No Worker Left in the Dust: A case study on the highly-contrasted and variable levels of silica safety

Abstract

With the new silica standards set forth by OSHA in 2016, environmental health and safety officials are trying to crack down on the development of silicosis in the construction workforce. However, the construction industry is quite large and contains a lot of diversity between project types (single-family residential, commercial, public works, heavy civil, etc.) and the people that work on them (unionization, migrancy, trade differences, education levels, etc). Because the topic of health and safety is already so disproportionate across these different types of people and projects, it would be suffice to say that the effectiveness of the new Silica Standards might only be reaching certain types of projects. The main objective of this thesis is to show the highly variable and contrasting levels of silica safety programs across different types of construction projects in the United States, to determine why some projects are so much safer than others, and to attempt to lay a groundwork for how construction companies with unsafe practices can meet the standards and regulations for silica safety as set out by Federal OSHA. The thesis contains a review of the programs of successfully silica-safe projects, as well as projects where standards are not met across two different U.S. cities.