Dust Management and Medical Assessment Guidelines Webinar

GAVIN MOREIRA, Member Services Manager for CMPA reports on a very successful webinar.

On 22 October 2020, the CMPA held a webinar via Microsoft Teams. It was held to assist members with their responsibilities when it comes to dust (including respirable crystalline silica dust (RCSD)). The webinar was held to review the CMPA Dust Management Guideline to bring it in line with the changes to legislation including Workplace Exposure Standard for RCSD; and now incorporates a dust management plan template. Also, the launch of the CMPA’s revised Medical Assessment Guidelines including silica specific periodic health monitoring was announced and presented.

The documents have been developed with Members’ and industry specialists input and reviewed by a number of Regulators. Over 40 CMPA Members tuned in either via their phone or computers from all parts of Victoria.

The first presentation was by David McKelvie, of SafeMix who provided an overview of the Dust Management Guideline. Followed by Wes Bird, of Allstone Quarries who provided a technical presentation of Dust Management based on the operations of the quarry at Newbridge.

Andrew Lewis, Air Quality Environmental Consultant from Ektimo provided an insight for the audience on Monitoring onsite as well as Personal monitoring.

The final presentation was by Dr John Gall, ERA Health who provided an overview of the updated CMPA Medical Assessments and Medical Guidelines for Practitioners documents including Silica specific periodic health monitoring.

All presentations were recorded and will be available for CMPA Members via a link to our Vimeo Account shortly.

The following extract of a letter (Page 24) was received by Elizabeth Gibson, General Manager of the CMPA.

Dear Elizabeth,
I would like to congratulate and thank you, the Secretariat and the presenters for this very first and exceptional set of web-based video presentations and compliment you on the collaborative effort shown between operators, specialists in their field and CMPA Secretariat.
These resources will be of great benefit to our members and the wider industry, and are presented at a level which our Managers, employees and contractors can draw benefit from.
Addressing dust and in particular silica has been a constant since the inception of the CMPA – raised in our first newsletter in June 2000 and considered in our first training resource ‘Work Safely’ 2002.

A few personal reflections for Managing Dust within our industry:

• Dust controls should be defined in our budgets as a recurring expense such as manganese, power, or training. It would logically follow this would be reflected in our unit rate of materials sold.
• Standalone training outcomes regarding the management of dust should be provided for all employees and contractors to be assessed and documented for appropriate awareness.
• Capital resources, PPE and training resources should be specifically earmarked for managing dust within each work site, with a proportionately higher amount of investment on sites that have identified crystalline silica.
• Employees must be encouraged and empowered to participate in ensuring total site adherence to the appropriate management of dust is occurring at all times
• Site housekeeping standards for dust management should be at the core of our work philosophy, from our individual operator workstations, cabins, processing plant, quarry face and stockpiles through to the entry of our site.
• Any deviation should generate a managerial response.

Again, I would like to thank all those who organised, presented and attended the Dust Management and Medical Assessment Guidelines Webinar. Without this collaborative involvement of all, our industry would not be at such a high standard.

Regards

Ron Kerr
Managing Director Conundrum Holdings Pty Ltd

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