The health hazards of tunnelling

A few years ago, a fellow occupational hygienist gifted me a necklace. He called it, “the health hazards of tunnelling”.

To make it he had taken a 5 cent coin and approximated 0.1 mg/m3 averaged over an 8-hour shift of silica dust – a common way that occupational hygienists use to explain just how little dust was needed to exceed the Workplace Exposure Standard at the time. He had also created a smaller section below the 5 cent coin where he had placed carbon, which represented diesel particulate matter (DPM). There are a lot of health hazards underground (thankfully he did not make the necklace mouldy), and this necklace serves as a constant reminder that it’s more than silica dust that we were working to protect tunnel workers from.

I was reminded of this when I was going through and archiving a stack of Tunnelling Journals over the holiday break when I came across this article published late last year on the cancer risk from diesel emissions in underground works. In comparison to our overseas counterparts, Australia lags behind on regulation and protection of tunnel workers from diesel emissions during construction. This was a key area of focus during my Churchill Fellowship, where I was concerned that we had no Workplace Exposure Standards for DPM for tunnel construction workers. While significant progress has been made, mainly in the mining sector where we have Workplace Exposure Standards for DPM, tunnelling is covered under separate legislation to mining in Australia, and at the moment, tunnel workers are not always protected.

Internationally there is more focus on this hazard, and therefore observed better controls to protect underground workers. A positive for me is that this important issue has gained more attention and traction here in Australia in recent years. My hope is that this results in improved regulation and protection of all underground workers.