Australia’s silicosis epidemic is shaping up to be ‘worse’ than the asbestosis disaster, disabling young workers across the artificial stone industry, a Brisbane occupational physician warns.

Some 139 people have been diagnosed with silicosis since the crisis began to unfold in 2016, says Dr Graeme Edwards, from the Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

“This is worse than asbestosis. Why? Because of their working age, and social and political and emotional consequences of the diagnoses in someone who has got this disease under the age of 40,” he told the RACP conference in Auckland this week.

“My youngest patient is 23 years old. I’ve got a 25-year-old stone mason with a three-year-old and five-month-old — and he doesn’t know what he will do for the rest of his life.”