New safety rules and regs are on their way to protect tradies handling hundreds of products that contain 1 per cent (or more) crystalline silica.
Engineered stone – dubbed the ‘killer stone’ after it caused hundreds of tradies to contract fatal lung cancer – is finally being forced off most job sites after a ban came into effect earlier this month.
But, while tradies have been laser-focused on what this means for legacy contracts and future work (thanks to an overly convoluted state-by-state rollout), heads are now turning toward the strict safety rules hitting the industry in the coming months for hundreds of everyday products on the job site.
As of September 1, new Model Work Health Safety (WHS) Regulations will ban the uncontrolled processing of a crystalline silica substance (CSS) (such as cutting, drilling, and grinding) in any material that contains at least 1 per cent silica by weight.
This includes everyday construction products like asphalt, cement, mortar, grout, concrete, fibre cement, and bricks that litter almost every construction site in the country.
That means no more cowboy concreters behind the saw without any PPE (we all know one). After this year, every grind, cut, and saw will be under the all-seeing eye of safety officers, with ‘high-risk’ scenarios requiring a written silica control plan, specialised training, air quality monitoring, and health monitoring.
With thousands of tradies working side-by-side with these products every day on the tools, the safety changes are shaping up to massively change how general day-to-day tasks like cutting tiles, trimming bricks and drilling into fibre cement are performed.
What is changing?
While no official guidance material on the impending changes is available yet, here’s what the current WHS regulations said in June for working with silica dust.
Any processing of a CSS material must be controlled by either isolation, wet dust suppression or on-tool extraction, depending on the risk of the situation.
If, despite using at least one of the above controls, a person is still at risk of being exposed to silica, the person must be provided with respiratory protective equipment (RPE).
These processes include:
- Using a power tool to crush, cut, grind, trim, sand, abrasive polish or drill a CSS
- Excavating CSS material
- Quarrying CSS material
- Mechanical screening CSS material
- Tunnelling through CSS material
- Or any process that exposes, or is likely to expose, a person to respirable crystalline silica during the manufacture or handling of a CSS.
A Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU) must also carry out a risk assessment for the processing of CSS to determine if the processing is high risk and keep a record of the assessment.
If it is a high-risk situation, then the PCBU must:
- Prepare a silica risk control plan (a Safe Work Method Statement can be used).
- Train workers about the risks of silica and keep training records.
- Undertake air monitoring.
If the resulting airborne concentration of silica exceeds the workplace exposure standard (WES) of 0.05 mg/m3 over an eight-hour working day, the result must be reported to the regulator.
These rules may change state-by-state closer to the cut-off date, so be sure to check with your local regulator about what is and isn’t required.
Another messy rollout
Following in the footsteps of the ban on engineered stone, the implementation of these safety rules is anything but simple.
The official conmencemnt date does still stand on September 1, BUT the provisions won’t commence until they are adopted by each state and territory.
To date, no jurisdiction has adopted the measures.
With only two months on the clock and no news yet form safety regulators or state officials for when exact cut off dates will be, tradies can expect another confusing regulatory sh*tstorm heading their way.
