Costruction is a risky business full of jobsite hazards, from life-threatening falls to blunt trauma injuries, but more insidious dangers exist, like crystalline silica inhalation, which can lead to a type of cancer known as pneumoconiosis. It’s what coal miners call “black lung” disease, where tiny airborne particles cause lesions and scarring on the lungs, gradually leaving workers unable to breathe.
Silicosis, its equally harmful cousin, currently affects 1.7 million workers annually, reports the Center for Disease Control (CDC). It’s caused by breathing one of earth’s most common minerals, silica, which becomes a corrosive inhalant from cutting, sawing, grinding, drilling and crushing stone, rock, concrete, brick, block, mortar and industrial sand.