A Safe Work Australia report found engineered stone poses an ‘unacceptable risk to workers’ and should be banned.
The ACT government says its prepared to introduce its own ban if a national agreement isn’t reached.
The CFMEU is calling on retailers like Bunnings and IKEA to stop selling engineered stone products.
If we banned every material people refused to use ppe when working with to “protect themselves from themselves”, we would have literally zero materials to build anything out of.
I’m all for legally requiring employers to enforce ppe laws, that way if a worker becomes injured due to lack of ppe, the employer is liable for “well why didn’t they have protection?” And the employer will have to demonstrate they require ppe, enforce it, and the employee was being actively stupid even when told not to.
I’ve worked with and met tonnes of contractors, it’s usually really polarizing.
You get half that don’t give a shit and use zero ppe.
And then you get half that go “that shit will fuckin kill you, don’t fuck around with that stuff”
But if the material is safe “at rest” for the consumer and only a problem when cut into, then it seems stupid as fuck to ban it.
Molten glass will burn your skin right off while it’s being blown. Should we ban glass as a material if some idiots do glass blowing without ppe?
Power saws will cut your entire hand off or worse, lathes will turn you into a pretzel, paper mills will turn you into a pancake, welding torches will make you go blind, almost every single material we work with is extremely lethal if people don’t use ppe and safety procedures when working with it.
This isn’t like asbestos where it sheds dangerous particles in the consumers home whenever it gets used and vaguely bumped or bopped.