Silica is not just a blessing and a curse in the United States and Canada. Our former occupiers are dealing with the same wonderful but dangerous material.

Silica, which comes from silicon, which is found very abundantly in beach sand, has revolutionized a lot of industry over the last 100 years, and has a lot of very valuable uses today – not the least of which is as the source material for many of our favorite computer processing chips in our various digital devices.

{Image courtesy of Flickr user Melissa Dinwiddie via a Creative Commons license]

{Image courtesy of Flickr user Melissa Dinwiddie via a Creative Commons license]

While silica is one of the great marvels in industry, it is also one of those materials that is a double-edged sword. This post will look at the side of the sword where silica has some dangers and risks for those in industry who work around the material, especially silica dust.

The United States and Canada have been doing their part ot mitigate silica dust contamination in many of their industrial sites, and now the attention is being turned to one of our common allies – the United Kingdom, where silica dust has caused many problems with workers inhaling it or being otherwise exposed to it regularly in less-than-optimal ventilation.

This has caused a dangerous situation in industry in the U.K., serious enough that the Institution for Occupational Health and Safety (IOSH) brought together industry and safety experts to deal with the growing problem of cancer of the lung coming from extended exposure to silica dust on worksites.

It was reported recently by IOSH that 800 U.K. residents die each year from lung cancer caused by regular and excessive exposure to silica dust, with an estimated 900 new cases being diagnosed each year. Eight hundred die each year from something that 900 people get. That is the kind of job turnover that no one wants!

The difficulty has been education and effective controls, according to experts. Most people think nothing about dust; it occurs naturally in virtually every environment, and unless you are a hospital or medical clinic or laboratory, there isn’t much thought given to dust. But wherever silica is, there will be dust and that dust could very well be dangerous. The goal of the get-together for IOSH was to work on ways to educate workers, supervisors and managers about silica dust, it’s prevalence in various industries and the risks and hazards of exposure to it.

In addition, supervisors, managers and safety officers need to be educated on the various control mechanisms that mitigate silica dust exposure and learn how to implement these controls and make them part of the safety environment in the industrial worksite.

The result is expected to be producing safety worksites and lowering those silicosis numbers significantly int the coming years. A series of resources about this can be found here, along with a YouTube video about the IOSH discussions.

In related news closer to home, OSHA in the U.S. this year passed a series of rules designed to further limit worker exposure to silica dust by lowering the exposure limit. The claim that this lower limit will save 600 lives a year and prevent as many as 900 cases each year (sound familiar?). While the notion is noble, several industries are claiming the new limit is too stringent to be practical, much less feasible, and they have asked the courts to get involved by petitioning to block the rules. You can access resources about these new rules here.