Mesothelioma Data, Statistics, & Information

by Karen Sarkis

Experts say chronic health problems don't have to be part of the construction worker's job and offer preventive measures for musculoskeletal, skin and other hazards.

More than 7.5 million U.S. workers are employed in construction, an industry where high rates of work-related illness have always been accepted as part of the job. Compared to other industries, the rate of work-related illnesses among construction is one of the highest.

"One of the things we say about construction is that the major causes of death are falls, electrocution and caught between," said Susan Moir of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. "In fact, the major causes of death in construction are health-related." Moir, director of the school's Construction Occupational Health Project, said most construction workers will eventually die of the wear and tear of the industry and the health exposures they are subjected to every day.

Work-related illnesses that construction workers suffer from are much less dramatic than traumatic injuries or deaths, but they are no less harmful. Construction workers die at a greater rate than the general public from chronic diseases and are at a higher risk for musculoskeletal disorders, noise-induced hearing loss, respiratory disease and skin disorders -- all of which are preventable.

Inhalation Hazards

Construction workers develop and die from respiratory or lung diseases at a higher rate than the general population. Moreover, Moir said, "there are significant indications of respiratory disease in large numbers of construction workers at a very young age." Work-related chronic lung diseases such as silicosis and asbestosis usually take many years to develop and are often diagnosed after the worker has retired.

Silicosis is a respiratory disease resulting from breathing in crystalline silica dust that is deposited in the lungs. The most common source of silica is from quartz (sand, an integral component of concrete, can be nearly pure quartz). When silica is freshly fractured, said Moir, it "looks like dust, but it's extremely hazardous."

Construction workers can be exposed to silica in many ways, including rock drilling, hauling and dumping. The possibility of silica exposure may exist whenever concrete is disturbed, as well. "In all kinds of work with concrete dust, we have discovered surprisingly high levels of silica exposure," Moir said.

Lead poisoning is also a problem for construction workers, particularly those repairing or demolishing old bridges and other steel structures coated with lead paint. "We're doing a lot of repair on bridges, and every bridge in the history of the universe has been painted with lead-based paint," Garvey said. Workers welding, burning, torch-cutting or sandblasting lead paint-coated structures are at risk. Lead can damage the nervous system, kidneys and reproductive organs.

Asbestos remains a threat to construction workers. Massive exposures to asbestos occurred among construction workers installing it between 1940 and the mid-1970s and removing it since then. Asbestos is often in old fireproofing, roofing, vinyl flooring, pipe and boiler insulation and some roads and cement-sheet products. Exposure can lead to asbestosis (a disabling lung disease), lung cancer and mesothelioma, a usually fatal cancer of the chest or abdominal cavity lining. Asbestos-related cancers usually do not appear until 20 to 30 years after exposure.

Inhalation hazards are among the most difficult of health hazards to deal with because they threaten the workers and those around them. One of the best ways to limit exposure, according to Moir, is through mitigation. "Mitigation usually means addressing health and safety problems at the perimeter of the sight to protect those who are outside the site," Moir explained. "Still, we would like the industry to consider beginning its mitigation efforts at the center of the site. In protecting the workers, the bystanders will be protected." She admits, though, that mitigation is expensive, and there are economic disincentives to taking this approach.

Another alternative Moir suggested is the wet method. "There has been some research done to show that wetting the dust down is pretty effective." The problem, she said, is that it is often done episodically. "What we would like to see is people preplanning for the dust so that the prevention method is built into the design of the operation."

Local exhaust is another option. "We have done studies that show, when you use local exhaust ventilation or mechanical ventilation, exposures are reduced by 30 (percent) to 50 percent," said Pam Susi of the Center to Protect Workers' Rights. Ideally, a local exhaust vacuum system should be built into the equipment, Moir said. "For your ordinary construction contractor (85 percent of the industry is very small operations), this equipment can be very expensive."

Focus on Prevention

Until companies begin to locus more on prevention, construction will continue to rank with mining and agriculture as an industry with the highest rate of occupational health problems, Moir said. She argued that construction heath and safety personnel often find themselves tailing behind the problems at busy, often far-flung construction sites. "We need to build health and safety prevention right into production, so that it's not something that's not thought of until the problem is already there."