Agreement on Workers Health Protection through the Good Handling and Use of Crystalline Silica and Products containing it

The NEPSI industry sector organisations and their counterpart trade union federations negotiated a multisectoral social dialogue Agreement between 1 September 2005 and 2 February 2006. NEPSI stands for European Network for Silica and brings together a wide range of industrial sectors and labour unions concerned by occupational exposure to respirable crystalline silica.

The Agreement aims at

• protection of the health of workers and other individuals occupationally exposed at the workplace to respirable crystalline silica from materials/products/raw materials containing crystalline silica.
• minimisation of exposure to respirable crystalline silica at the workplace by applying the good practice guide in order to prevent, eliminate or reduce occupational health risks related to respirable crystalline silica.
• increasing the knowledge about potential health effects of respirable crystalline silica and about the good practice guide.

The signatory parties commit themselves to gather and apply good practices. The core document is the good practice guide together with task guidance sheets. The good practice guide has been updated in 2018 to reflect the fact that work activities involving exposure to respirable crystalline silica generated by a work process were included in the European directive 2004/37/EC on carcinogens, mutagens or reprotoxic substances at work with a binding occupational exposure limit value of 0.1 mg/m³ (amending Directive 2017/2398/EU). All guidance materials are available at the NEPSI website.

The application of the Agreement and the good practice guide is monitored according to a specific procedure and reporting is carried-out every two years. All summary reports on the application of the Agreement are also available on the NEPSI website. 
 

Publication details
Published by: NEPSI, European Network for Silica
Publication date: 2006