Silicosis is irreversible and it is being diagnosed in men in their thirties. Pick the task and the tool.
1. Do not create the dust. Order it cut to size, use a pre-cut product, snap rather than cut, or use a method that does not generate respirable dust at all.
2. Capture it at the tool. On-tool water suppression or on-tool extraction with an H-class vacuum. This is where most of the reduction comes from.
3. Keep people away. Isolate the work, exclude everyone not doing it, ventilate.
4. Then a respirator - fitted to the individual face, fit-tested, and clean-shaven to seal. A respirator on a beard does not work, no matter how good the filter is.
Never dry cut, and never dry sweep. Dry sweeping puts back into the air what took all day to settle.
Concrete cutting and core drilling, concrete grinding and polishing, and silica and engineered stone work each have their own SWMS in the libraries, plus a permit in the Permit-to-Work Library. Health monitoring records belong in the Registers Library.
The Australian workplace exposure standard for respirable crystalline silica is 0.05 mg/m³ over eight hours. This tool does not estimate your exposure in mg/m³ - that requires actual air monitoring by an occupational hygienist, and anyone who tells you a number from a dropdown is guessing. What it does is tell you which controls are expected for the task you picked, and when monitoring is triggered. General information, not legal advice. Duties for engineered stone differ and have changed - check the current rules for your state.
Obras Onsite Pty Ltd · ABN 54 698 828 821
The tools above are free and yours to use. When you need the paperwork behind them reviewed by someone who has run sites, Obras HSE Services is a live consulting business in south-east Queensland.