The Silica Baseline Survey (SBS) has established baseline intelligence on employee exposures and the control of respirable crystalline silica (RCS) in 4 UK industry sectors: brick- and tile-manufacture, stonemasonry, quarrying and construction.
The objectives were:
- to establish whether engineering controls and the use of respiratory protective equipment (RPE)) were adequate to reduce exposures below the Workplace Exposure Limit (WEL) for RCS;
- to assess the reliability of the exposure controls (termed “competence”);
- to identify common causes of failures of exposure controls, and
- to provide data against which the effect of HSE interventions can be assessed in future.