Correspondence on 'Demographic, exposure and clinical characteristics in a multinational registry of engineered stone workers with silicosis by Hua et al

In 2018, we reported in this journal seven cases of artificial (engineered) stone silicosis in Australia and described it as a ‘rapidly emerging’ occupational lung disease.1 Last year, also in OEM, we reported a further 86 workers with silicosis identified during the first year of a targeted health assessment programme for stone benchtop industry workers in Victoria, Australia.2 There is now ample evidence that an epidemic of silicosis in the stone benchtop industry is no longer ‘emerging’, but has now occurred Australia, and is highly likely to be replicated in all countries where artificial stone has become popular. We read with great interest the paper by Hua et al, detailing the initial findings of the Engineered Stone Silicosis Investigators (ESSI) Global Silicosis Registry.3 The authors report 169 cases of artificial stone silicosis from Israel (125), Spain (20), Australia (14) and the USA (10)....
Source: Occupational and Environmental Medicine - Category: Occupational Health Authors: Tags: PostScript Source Type: research