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It’s incredible how bad tradies are at PPE. When my solar panels were being installed on my house, the electrician was happily about to drill through asbestos c
by stephen_g 3y ago
It’s incredible how bad tradies are at PPE. When my solar panels were being installed on my house, the electrician was happily about to drill through asbestos cement eave lining before I stopped him, and at least made him put on a disposable P2 respirator mask I had lying around. But he still released asbestos fibres into the air and the ceiling cavity where his colleagues were working, and will have got it on his clothes and hair. How many times had he done it completely unprotected at other people’s houses without even thinking? (Australian houses often contain AC sheeting in houses built between the 50s to the 80s)
With silica it’s a similar story, we were moving in to an older office block that again had asbestos in the ceiling tiles, and I was wearing a respirator because again electricians had drilled it in a bunch of places (inside this time, ended up going through very expensive decontamination a couple of days later including ripping out and replacing half of the brand new carpet). Anyway, I was in the server room where an air-conditioner guy was installing a split system unit, and he asked me about it and I told him what was happened. He then said something like “Oh yeah, I definitely should have been more careful with that kind of stuff when I was a young fella”, and then proceeds to start drilling through the double brick wall (to install the piping to the outdoor unit) with no mask or hearing protection… Cutting brick and concrete releases silica into the air too, most tradies just give no thought to using proper PPE…
- ktm5j 3y agoOkay well you clearly have a great life with a lot to live for, but that's not really the case for everyone. How about you don't judge people you're calling "tradies" for how they decide to live their lives.
- tinco 3y agoDid you even read the article? These people are very young, and deeply regret the way they decided to live their lives. And tradies is not some kind of slur, it's how they refer to their colleagues across the trades. And wtf is up with just assuming these people who don't wear PPE don't think they have a great life with a lot to live for, there's literally a 35yr old dude with 3 loving kids in one of the pictures of affected persons.
- kristofferR 3y agoNRK had a great article about this recently: https://www.nrk.no/vestland/xl/kvartsstovet-som-gjer-folk-sjuke_-norske-anleggsarbeidarar-risikerer-alvorleg_lungesjukdom-1.16567520 https://www.nrk.no/vestland/xl/kvartsstovet-som-gjer-folk-sj... Seems to work fine in Google Translate.
- paxys 3y agoSadly that's just the culture. I've seen apprentices laughed at by old timers and called pussies because they were taking basic precautions and wearing PPE. And then to fit in they themselves took on that same attitude.
- mathieuh 3y agoI walked past a guy using a pneumatic drill the other day. It was so loud I crossed the road to get away from it and my ears were ringing for a while after I'd passed him. He wasn't wearing any form of ear protection at all. He can't have been much older than 20.
- gattr 3y agoHe could have been using small earplugs - I hope!
- extraduder_ire 3y agoI think I permanently trained myself out of that by looking at some arc welding when I was about 8 years old. Looked pretty, and brighter than anything I had seen before. (sun, lightning, lasers, etc) Didn't seem to hurt or cause any immediate issues. Realized how wrong I was when I woke up the next morning, felt like I had gritty sand in my eyes for two or three days.
- piperswe 3y agoIt hurts me when I see my tradie trainee husband (at school to be an auto mechanic) skip PPE in places he really shouldn't (e.g. latex gloves when handling carcinogenic fluids). I don't really know as I can do much other than state my objections to deaf ears though.
- _3u10 3y agoThose fluids are carcinogenic to drink, not to get on your skin. Don’t be a scold, show the benefit, which is it’s easier to clean up after work. Also latex gloves cause latex allergies frequently, vinyl gloves can be a good alternative.
- drivebyadvice 3y agoThe talk in the trade is that asbestos is way overblown and it mostly affected people installing it in ships for the Navy. They worked in tight spaces with lots of asbestos in the air, lining the ship and its pipes with it, all day every day. I don't know how true that is but I've heard the same exact story from several different contractors. I do know that getting those linoleum/asbestos floor tiles ripped up will cost you a lot to get somebody to do it for you, but there aren't any real safety precautions you need to take since it isn't getting airborne, it's basically just pure profit for the contractor.
