Silica Dust: The Deadly Workplace Hazard You Can't Afford to Ignore

Code of Practise and the Safety Regulator

As of May 1st of this year, the Code of Practise (QLD) for Managing respirable crystalline silica dust exposure in construction and manufacturing of construction elements comes into effect. Under Section 274 of the Workplace Health and Safety Act (WHS Act), this Code of Practise has been approved for use.

An approved code in the legal sense can be enforced by the safety regulator when an inspector either forms a reasonable belief or beyond reasonable doubt determination that the Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU) aka your business, has contravened a section within the legislation. Using Section 26A of the WHS Act, an inspector may enforce any part of the Code of Practise to find you culpable.

As a PCBU and this Code of Practise under Section 26A, you must:

- comply with the code of practise; or

- manage hazards and risks arising from the work carried out as part of the PCBU in a way that is different to the code but provides equivalent to higher standard of work health and safety required in the code.

With a new Code of Practise comes new enforcement action from the safety regulator (e.g., Workplace Health and Safety Queensland). Inspectors will be coming to a variety of workplaces after the grace period, and will ensure compliance is being met. To avoid costly penalties, please contact us for an assessment of your workplace and control measures.

What is Respirable Crystalline Silica (RCS) Dust?

Crystalline Silica is a common mineral found in building products, such as:

- bricks,

- concrete and cement,

- engineered stone,

- natural stone (granite, marble, sandstone),

- fibre cement products.

RCS can be generated when working with these materials when such tasks like cutting, sawing, drilling, grinding, polishing and crushing are undertaken. Other tasks like dry sweeping or using compressed air can disturb settled dust containing RCS and making it airborne.

Why is RCS so dangerous?

RCS is dangerous because it is easy to breathe in, it hangs around for several hours in the air without ventilation, you cannot see it and breathing in RCS can lead to serious lung disease, including silicosis and lung cancer. RCS is a serious, incurable, irreversible and progressive lung disease affecting the lungs. It does not discriminate on ages of workers and can be categorised into either acute, accelerated or chronic silicosis. At all levels, workers will experience difficulty breathing, shortness of breath and scarring on the lungs. That is a risk you cannot afford to take.

Hierarchy of Controls and silica dust control measures

Section 36 of the WHS Regulation 2011 (QLD) contains the Hierarchy of Controls, which is a legislative risk management diagram which identifies how a PCBU should manage hazards and risks in the workplace. The PCBU or Duty Holder must look to eliminate in the first instance, and only use lower order control measures when they cannot control the risks to health and safety with the higher order controls. A combination may be used to minimise a risk, so far as is reasonably practicable, if a single control measure is not sufficient.

Typically, if the silica dust cannot be eliminated or substituted, the PCBU may consider a combination of engineering controls (e.g. water suppression or H-Class HEPA filtered vaccum dust extraction), administrative controls (e.g. Safe Work Method Statements) and Personal Protective Equipment (e.g. Respiratory Protective Equipment).

What is Respiratory Protective Equipment?

Respiratory Protective Equipment, otherwise known as RPE, is a type of personal protective equipment (PPE) designed to protect the wearer from breathing in hazardous fumes, dust, chemicals or the like. There are many forms of RPE, including non-powered varieties P1, P2, P3 dust masks, and powered varieties being powered air purifying respirators (PAPR), typically found in mining and tunnelling.

Section 44 of the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 places obligations on a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) to ensure personal protective equipment (PPE) (including respirators) is a suitable size, fit and reasonably comfortable for the worker who is to use or wear it.

This will require you as the duty holder and PCBU to have all of your workers fit-tested to wear a suitably sized respiratory for the nature of the work.

At a glimpse, your requirements as a PCBU in the construction industry

It is highly likely that the workplace exposure standard (WES) would be exceeded when:

- using a power tool to cut, crush, scale, grind, saw, sand or polish materials (known as processing) that contain 1% or more RCS, or

- no controls are being used, including the use of water to suppress RCS.

For that reason, the PCBU must not allow workers to undertake any uncontrolled dry cutting or processing that contain 1% or more crystalline silica. If you intend on using products that contain RCS 1% or greater, you must utilise control measures.

Tables 2.1 and 2.2 in the new Code of Practise outlines what is expected of a PCBU. If in the last 12 months a worker has undertaken work which involves using Respiratory Protection Equipment (RPE) for greater than 30-days in a year, the PCBU must provide health monitoring. It is expected that this process be repeated yearly for the workers who will be exposed to RCS 1% or greater and that are required to wear RPE to control the risk of silica inhalation for greater than 30-days in a year. There are instances where RPE is not required to be worn, and health monitoring is therefore not required.

If you're unsure as a business owner whether you have the correct control measures, documentation or processes in place to manage RCS in your workplace, please reach out via the Contact Us section of the website.

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