Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis
Tangentially related, there&#x27;s this copper mining museum in BC (1) in what used to be one of these corporate towns where you lived and died. They do a quick demo of the equipments they used back in the day, in a pre cut hole. Even with your hands on your hears it&#x27;s painful, teeth chattering - and they don&#x27;t even really hit the rock.<p>People working in there weren&#x27;t wearing any sort of hearing protection and became deaf within months. And after introducing pressured air driven equipment, they were <i>all</i> dying in a few years from silicosis. Until someone added water spraying to precipitate the dust into mud (wherein their issue became to fiddle caked in mud all day long in the dark, which I guess is an improvement over certain death). Which happened years later.<p>Thinking about the kind of life they had terrorizes me. I don&#x27;t get how, for the longest time, people were fine with that. I mean no judgement on the workers, they probably didn&#x27;t have a choice - but the people sending them in probably saw them as kettle.<p>Makes you think about the sort of progress in worker protection that was made since then. But also this kind of story reveals how people are still ready to profiteer from such deadly practices, if given the opportunity.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britanniaminemuseum.ca&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britanniaminemuseum.ca&#x2F;</a>