Regulatory Action and Future Outlook

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So let's see which is the first of the stories to be shortlisted for this year's award. Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast. Joe Duggan reported for the eye paper. Joe, what's the story that's brought you to the Pulfoot Award this year? Since twenty twenty four we've been reporting on cases of silicosis in young workers cutting a stone known as quartz or engineered stone, which is a stone that's become very popular It's the the basic headline seems to be fashionable kitchen work tops can actually be leading to serious illness or or even death among the the workers who are who are cutting it. Yeah, and it's we we don't yet know the scale of the problem in this country but it's the most popular stone for people having kitchens and everyone's got kitchen so w we know of more than fifty cases so far, but it's likely to be significantly higher than that. Somebody I know works in the industry and contacted me and said, you know, have you heard of this stuff? Engineered Stone Quartz? You know, he was refusing to work with it. He said it's too dangerous, I don't want to put my workers at risk. They've just banned it in Australia. What's the situation here? Yeah. I'd never heard of it. I didn't know what it was. I knew what psychicosis was. It's an occupational lung disease which sort of historically, has always been you know, people working in like mining, constru ction have developed silicosis usually after quite a number of years of exposure to dust from cutting stone. What what we found with the cases of silicosis in the guys who were cutting these kitchen worktops is they were starting to develop it very young and after not very long exposure, after you know, a couple two or three years in some cases. Yeah. So they were getting ill and and dying younger than um historically workers have done when they've contracted silicosis from cutting stone. And what what is the substance that you referred to at the top there? Did you say engineered quartz? Engineered stone. Yeah. It's also known as quartz and it's become the most popular stone that people have installed in their kitchens when they want a new work top, it''ss it cheaper than granite and marble, but it it looks attractive as well. So people composite? Is it Yeah it's man made. It's a man-made stone. So it has a very high level of silica in it. Cutting silica exposes workers who aren't using who aren't being provided with proper safety protection to dust. And the higher the silica level, the higher the the risk to the worker who's cutting it. And in case of in the case of quartz it can be very high, ninety five percent silica content, whereas granite and marble for example, I think the numbers f for either are like thirty percent, much less. Can I check? There's this is workers in the UK . So w how we started to get involved in the story was my friend asked me what's the situation here and I I really didn't know where to start so I just looked up all the the top respiratory consultants in the UK who deal with occupational lung disease and just started ringing them up to s to to find out have are there any cases of silicosis here from quartz? And eventually that led me to Dr. Joe Feary, who's a doctor at the Royal Brompton Hospital, who is the main doctor looking after the UK's first court silicosis patients. So she told me in January 2024, yes, we have started to see the first cases they've developed in the last few months. Coincidentally, about a week after she told me that there was a debate in the House of Lords about this raised by a Green Party peer called Baroness Bennett, who's Australian , and she knew about the ban that had just come in Australia and again wanted to know from the government what's the situation here. And then government ministers said in that debate there are no cases, but we we knew that wasn't true , it wasn't correct. We knew we had a story then and we published the first story I think a week later or so. So am I right in understanding that there are precautionary measures you can take, there are there are protective masks The main one is they called it wet cutting which is using water suppressing tools to stop the dust from developing . What we found is the profile of the the guys who and it is all all men who are getting it, who are getting silicosis, they're working for firms who are just not following these safety rules and just leaving them exposed. They tend to say as I say, they tend to be very very young. A lot of them are migrant workers who are just being exploited basically. But what because it's slightly more expensive to use the wet cutting method that makes it a lot safer. Yeah, yeah. The firms that they're working for are just sort of cutting cutting corners and and not providing their workers with the correct tools. So do do you know roughly how many people are working in this industry or who who might be exposed to this? It's been difficult to get sort of figures on it, but there's been a bit of analysis done recently and that analysis um has estimated there's around seven thousand workers working in the industry. So the latest figures so far are that there are diagnosed 5y five