A new study has claimed that more than 1,000 workers could die each year due to "inadequate safeguards" in workplaces when dealing with dust known to cause cancer and other diseases.

Many more lives are also being put at risk by the lack of safeguards, academics at the University of Stirling said.

Respirable crystalline silica is a dust created during work operations involving stone, rock, concrete, brick, mortar, plaster and industrial sand. It is second only to asbestos as a cause of occupational cancer deaths and exposure to it via inhalation can cause other illnesses such as silicosis, tuberculosis, kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and arthritis.

The study, carried out by Professor Rory O'Neill and Professor Andrew Watterson of the University's Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety Research Group, is in response to the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) reluctance to tighten the current silica exposure standard. This is what regulates the amount of silica workers can safely be exposed to in the workplace.

-- Advertisement --

The HSE has previously argued that technological limitations make monitoring below the current exposure standard impractical.

Professor Rory O'Neill argued: "The HSE says monitoring technology isn't good enough yet to measure lower levels of silica dust, so we must stick with the same deadly, higher but measurable standard. It is wrong on both counts. The increasingly toothless safety watchdog is regurgitating the line promoted by the industry lobby, placing vested interests above workers' health.

"Modern science can obtain and analyse dust on Mars. If HSE's science can't obtain and analyse adequately one of the most commonly encountered and deadly workplace dust exposures here on Earth, you have to ask who on Earth is the watchdog protecting?"

In America, the equivalent of the HSE – the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) – is also arguing for a change in the rules that would see the exposure standard to silica halved. It claims that monitoring a tighter exposure standard is technically feasible and would save thousands of lives.

Professor Andrew Watterson added: "OSHA says a tighter standard is perfectly possible, can be monitored in the workplace and would save hundreds of lives and billions of dollars each year. Canadian provinces already monitor and enforce a tighter standard still.

"The current lax legal occupational exposure standard in the UK guarantees another generation will be blighted by entirely preventable, deadly and disabling conditions. Yet the HSE is actively promoting an industry-supported but unsustainable argument in the UK and in Europe that the current standard must stay."

(JP/IT)