Safety & Health in the Stone Crushing Industry - Occupational ...

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Foreword
This manual is based on findings of a research development project in stone crushing sites in Northern
India (Bundelkhand). The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada
(http://www.idrc.ca), funded a community development project over several years which was aimed at
improving the living conditions in the villages around stone crushing sites and the working conditions in
the crushing units. Project partners were the non-governmental organization Development Alternatives,
New Delhi, India (http://www.devalt.org), Dr. K. Vijaya Lakshmi (PI), and the Department of
Environmental Health Engineering of Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, India (http://www.srmcehe.org.in),
Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan (Co-PI).
The late Mr. M. Nithiyananthan, the Project Leader-Industrial Safety of the project from Chennai, India,
produced the majority of the findings and photos, which are presented in this manual. He tragically
passed away in early 2009 before this manual could be finished. We publish these findings in his
memory.
The editors are grateful for the support from many contributors. Special thanks go to Ana Boischio from
IDRC and the project's principal investigators Dr. K. Vijaya Lakshmi and Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan for
making this publication possible. Mr. Raghwesh Ranjan made the visits to the stone crushing units
possible. Reliable and efficient as always, Mr. D. Venkatesan researched the available documents and
photos that provided the basis for this publication.
The authors who contributed chapters for this manual besides the editors are: Perry Gottesfeld from
Occupational Knowledge International, San Francisco USA (www.okinternational.org), who contributed
the chapter on wet dust reduction technology; Dr. Ralf Steinberg, an international safety expert,
Düsseldorf Germany, who kindly reviewed the manuscript and contributed to several chapters and Mr.
Suvankar Bose and Mr. George S Sharma from Development Alternatives, New Delhi India who
developed and explained the dry dust reduction systems.
All black and white illustrations in this manual are from publications of the Hesperian Foundation, a
non-profit health organization that kindly granted permission to use some of their illustrations from two
of their publications (http://www.hesperian.org). Their free publications "A Worker's Guide to Health
and Safety" and ”A Community Guide to Environmental Health" can be found on their website.
Many of the checklists presented at the end of this manual were developed with colleagues and friends
from the Department of Environmental Health Engineering of Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai,
India. They include Dr. Joerg Arnold, S. Sankar, R. Ayyappan, Dr. Ralf Steinberg and others.
The following persons were part of the research project between 2006 and 2008:
Dr. K. Vijaya Lakshmi (Principal Investigator)
Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan (Co-Principal Investigator)
Mr. George C. Varughese (Project Advisor)
Ms. Indrani Mahapatra (Research Coordinator)
Mr. Raghwesh Ranjan (Research Coordinator/Project Leader - Social)
Dr. Reetu Sogani (Consultant – Gender)
Mr. Prawal Pratap Singh (Ex-Project Staff – Social)
Ms. Taru Mehta (Ex-Project Staff – Social)
Dr. P Jayachandran (Project Leader-Health)
Dr. M. P. Singh (Project Staff – Health)
Dr. Anandh B (Project Staff – Health)
Dr. K. Mukhopadhyay (Project Leader – Environment)
Mr. S. Sankar (Project Coordinator-Environment)
Mr. M. Nithiyananthan (Project Leader-Industrial Safety)
Mr. R. Ayyappan (Project Staff-Environment/Air)