Silicosis.
The scourge of miners both above and below ground.
And according to the Australian Workers Union (AWU), this problem is re-appearing.
The AWU feels so strongly that silicosis is re-emerging that it organised an information session in Kalgoorlie to educate miners on the disease.
Silicosis is an lung disease which is caused by repeated and prolonged exposure and inhalation of relatively high levels of free silica dust.
Exposure typically occurs when rocks containing silica are ground up during mining or quarrying opera
tions; if inhaled the dust can cause scarring in the lungs.
While there are often no outward symptoms of the disease, breathlessness and coughing can occur.
Silicosis also has the potential to cause chronic respiratory disease.
While the causes of silicosis are well known, according to a recent Australian Senate enquiry, there is still a lack of understanding about the actual size of the problem.
Throughout the industry, it is not known whether the current standards of risk minimisation for exposure to inhalable silica are enough to eliminate the risk of the disease completely.
What is known is that particles that pose the greatest risk are in the respirable range, and are extremely fine at a size of 2.5 µm or even less than 1 µm.
On top of this, there is concern that existing exposure standards are not providing safe levels of protection for mine workers.
Early research has shown that current standards for dust protection are not being met in some mines.
It also showed that many mine workers have a misunderstanding as to what is a potentially hazardous
dusty environment and what is not.
While a mine may have high levels of airborne dust, monitoring has shown that some environments actually have fairly low levels of inhalable dust, hence low levels of respirable silica.
While the majority of the onus is on mine managers to reduce dust exposure through dust suppression measures such as wetting and proper mine ventilation, simple things such as winding up a window when working in air conditioned cabs can severely reduce exposure to inhalable dust.
The World Health Organisation aims to eradicate silicosis by 2030.