No ban on popular bench tops despite mounting health concerns for workers who make them

Friday, 23 April 2021

The days of paper masks are long gone in safety-conscious workshops making engineered stone kitchen and bathroom bench tops, but the legacy of historic dust exposure is causing health problems for workers.

WorkSafe is clamping down on safety standards at businesses making engineered stone bench tops, but there are no plans to ban the popular product.

Engineered stone made from crushed quartz and resin accounts for up to half the New Zealand kitchen and bathroom bench top market, but the fine dust produced during cutting, sanding and polishing contains high levels of silica which causes accelerated silicosis, an incurable and fast developing lung disease.

Out of 113 engineered stone fabricators identified by WorkSafe, 75 have received enforcement notices over the past six months for safety breaches such as failing to control dust exposure, providing poor respiratory equipment and inadequately monitoring the health of workers.

An Australian Dust Diseases Task Force has suggested a ban on artificial stone may be necessary if proposals to tackle accelerated silicosis fail, but its New Zealand counterpart has yet to go that far.

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An estimated 60,000 slabs of engineered stone are imported into New Zealand annually for use in kitchen and bathroom bench tops, and wall linings for commercial premises.

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WorkSafe says there are about 450 potentially exposed workers out there, and so far ACC has received 85 claims for accelerated silicosis, most of them lodged in the past six months.

The youngest claimant was 19 and the oldest 74, and the vast majority were men.

To date fewer than four claims had been accepted, 31 were under investigation and 45 had been withdrawn or declined.

Dust produced during polishing, sanding and grinding of engineered stone has been linked to accelerated silicosis, an incurable lung disease. Fabricators are being encouraged to take precautions to reduce worker exposure to the dust which contains much higher levels of silica than natural stone.

The NZ Dust Diseases Task Force was set up to advise WorkSafe, the Ministry of Health and ACC on a “clinical pathway” for at risk workers, and WorkSafe acting general manager health and technical services Api Poutasi said it has not recommended halting engineered stone imports.

He said safety standards appeared to be improving with just three prohibition notices ordering an immediate stop to unsafe activities issued during recent business inspections, compared with 21 in 2019. Nine fabricators visited had since exited the industry.

The New Zealand Engineered Stone Advisory Group represents most major importers and distributors of engineered stone, and chair Mike Arthur said they did not believe a ban was necessary because the product could be safely fabricated using the correct processes and equipment.

The advisory group and health and safety consultancy Impac Services received $300,000 from ACC to set up a voluntary accreditation programme encouraging safe work practices, and it hopes to accredit 130 fabricators this year.

At a bare minimum, workshops will have to show they cut most of their stone wet to reduce dust, and they must ensure workers are properly fitted with suitable protective equipment.

Impac Services director Tom Reeves said he was aware of engineered stone suppliers carrying out spot checks of fabricators and refusing to supply those with unacceptable safety standards.

Computerised equipment for wet cutting stone could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars which was an issue for some small operators.

“They aren’t investing in the right fabrication equipment from a health protection point of view, and they are able to undercut those fabricators making the effort,” Reeves said.

ACC chief clinical officer Dr John Robson said it was common for people with silicosis to be asymptomatic, and he encouraged anyone with at least six months exposure in the past 10 years to lodge a claim and get assessed.

Occupational health professionals unhappy at the system for identifying affected workers say it is far too slow, and does not provide sufficient support to those who discover they have a life-threatening condition.

They argue time is of the essence because Australian stone masons in their twenties had been diagnosed with accelerated silicosis after less than a year in the job.

Occupational health nurse Heidi Börner is part of a group lobbying Health Minister Andrew Little to have occupational health specialists visit workplaces, rather than relying on engineered stone workers going to their GP for an ACC referral, and those who had left the industry should also be traced.

Börner said that based on Australian data, between 20 and 30 per cent of workers exposed to silica dust are likely to have already developed accelerated silicosis, and the same proportion of this group was likely to die of the disease.