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Silica Sand Health Scare at New Racetrack
Published: March 04, 2005
A HEALTH scare has been raised over material to be used in a proposed new all-weather track at Musselburgh racecourse which has been linked to lung disease and cancer.
Racecourse authorities behind the £12 million scheme were quick to deny any danger branding residents’ fears as “Classic scaremongering.”
But information on East Lothian Council’s own planning website contains stark warnings from the Government’s Health and Safety Executive on silca sand which would be used as the base for any new track.
It would be covered by rubber chippings – but concerned residents fear it could be curned up by the flying hooves of racehorses and escape into the atmosphere polluting their homes.
“Professional opinion suggests that the rubber-chip covering will offer little or no protection against the regular churning up of the silica sub-surface by horses hooves and former East Lothian Councillor Roger Knox who heads up the Ravensheugh Residents Association protest.
“The resultant dust will present an unquestionable danger to local residents being subject to wind dispersal.”
Residents, he said, already had experience of the dispersal of the original power station fly dust from the Lagoons.
“This potential hazard is clearly shown on the Environmental Impact Study and the fact that they have been totally silent of this issue and not highlighted it for public attention is a very grave indictment of their entire attitude on this planning application,” he said.
Mr Knox said that he, along with other individuals and organisations in the town would be including the potential danger from silicon in their objections to planning permission for the project.
Racecourse manager Bill Farnsworth said: “This is a straightforward case of scaremongering and does not bare scrutiny.
“A number of companies will be asked to tender for the supply of an all weather surface and all will have to exceed the most stringent health and safety standards.
“These claims smack of mischievousness and should not be taken seriously.
"These types of all weather surfaces have been in use for many years at tracks in the UK and United States and to my knowledge have never caused any health concerns."
Planning Case Officer Neil Sutherland said he had not yet received any objections based on silica sand but would be consulting widely on the application when the proper time came.
The council’s public health officials would be consulted and if they felt they had not the proper expertise, the Health and Safety Executive might be consulted.
The HSE warns that breathing in the very fine dust can lead to the development of silicosis.
“This involves scarring of the lung tissue and can lead to breathing difficulties,” they say. “Exposure to very high concentrations over a relatively short period can cause acute silicosis resulting in rapidly progressive breathlessness and death within a few months of onset.”
More common, say the HSE, is progressive silicosis, usually because of exposure over a longer period. This causes fibrosis, hardening and scarring of the lung tissue with a consequent loss of lung function.
“Victims are likely to suffer shortness of breath and will find it difficult or impossible to walk even short distances or upstairs. The effect continues to develop after exposure has stopped, and is irreversible.
“Victims usually become house or bed-bound and often die prematurely due to heart failure.
“Silica may be linked to lung cancer. Precautions taken to control the risk of fibrosis will serve to control the risk of lung cancer.”
People working with silica have to wear masks and protective clothing.
Musselburgh Community Council and many local bodies have already objected to the plans for an all-weather floodlit track complaining that it would seriously affect golf links, believed to be the oldest playing links in the world – in the centre of the track. Objections also centre on the effects of lighting pylons on local residents.
Chairman John Caldwell told councillors that even if East Lothian Council – four members of which sit on the Racecourse Committee – he believed the final decision would rest with the Scottish Executive.
SC Notices On Safety Measures For Silicon Workers
March 27, 2006 - The Supreme Court today issued notices to the Centre and the state of Haryana on a petition seeking proper safety measures for workers working in silicon industry at Palli in Haryana.
A bench comprising chief justice Y.K. Sabharwal, Mr. Justice C.K.
Thakker and Mr. Justice R.V. Raveendran issued notices on a PIL filed by People's Rights and Social Res. Centre alleging that thousands of workers were falling victim to the killer silicosis.
The disease is progressive fatal disease and is detected after ten long years, the PIL said.
Aparna Bhatt, counsel for the petitioner, told the court that the industries were shifted from Lal Kuan in Delhi in 1992 to Palli. The workers are told to cover their faces with cloth but silicon gets clogged in the body. She also referred to expert study reports which said that millions of workers had died due to Silicosis around the world.
Chamber assumes more responsibility for mining health and safety
Millions set aside for mine safety
The tripartite Mine Health and Safety Council (MHSC) reports that around 56% of all mining fatalities in South Africa, during 2006 occurred at gold... Slow progress in haltin fatality rate worries Chamber The mining industry is extremely concerned about the slow progress towards achieving a 20% annual reduction in mining fatalities, says the Chamber... SA mining industry falls well short of 2006 safety target Miners must invest more money in mine safety – NUM Gold miners, unions dig in for another round of wage talks
By: Neal Goldwyer
18 May 07 - Leadership and knowledge sharing could drive occu- pational health and safety improvements in South African mining as exemplary performances across the industry prove that future safety targets are achievable.
Late last year, the South African Chamber of Mines of South Africa established a high-level leadership, technology and best practice grouping tasked with analysing where improvements in the industry could be made.
Two broad areas covering both health and safety (H&S) were identified, namely leadership and continual improvement through learning.
The Chamber is also currently undertaking an in-depth study into the reasons for deteriorations in safety performance, especially in the gold-mining sector, which has fallen behind agreed safety milestones for the past two years.
The first major aspect of the task force’s study is a comprehensive literature review into developments in mine leadership and H&S leadership in particular.
The Chamber is also writing up case studies about its recent one-day tours of different commodity mines.
“These are ‘pockets of excellence mines’ that are doing marvellous things when it comes to safety. Some have reported zero fatalities over five years,” says Chamber safety and sustainable development adviser Sietse van der Woude.
