The human cost of Sydney’s many tunnelling projects

Beneath our city, a maze of tunnels is under construction.

The $25 billion Metro West rail line is skirting various pieces of infrastructure underground weaving through the City Circle line, before coming within metres of the Anzac Bridge’s foundations for its journey west. In the city’s south, the M6 stage 1 project linking the M8 at Arncliffe to Kogarah, will still be under construction until 2028, after tunnellers were forced to contend with large sinkholes.

The WestConnex and NorthConnex motorways have provided an insight into how Sydney’s suburbs can be transformed by taking traffic, trucks and trains underground.

But, as Max Maddison writes in today’s Sun-Herald, there is growing evidence of a human cost of Sydney’s tunnelling projects.

Thirteen people, including a 32-year-old, working on the M6 tunnel have been diagnosed with silicosis, a potentially deadly respiratory disease caused by inhaling crystalline silica, according to documents revealed by this masthead.

Silica dust is present in particularly large amounts in engineered stone – a material commonly used in kitchen benchtops and bathrooms before an investigation by the Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes into its health implications for tradespeople led to a ban.

However, the fine dust is also naturally occurring in many construction materials, including stones, rocks, sand, bricks and tiles.

While it is correct for the workers’ employer, CPB Contractors, to raise that the diagnoses does not mean the group – and a fourteenth diagnosed worker, whose worksite the company did not specify – contracted the disease while working for CPB, the revelations that tunnelling workers are being diagnosed with the deadly dust disease, and the apparent lack of action from SafeWork NSW, are of concern.

They are also a case of history repeating itself.

In 2023, the Herald revealed state and territory ministers had been sitting for months on workplace safety watchdog warnings about the risk of silicosis in tradies working with engineered stone, and recommendations that a blanket prohibition on the material was the only option to protect thousands of tradies.

And here, once again raised alarms have fallen on deaf ears, with evidence SafeWork NSW has known about dangerous silica dust levels since 2017, yet issued only four warnings related to airborne hazards across all tunnelling companies since 2019.

In 2023, the regulator learned CPB had failed to notify it of 12 workers on the M6 diagnosed with silicosis, while investigating another’s diagnosis.

Documentation relating to SafeWork’s ongoing investigation into CPB has been stamped as privileged by parliament, keeping dozens of documents from the public. CPB is the contractor for nine NSW tunnelling mega-projects, including the M6, Metro West, and Western Harbour Tunnel.

But the public have the right to know what is being done to keep Sydney’s tunnelling workers safe.

For a 32-year-old working beneath our city to be diagnosed with silicosis is devastating. It was stories of young workers having their lives cut short that propelled Australia’s engineered stone overhaul. These diagnoses, too, deserve our attention.

Bevan Shields sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.