Safety failure – Fines for not addressing key workplace hazard

Boral Resources (Vic) Pty Ltd was charged with six breaches of the Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, relating to workers' exposure to respirable crystalline silica at its Montrose quarry. A $180,000 fine was imposed on Boral for failing to require workers to wear respiratory protective equipment, and other omissions.

This comes after an Administrator who worked at the Montrose quarry in 2013 was diagnosed with silicosis in 2019, when she was in her early 30s. The administrator advised that when she was in her office at the quarry, she constantly tasted and breathed in dust from the site's crushing plant 90 metres away.

Although an obvious hazard, the employer never discussed the contents of the dust and the presence of silica in the quarry’s rock in any of the workplace safety meetings which she had attended as minute taker. Had the hazards and precautionary measures been discussed, the disease most likely would have been preventable.