Australia Commits $4.6M to Silicosis Research
CANBERRA, Australia – Australia will spend AUS $6 million (USD $4.66 million) in fiscal-year 2021 to study silicosis diagnosis and treatment among the country’s stone workers.
The move by the country’s Department of Health follows more than two years of highly publicized cases of the lung disease appearing in fabricators dealing with engineered stone.
The funding, to begin July 1, will be spread among five university-level programs.
The largest amount – AUS $2.2 million – goes to the University of Queensland, where some of the funding will enhance work on whole-lung lavage. The process – an actual saline rinse-out of affected lungs – is being developed jointly by the university and The Prince Charles Hospital in Chermside, Australia.
Monash University in Melbourne gets two awards totaling AUS $1.6 million. One program will use data from affected workers to investigate new methods to determine disease severity and find better indicators of progression. The other program seeks to address lung problems by identifying risk of inflammation and improve the use and effectiveness of anti-inflammatory medication.
The University of Sydney receives nearly AUS $1.5 million to build on a current project seeking to enhance silicosis diagnosis using artificial intelligence. The University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia, will get AUS $645,764 to study the role of particle size in silicosis, the types of engineered stone that produce the higher hazards for workers, and why the dust generated in fabrication causes the severity of the disease.
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