Businesses, also known as person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) and workers must work together to reduce the risk of exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RSC).
Learn more about your legal obligations under the work health and safety legislation.
Businesses who work with crystalline silica substances
As a business, you must manage your workers’ exposure to RCS dust and put measures in place to keep workers safe and healthy. This includes, but is not limited to, eliminating or minimising the risks of exposure to RCS when working with crystalline silica substances (CSS). In addition to your usual responsibilities and duties under WHS there are specific laws that require you to protect workers exposure to RCS.
Workplace exposure standard
A PCBU must ensure that no person at the workplace is exposed to RCS, at a concentration above the workplace exposure standard. The workplace exposure standard for RCS is an eight-hour time weighted average (TWA) of 0.05 milligrams per cubic metre (mg/m3).
More information is available on the Safe Work Australia webpage Guidance on interpretation of Workplace exposure standards for airborne contaminants.
Air monitoring
Air monitoring involves measuring the level of RCS in the breathing zone of workers by using a personal sampler during their usual shift activities (including routine breaks). Air monitoring is important to:
- check the effectiveness of control measures
- monitor the workplace atmosphere to ensure the workplace exposure standard is not being exceeded
- help choose the right level of respiratory protection
- inform health-monitoring requirements.
Air monitoring results must be kept for 30 years after the record is made and be readily available to those who may be exposed to the substance or mixture in the workplace.
In assessing any processing of CSS, you must have regard to the results of any previous air monitoring that has been conducted at that workplace that are relevant to the task, controls and conditions in your workplace. If you do not have any previous air monitoring results, this does not prevent you from determining whether the processing of a CSS is high risk, rather you must undertake your assessment considering all the matters.
Some businesses and industries, such as the stone-benchtop industry have specific air monitoring requirements that are outlined in the Managing the risks of respirable crystalline silica from engineered stone in the workplace: Code of practice.
PCBUs who carries out high risk processing of CSS, need to undertake air monitoring for RCS. If the monitoring results show the airborne concentration of RCS has exceeded the workplace exposure standard of 0.05 mg/m3 , the PCBU must report the results to the WorkSafe Commissioner using the notification form.
Health monitoring
Health monitoring of a worker means monitoring the worker to identify changes in their health because of exposure to certain substances. It involves collecting data to measure exposure or evaluate its effects and determine whether the absorbed dose is within safe levels.
A PCBU must organise and pay for health monitoring if there is a risk to the health of their workers because of exposure to silica dust at the workplace. Health monitoring identifies any changes to the health of workers resulting from exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS).
Under the Work Health and Safety (General) Regulations 2022 (WHS General Regulations), the minimum requirements for health monitoring for crystalline silica through exposure to silica dust are:
- collection of demographics, medical and occupational history
- records of personal exposure
- standardised respiratory questionnaire
- standardised respiratory function tests, for example, FEV1 (forced expiratory volume in one second), FVC (forced vital capacity) and FEV1/FVC (respiratory ratio, or Tiffeneau index)
- low dose high resolution computed tomography of the chest at less than 1 millisievert (mSv) equivalent dose for the entire study. The study must image the whole of each lung on inspiration at 1.5 mm slice thickness or less, without an interslice gap, and must include expiratory imaging. The images must be of adequate quality to detect subtle abnormalities, including ground glass opacities and small nodules.
The registered medical practitioner who prepares the health monitoring report must give the regulator a copy if the report contains monitoring results consistent with exposure to silica. When conducting the assessment to determine if the processing of CSS is high risk, you must consider the results of any relevant health monitoring that has been previously conducted at the workplace.
More information on health monitoring of workers for exposure to crystalline silica can be found in the Health monitoring guide for registered medical practitioners: Silica (respirable crystalline)
Health monitoring records must be kept confidential and for at least 30 years after the record is made, even if the worker no longer works at the workplace.
Information about health monitoring reports is available in the Health monitoring duties for persons conducting a business or undertaking: Guide.
Providing information, training, instruction and supervision
You must provide crystalline silica training for workers carrying out processing of a CSS:
- as a part of induction and refresher training
- any worker involved in processing of a CSS that is high risk; or
- who is at risk of exposure to RCS because of that processing.
If your workers are not undertaking high risk processing, you must still provide appropriate information, instruction, training or supervision to anyone who may be exposed to RCS at the workplace.
Crystalline silica training means training that is accredited or has been approved by the regulator in relation to health risks associated with exposure to respirable crystalline silica and the need for proper risk control measures required by the WHS Regulations.
The following existing courses are recognised as approved training in Western Australia.
- HIA Silica awareness training
- Units of competency for silica safety:
You are required to keep a record of the training provided to workers, while they are carrying out the high risk processing and for five years after the day they stop working for your business. This record of training can be documented in your silica risk control plan.
For workers
Take care of your own health and safety
As a worker, you must take reasonable care for your own health and safety and not adversely affect the health and safety of others. You must comply with any reasonable WHS instructions given by the PCBU, such as participating in health monitoring and wearing relevant personal protective equipment, and cooperate with any reasonable policy or procedure relating to WHS at the workplace that has been notified to you.
Wear and correctly use personal protective equipment
You must wear and correctly use personal protective equipment if it is provided. Ask for a replacement if it is damaged or needs to be cleaned.