Silica dust has a construction reputation. That reputation is killing people in other industries.
The HSA's campaigns have done real work raising awareness on building sites, and the engineered stone ban sent a clear signal about how serious respirable crystalline silica actually is. But the spotlight on construction has left a shadow. Employers in manufacturing, food production, ceramics, and dental labs are breathing easy in the wrong sense of the phrase. Their workers are not.
Silica is silicon dioxide. It is in quartz, sandstone, granite, slate, and clay. It is in engineered composites, refractory materials, and a startling number of industrial powders. When those materials are cut, drilled, ground, or mixed, particles smaller than 10 microns become airborne. You cannot see them. They travel deep into lung tissue. The body cannot break them down. Scar tissue builds. Lung function drops. There is no reversal. Silicosis, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: these are the outcomes, and they arrive 10 to 30 years after the exposure that caused them.
Where Non-Construction Industries Are Getting Caught Out
Ceramics and Pottery Manufacturing
Clay contains silica. Dry clay contains a lot of it. Operations that involve mixing dry clay powders, trimming unfired ware, or sanding fired pieces generate respirable crystalline silica at levels that can exceed the occupational exposure limit of 0.1 mg/m³ in minutes. Small ceramics workshops are particularly exposed because the margins are tight, ventilation is an afterthought, and respiratory protective equipment is treated as optional. The workers often have years of exposure before anyone measures the air they are breathing.
Food Ingredient Processing
This one surprises people. Rice milling and processing generates silica dust because rice has a silica-rich husk. Certain food-grade mineral additives, diatomaceous earth used as a filtration aid, and anti-caking agents in powdered products all contain silica compounds. Workers handling bulk quantities in poorly ventilated processing areas accumulate exposure over shifts. The food industry has excellent attention to contamination hazards for the product. It has considerably less attention to what workers are inhaling in the process.
Stone and Tile Manufacturing
Porcelain tiles contain up to 70% silica. Manufacturing and finishing processes, including pressing, cutting, and polishing, produce fine dust continuously. Ireland imports significant quantities of stone and tile products for finishing and installation work, but there are also fabrication and finishing operations here where workers spend full shifts around cutting equipment without adequate dust control in place. The occupational exposure limit was halved in recent years. Many operations have not recalibrated their controls to meet the lower threshold.
Dental Laboratories
Dental technicians work with dental porcelain, composite resins, and casting investments, many of which contain crystalline silica. Grinding, trimming, and polishing prosthetics produces fine airborne dust in enclosed workshop spaces. Research from the UK's Health and Safety Executive found silica exposure levels in dental labs frequently exceeded recommended limits. The workforce is small, the workshops are often unregulated premises attached to dental practices, and health surveillance is inconsistent. This is a cohort of workers who are being harmed and largely not counted.
Foundries and Metal Casting
Sand casting uses silica sand as the mould material. Shakeout operations, where castings are separated from moulds, release large quantities of fine silica dust rapidly. Fettling, the process of cleaning and finishing castings, involves grinding operations that also generate significant exposure. Foundries have known about this hazard for a century. Some have excellent controls. Others, particularly smaller operations, rely on respiratory protective equipment alone, which is a last resort, not a control measure.
What the Regulations Actually Require
The Chemical Agents Code of Practice under Irish law, aligned with European Directive 2017/164/EU, sets the occupational exposure limit for respirable crystalline silica at 0.1 mg/m³ as an eight-hour time-weighted average. This applies to every employer in every sector. It is not a construction-specific rule.
The hierarchy of control applies. Elimination first, then substitution, then engineering controls like local exhaust ventilation and wet suppression, then administrative controls, then respiratory protective equipment. An employer who hands out dust masks without first implementing engineering controls is not compliant. The mask is not the control, it is the fallback when everything else has been maximised.
Health surveillance is also required where workers are exposed to silica above the action value. That means regular lung function testing and medical review. Many non-construction employers have never heard of this requirement. That is not a defence.
The Exposure Assessment Problem
Construction sites now see air monitoring as a standard part of site management. Non-construction employers rarely commission it. They estimate. They assume their operation is not that dusty. They compare themselves to a building site and decide they are clearly safer. These comparisons are meaningless. A food processing worker grinding rice husks in an unventilated room for eight hours a day may accumulate more silica exposure in a month than a construction worker doing intermittent concrete cutting with water suppression.
Air monitoring is not expensive relative to the cost of a prohibition notice or a successful occupational disease claim. A competent occupational hygienist can assess a workplace and quantify exposures in a day. That assessment tells you what you are actually dealing with, not what you are guessing at.
The HSA's Reach Is Expanding
The HSA has signalled clearly that silica is not a construction-only enforcement priority. Inspectors visiting manufacturing facilities are now asking questions about chemical agents assessments, exposure monitoring, and health surveillance records. The sectors caught off-guard are the ones that assumed the campaign had nothing to do with them.
It has everything to do with them. The lung damage is identical regardless of the industry that caused it.
If your workers handle materials that contain silica, in any sector, under any category, you have a legal duty to assess their exposure, control it, and monitor their health. The construction industry spent decades learning this the hard way. The information exists now. There is no excuse for other sectors to repeat the same journey.
