Welcome, and how this works
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This course takes about 40 minutes. You can stop at any point and pick up where you left off.
It is for anyone who works stone, concrete, brick, tile or sand: stonemasons, concreters, tilers, bricklayers, demolition and civil crews, quarry and mine workers, tunnellers, foundry workers and the supervisors and managers who run that work.
The thing to understand before anything else
The material is not the hazard. The dust you make out of it is. And the particles that cause the damage are far too small to see, so a workspace that looks clean can still be harming you.
What it covers
- What crystalline silica is, and which materials carry the most
- Where exposure comes from, and the jobs that generate the most dust
- What it does to the lungs, and why the damage can arrive in years rather than decades
- The engineered stone prohibition, and what it does and does not cover
- Controls that genuinely reduce exposure, and the ones that only look like they do
- Respiratory protection, and why an unfitted mask is close to useless
- Exposure standards, air monitoring and health monitoring
- Who is responsible, and what to do when the controls are not there
What this course is not
It is awareness training. It will help you recognise the hazard, understand the controls and know when something is wrong. It does not make you competent to design a control system, run air monitoring or supervise high-risk silica work, and it is not a substitute for the task-specific training and instruction your employer must provide.
Where this applies
Written for Australia. The prohibition, the exposure standard and the health monitoring requirements are all Australian, and some details differ between states and territories. Check what applies where you work.
General information, not legal advice. Your regulator publishes the detail that binds you.