St Vincent’s physician takes a leading role in changing workplace practices leading to respiratory disease
St Vincent’s physician takes a leading role in changing workplace practices leading to respiratory disease
27 Feb 2023
Silicosis is an incurable respiratory disease directly caused by the inhalation of airborne silica, found in artificial stone, a cheaper alternative to natural stone and popular for use in modern kitchen and bathroom benchtops. Artificial stone also contains other substances like resins and metals which may also be toxic to the lungs.
Professor Deborah Yates has been a respiratory physician at St Vincent’s for 22 years, and has seen a massive growth in the number of cases of Silicosis over the past 10 years, all of them linked to working with artificial stone.
“I have patients who are late 20’s and early 30’s who need a lung transplant, which is shocking. The other thing that’s really shocking is that nothing has been done”.
While there are warnings about the dangers of silicosis and regulations in place, poor enforcement of regulations and work health safety standards is resulting in a surge of cases.
Dr Yates, who has been on several of the committees making up part of the National Dust Diseases Taskforce, says that regulations have been made including early screening for occupational exposure, but that these regulations are not being followed.
Compounding the issue, exposed workers only develop physical symptoms such as breathlessness on exertion and chronic cough, once the disease is in an advanced state.
“The insidious nature of silicosis is that you can have really quite bad disease without having much in the way of symptoms at all, until you become so breathless you can barely function, which is why it’s really important that people go to their doctors and get screened early on” says Dr Yates.
But lung damage post unsafe exposure is not reversible, and with lung transplantation the only current treatment option, Dr Yates is calling for better recognition of the dangers, which she says is not widely understood, particularly amongst patients from a non-English speaking background.
Dr Yates has seen an increase patients from Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai backgrounds who have little concept of the dangers of working with these materials, and therefore aren’t taking the necessary precautions.
“I had a 45 year old patient who carried on working because he didn’t realise he had lung disease, by the time he came to see me he was too sick to have a lung transplant. He died, just trying to support his wife and two young children”.
Ultimately, Dr Yates believes that Australia should be moving fast towards a ban on artificial stone, using alternative products with safe levels of silica, instead of the cheaper, manufactured stones.
“We know we can prevent silicosis by having very low exposures, so it doesn’t make sense to have anybody develop a disease that is totally preventable.
If we’re not preventing this we’re not doing justice to all those people out there who are working hard and trying to support themselves by doing an honest day’s work”.
Watch this video to learn more.