workers with silicosis since mid twenty twenty three. At least four have died. But the doctors do believe that there's there's there's probably a significant number more that are out there that that haven't been diagnosed yet. Who was meant to be regulating this? Uh the health and safety executive. Okay . And I imagine that fairly early on in reporting the story you you you asked them about it. I believe that the answer the DWP minister gave at the time came from HSE figures. So they have recently, in fact last week, brought in their most significant intervention in this area since this issue developed. They did a couple of years of analysis on the problem, and what they've done is they've issued their first regulatory guidance to specifically address the engineered stone industry, which tells firms dry-cutting without water is banned, water suppressing methods are you are legally obliged to use those. We're going to be now undergoing a nationwide inspection campaign of a thousand businesses over the next twelve months and, we're going to basically crack down on firms that aren't doing this. So it's going to be really interesting over the next few months to see there will be firms getting caught exposing workers to dangerous dust levels. So you would expect there to be intervention from from the HSE . Do you think that's a result of your reporting? I yeah, it is. And um I mean also last week as well there was another another development in this story which should also really really help things. There's um a new Kite Mark scheme is being introduced by the industry and by the British Occupational Hygiene Society, which is the chartered society for for workplace prote ction. What that's going to mean is occupational hygienists are going to inspect firms and ensure that they are wet cutting and en ensure there's a whole list of checks that need to be done. Once these independent occupational hygienists have done that, they'll be able to mark the slabs with a kite mark to indicate this slab has been cut safely, this firm is following the rules. I was going to ask the current state of the HSE and whether they were able to investigate this before your reporting drew attention to it, it sounds like they may not have been. I mean silica dust has been a problem for for years and they they have been it's not it's it's not just something that exists in the the engineered stone industry. So th so th th they do they have been carrying out inspections. I mean I I I I think it's fair to say that our reporting has pushed along s some of the some of the interventions that we're seeing now. So so yeah, I think I think that's fair. I think it'd be interesting to to hear a couple of examples of the the people, the the the men who've been affected who've been doing this work. Can you can you tell me about Marek? Yeah, so Marrick we were um in touch with Marrick's lawy ers, they they said to us that he's dying. Um he was he is he was a Polish a Polish worker, dad of two, um forty eight years old. He was diagnosed, I think in April 2024 with silicosis. We interviewed him while he was very, very sick in the Whittington hospital in October 2024. He very bravely wanted to speak out. He had only days to live. It was quite a harrowing interview, but he wanted to speak out and he wanted to warn people of the dangers of cutting engineered stone without without dust. So we we spoke to him while he was in hospital and he and he died a few weeks later, so that was that was a very harrowing interview. Um a few a couple of months before that we'd also interviewed another another young man in hospital, a thirty one year old Syrian refugee called Malek. He also had been told by the doctors that he could die so he again wanted to wanted to speak speak to speak to us um and just warn people about about the risk that they're running if they if they work at firms who are cutting corners and exposing them to dust. So I mean that's just two of the more than fifty men that that are known about so far who who have this. I know that there are some compensation schemes available, but it sounds like the compensation is not getting to people in time. And obviously some of the workers who've who've contracted silicosis have then died. So , Merrick was to that's insult to injury, he was trying his lawyers on behalf of him were pushing for him to get um industrial injuries disability benefit, which then sh sh once you've been approved for that, you can there's a government compensation scheme that you can apply for if if you are the victim of an occupational l disease like that. It took months of back and forth for the DWP to get anywhere with that. In fact at one point he was asked in for an assessment, you know when he was lying in hospital bed dying he was approved on the day he died so you know he didn't he d you know the money never came his way so it just sort of adds to the whole sort trauma of what some of these guys are do ing. I know that Dr. Joe Fury, one of the doctors, the the main doctor looking after these guys, has said that she's been sort of constantly writing letters on behalf of men who are too sick to work and who are s really struggling to access the benefits that they are entitled to. Have the firms where Mar