The Chamber visited five unnamed mines across the coal, gold, platinum, diamond and manganese sectors. Observations and insights gleaned from all levels of the workforce hierarchy will be used by the Chamber to develop a practical toolkit that industry leaders can use to effect H&S improvements in their own companies.
This dovetails with the taskforce’s commitment to continual improvement through learning. The Chamber hopes to establish a mechanism whereby the technologies, best practices and implementation strategies being used by industry leaders can be migrated to other sectors and mines whose performance is unacceptable.
It is not the case that there is no shared communication, says Van der Woude, but there are barriers to implementing the lessons learnt. These include resistance to innovations not developed in-house and skills and technology shortages.
The Chamber has commissioned serious research into what these barriers are, and how they can be overcome to grow these pockets of excellence.
In 2005, the mining industry as a whole recorded its best ever improvement in its fatality frequency rate (FFR). At 16%, however, this still fell short of the 20% milestone set at the biennial Mine Health and Safety Council (MHSC) summit in 2003.
At the summit, mining industry representatives, the Chamber, the Department of Labour and the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) made a commitment to bring South African occupational health and safety standards in line with international benchmarks by 2013. In order to translate the general zero-harm stance into tangible goals, industrywide targets of a 20% reduction in the FFR a year were set.
“I think that was a bold statement for the South African industry to have made at the time because of our context – very deep level mines, labourintensive industry, and legacy issues. There was a clear recognition by the Chamber, government and employees that the vision of zero harm would not be reached overnight,” says Van der Woude.
Although the target attracted scepticism from many quarters, he denies that it is unattainable, insisting that there are individual mining companies and sectors, like platinum and diamonds, that have achieved these targets.
Van der Woude initially regarded the gold sector’s recent poor safety record as a natural “pull back” from the laudable improvements it made in 2002 and 2003. “Gold had been driving the improvement in the industry for two years before it faced these setbacks,” he says. The DME, as custodian of statistical information relating to FFRs in the industry, has not yet confirmed the 2006 figures. Its concern is evident, however. DME Minister Buyelwa Sonjica has called a September 2007 mini indaba to discuss the unacceptably high rate of fatalities and injuries due to seismicity and rockbursts.
“My estimate is that the improvements in 2006 will have slowed somewhat, which is unfortunate,” says Van der Woude. Looking at the 2005 results and considering incidents such as the five fatalities at AngloGold Ashanti’s TauTona mine from 2006, he doubts that the gold sector will meet the 0,2 fatalities for every million-hours-worked target set for the year. A deterioration of the 2005 figure of 0,3 is expected.
The Chamber supports the minister’s call and is also taking the issue very seriously. “A monthly setback can be considered temporary, but if one takes a longer-term view of the situation, these incidents are cause for concern,” he says.
A key issue is that of seismicity, which has all the predictability of the weather and is the bane of deep-level mining especially. The Chamber is planning a dedicated study in preparation for the mini indaba. “Seismicity is the Achilles heel of the mine safety field,” says Van der Woude.
The outcome of the mini indaba will be presented at the next MHSC summit in October.
If decisions on the safety front are inhibited by delayed statistical information, the lack of health indicators is even more troubling. As it is, data about occupational- related ailments are always lag indicators – they register problems too late for anything save remedial intervention to be done.
“What we are emphasising as part of the zero-harm policy in industry is the need for more lead indicators,” explains Chamber health adviser Fazel Randera.
As an example of lead indicators that can help tackle noise- induced hearing loss (NIHL), he says that the Chamber has begun collating data about what is being done in the industry to attenuate mechanical noise, which areas are noisiest, and how many workers are exposed to hazardous conditions.
“It is harder to focus on silicosis, tuberculosis and NIHL on an ongoing basis as they develop over a 20-year or 25-year period and do not affect every worker,” Randera says.
If the Chamber is to help industry reach zero-harm milestones, he says, it will be through a focus on the design and maintenance of the working environment. The causal mechanisms of these diseases must be managed.
“The Chamber needs to be able to advise very clearly and carefully on what equipment is being installed in the new mines coming on stream; it will take time to effect industrywide compliance in long-established mines,” he says.
Randera expects that increased awareness on the part of workers and managers will come to define the industry. However, this will depend on the provision of better data about the industry as a whole.
When the Mine Health and Safety Act was passed in 1996, the Chamber’s responsibility for data collection on H&S in the mining industry fell to the DME.
“It has been ten years since the new Act and it is high time that a comprehensive, analytical set of historic statistical results be presented to further H&S improve- ments in the industry,” says Randera.
The Chamber continues to raise the issue of the lack of consistent occupational data with the DME in tripartite forums. Recently, however, it has also begun to approach mining companies directly for data and for the annual reports that they are, by law, required to complete and submit to the DME. These reports contain audited statistics about their mining operations, safety procedures and occupational health programmes.
The MHSC has commissioned from the Safety in Mines Research Advisory Committee an analysis of the existing H&S databases spanning the last ten years. This will be a kind of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis of the mining industry. The Chamber hopes then to integrate the lessons learnt from medical surveillance over the years into an operational context with a view to improving working conditions, training workers to take respons-ibility, and encouraging managers and other leaders in the mining industry to approach occupational health and safety with equal determination.
Yet another source of information that Randera refers to is the database established at the sustainable development unit at the University of the Witwatersrand. This database accepts and analyses company- specific information, submitted by mining companies voluntarily at a global level, for the purpose of making international comparisons
Edited by: Laura Tyrer
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