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y agoOfficial statistics (in Spain, which is where I'm from and have read them) don't agree with that. Plenty of construction workers and various related workers, like plumbers, etc. have died from asbestos. As an anecdote, you could even die from asbestos from working at a TV station... The Spanish public TV station used asbestos as insulation in stages and apparently, when there were vibrations from loud sound, applauses, etc., dust particles fell on the workers and public. A famous TV anchor, José María Íñigo, died from that, as well as other workers from the station.
- tetromino_ 3y agoThere are different varieties of asbestos. None are good for you, but some are far more deadly than others. Western European countries (including Spain, I am guessing) and Australia tended to use the most dangerous varieties of asbestos - crocidolite and amosite. By contrast, North America and ex-USSR countries used the less carcinogenic chrysotile.
- stephen_g 3y agoWhile blue asbestos was used in some applications, the vast majority of asbestos in Australian homes is chrysolite. There were (and are) still many mesothelioma and asbestos deaths in tradesmen building with chrysolite containing products here, as well as people whose only known exposure was renovation of houses containing it.
- skullone 3y agoI mean, you probably should disclose your property has asbestos to trades working on your house - and they probably would wear the right PPE. Lots of people are fine with small risks with regular materials like sheetrock on small jobs (cutting a hole or something). But really, that should've been disclosed to workers as they enter your property.
- stephen_g 3y agoI honestly don’t think it would have made a difference - he was going to drill it anyway after I stopped him, I had to ask him to please use the respirator. In the commercial case we had also very clearly told them that it was asbestos containing but there was some miscommunication to the workers, so they just drilled all these holes… Anyway, at the end of the day, while there are rules for commercial buildings to have asbestos registers, I wouldn’t expect every homeowner to know what every part of their house is made of, but at the same time, basically every building built for a period of more than 60 years in Australia contains (or contained) asbestos containing materials - so it’s a pretty scary lack of training or ignoring of the risks for somebody working in the building industry to not take even basic precautions when at least 1/3 or so of the houses these people are working in contains asbestos. For the solar guys, the eaves are the most likely place for it to exist, because even when houses have been pretty extensively renovated inside and had a lot of the AC sheeting removed indoors (as mine has), or might not have had asbestos sheeting inside originally (plaster was more expensive, so a more premium finish), it’s one part that was very likely to have still been AC sheeting (since it was mould resistant) and much less likely to have been replaced with non-asbestos fibreboard in the meantime.
- bowsamic 3y agoSadly no better here in Germany, which surprised me. In the UK health and safety is much more extreme. Here in Germany it’s rare to see workers taking any kind of safety precautions
- MandieD 3y agoMy dad, who is permanently sunburnt from his half century in construction (and wasn’t terribly into most other safety measures against abstract risks), tsk-tsks the laxity of German road crews allowing workers to wear shorts in the summer. Sturdy jeans go a long way as basic leg protection, and he couldn’t imagine any construction worker in much hotter Texas forgoing them, no matter how much they have to be yelled at about hardhats.
- bowsamic 3y agoThe main thing I noticed in Germany was open construction sites with little to protect pedestrians walking through, lack of any kind of masks when working with fumes or dust, no ear protection, and no hardhats.
- globular-toast 3y agoBut still the "real men" on UK building sites and trades shun PPE. It's just a dumb man thing. I often wonder if they think every day there's a chance of a woman seeing and thinking how manly and hot they are for not even needing wimpy protection. Here the construction vehicles have a green flashing light on to indicate that the user has a seat belt on. They get round that by just buckling up then sitting on the belt. Tbh that one seems a bit silly but there's probably a good reason for it.
- bowsamic 3y agoPerhaps, though still my experience seeing building sites in the UK still seems to have way more health and safety and risk assessments. As I said in the other comment, in Germany it's not rare at all to see road workers with heavy machinery, fumes, and dust, who are wearing no ear protection, no goggles, no mask, and no hard hat. That would be an extremely rare sight in the UK.
- dukeofdoom 3y agoThere's a lot of people living in really old substandard houses with Asbestos here in Canada too. The decline of the middle class, and economy where a new house costs 1 million, while the average salary is 59k made it nearly impossible for people to afford to build a new house. So the vas† majority of people in old homes will be stuck in them.
- omnimus 3y agoAsbestos is fine if you dont drill/breathe it. If its fire insulant between drywall it was never proven to be health issue. Its not like its radioactive or something