
It should be used in conjunction with other methods including engineering controls such as machines that wet down dust as its being made, said Dieckmann.
“If you’ve got only one control and it fails you’ve kind of lost.”
Like the Yukon, B.C. also requires exposure control plans. Yet, many worksites in B.C. still do not have one, said Murray.
“We are seeing more sites with plans, from large employers mostly,” he said, adding that B.C. inspectors are looking to medium and smaller employers to develop plans now to comply with the legislation and to protect their workers.
WorkSafeBC has had an awareness program about silica dust for the past three years. It’s something the province has been doing despite a lack of claims because it doesn’t want silicosis to become the asbestos of the future.
“Just because we haven’t seen the claims in the systems yet, does not mean to say you are not going to see claims in the future,” he said. “And you have to look after worker health. It’s not just about having a disease, it’s about having workers going home with the level of health to their families at the end of the day.”
Murray suspects one of the reasons for such low numbers is misdiagnosis.
“A lot of the time we feel it’s being misdiagnosed because… we don’t have the correlation between how many workers and the types of people being exposed versus the number of claims in the system.”
Workers may go to the doctor when they don’t feel well. The doctor will ask if the worker smokes and, if the response is yes, then silicosis may not be discovered, said Murray.
“Automatically the doctor says ‘It’s just smoking you’ve got to cut down on your smoking’,” he said. “But realistically a lot of the time it’s not just smoking that’s doing that. Some of the times it can actually be silica dust as part of a daily routine in the workplace.”
But the situation may not be as bad as it seems despite the high exposure rates Murray describes.
A 2010 study from the UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research found data that silicosis incidence decreased from 2.3 cases to 0.3 cases per 100,000 people from 1992 to 2006.
The study took data from physician visits, hospital discharge and workers’ compensation data, said one of the study’s authors, Paul Demers, who is now the director the Occupational Cancer Research Centre, in Toronto.
“What we see are the rates have been dropping over time, that silicosis isn’t as common now as it used to be,” he said.
“We know that compensation doesn’t catch every case and probably catches only the worst cases and, even then, it’s based upon whether a person tries to file for compensation or not and the co-operation with their physician and other factors like that.”
“Certainly there are more cases out there than you would suspect just by looking at death certificates or by dealing with workers’ compensation,” he said. “We saw evidence that there is still a lot of silicosis but what we did confirm is that in fact the rates of silicosis are dropping, even when you look at those other sources of data.”
