As reported in The Star, as a bricklayer and someone who has been around concrete and cement for much of his working life in several Canadian provinces, John Ferreira has seen and dealt with a lot of dust.

Ferreira, now a health and safety co-ordinator for LIUNA Local 183 in Toronto, one of the largest construction locals in North America, remembers doing cement-finishing work at construction sites in Toronto decades ago, where dust was flying everywhere during the grinding, blasting or chipping of concrete.

“When you walk in the stairwells of buildings downtown, you see exposed concrete. It looks beautiful, but before that it was rough concrete that someone had to grind. Someone had to breathe that dust from the grinding and that was really bad for his lungs,” Ferreira says.

Now, in his role as safety co-ordinator with the union, Ferreira says procedures to mitigate dust have improved, but he’s still seeing a lot of it.

“The problem is going to persist in the future because Toronto is booming … you’re going to see a lot of dust,” Ferreira says.

A common mineral, crystalline silica is a basic component of sand, soil, mortar, bricks, tiles and rocks such as granite and quartz. But silica dust and particles are a potential hazard on jobsites, and experts are sounding alarm bells about it.

Breathing silica dust and particles into the lungs often enough and long enough can lead to a disease called silicosis, which is disabling, and can lead to lung disease and possibly lung cancer.

Keep reading in The Star