It Goes On...And On...

One last thought on slate, and quarrying the material here in North Wales, prompted by yet another woeful tale of silicosis in the business of cutting quartz kitchen surfaces here in the UK. The case in question is of Luke Bunker, who at the ridiculously young age of twenty-eight, was diagnosed with silicosis and COPD, after working in this disastrously unregulated workplace environment. Twenty-eight. In the few short years of his employ, he has succumbed to the kind and extent of disease that used to take a lifetime of hazardous working to arrive at. I've been watching another archive documentary about working in the Chwarelau of the North Wales slate industry today, focussing on the Dinorwig quarries that surround Llanberis. One of the interviewees related the presence and depth of the slate dust in the cutting sheds of the quarry, and how breathing protection was not even a consideration back in the day: which tragically chimes with the twenty-first century example mentioned above.

How little progress has been made. Or is it simply a case of regression prompted by deregulation in the service of profit? Or was and is it always thus? All I'll add is that in 1981, walking back in the early morning from an all-night party in Mynydd Llandegai in my mid-twenties, I decided that as it was a Bank Holiday, and in the knowledge that the quarry at Penrhyn would be closed, I took a shortcut through the site to nosy around, still semi-inebriated. I wandered into one of the slate-processing sheds and found myself walking through an inch of blue-grey 'snow' which coated every surface in sight; and that which the slightest excess movement would throw into the low early morning shafts of sunlight clouds of this fine but deadly particulate. Hours before, tens of people would have been working in this very environment, the import of which that, even in my half-pissed state, was not lost on me. That image and realisation has never left my mind. It would seem that we need to get a grip on things yet again, judging by the current news of the likes of the unfortunate Luke Bunker...