New Zealand’s biggest fabricator of engineered stone benchtops says some companies in the industry “need to be investigated”, following more evidence of dangerous conditions.
The Herald this week revealed a damning report done for the Ministry of Health, which outlined unsafe conditions at some workshops, including dust onfloors and surfaces, which when breathed in can cause deadly disease.
Reacting to those findings, Cam Paranthoiene, co-owner of AGB Stone, which employs more than 130 people working across six factories, said around 80 per cent of the industry “operate with good systems in place”.
The remaining companies “aren’t necessarily following safe practices … they are the ones that need to be investigated”, he said, and a voluntary accreditation scheme needs to be strengthened and made mandatory.
Australia is moving towards a world-first ban on engineered stone, which is a man-made product that dominates the kitchen and bench-top market.
There is growing awareness that prolonged inhalation of its dust can cause silicosis, an incurable and sometimes fatal disease that scars the lungs.
Common symptoms, which don’t appear until after the disease develops, include severe shortness of breath, a persistent cough, fatigue and weight loss.
Silica is found in stone, rock, sand, clay and many building materials, but dust from engineered stone is more dangerous, because the products have contained up to 95 per cent silica, compared to 2 to 50 per cent in natural stones.
Workers should be protected by strict safety measures, including cutting the stone only when it is wet, to stop dust being created, powerful ventilation systems, and top-line masks.
In New Zealand, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and WorkSafe will report to the new Workplace Relations and Safety minister on regulatory options by the end of this month.
Government agencies partly funded a recent pilot study, in which occupational health nurses visited five workshops in Auckland and Wellington.
Some of the unnamed businesses that volunteered to take part were accredited through an industry-led, voluntary programme that specifies minimum safety guidelines including wet-cutting of stone with appropriate PPE and dust-extraction systems.
The nurses reported “evidence of a significant amount of dust”, the report stated. Dry-cutting was happening in a worksite that had been “gold” accredited, with “visible dust present on surfaces in all areas of the workshop”.
Paranthoiene said he’d now asked to be part of the team overseeing the accreditation, “because I don’t think it is actually targeted at practical health and safety - audits must be ‘a day in the life’ and not staged events and auditors need to understand the difference”.
It’s totally unacceptable and unnecessary for any fabricator to be dry-cutting, he said.
“It’s really bloody disappointing that a person who was gold accredited, spent all that time, effort and money proving to an auditor that they could fabricate safely, and then when the auditor is gone, they turn around and can’t be bothered following the rule.”
A worker at an AGB Stone factory - engineered stone should only be cut or polished when it is wet to stop dust.
The industry could help WorkSafe ensure every fabricator is audited once a year, Paranthoiene said.
Engineered stone is not manufactured in New Zealand. Like others in the industry, AGB Stone is phasing out its supply of engineered stone with a content of more than 40 per cent silica.
However, the Safe Work Australia government agency has recommended a total ban, concluding, “there is no toxicological evidence of a ‘safe’ threshold of crystalline silica content, or that the other components of lower silica engineered stone products (eg. amorphous silica including recycled glass, feldspar) do not pose additional risks to worker health”.
Asked about this, Paranthoiene said, “I’m not a scientist, but manufacturers would have not spent tens of millions of dollars developing these new products if they weren’t confident that they were a safer alternative.”
A decision by Australian state and federal governments was due last week, but has been delayed. Major manufacturer Caesarstone has launched a lobbying and advertising campaign there, warning a total ban is “unnecessary” and “excessive”.
