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Bangladeshi Workers Pay Price for ‘Weathered’ Jeans Look
Shafiq Alam | October 10, 2011

A Bangladeshi garment laborer works in a sandblasting factory in Dhaka. Sandblasting has long been banned in Europe and the United States, but it is still conducted in Bangladesh. (AFP Photo/Munir uz Zaman) A Bangladeshi garment laborer works in a sandblasting factory in Dhaka. Sandblasting has long been banned in Europe and the United States, but it is still conducted in Bangladesh. (AFP Photo/Munir uz Zaman)
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DrDez
10:35am Oct 11, 2011

Shafiq Alam

sand or shot blasting is not banned in Europe. Indeed it is used in a wide variety of things from metal prep to building restoration

It is however regulated and the regulations are enforced. (KEY POINT) My brother has a plant in the UK that uses a variety of shot and silca in preparation for metal treatments prior to coating -

That does not detract from this guys plight and the ignorance surrounding it.

However

In 1975 we started introducing UK standards for H&S in our then small plant in Tangerang. We have spent millions of dollars on equipment, training and goodness knows what else and time and time again we are faced with breaches.

Since 1975 we have recorded about 50 cases with PLC (potential lethal consequences) of all those all but 1 was caused by people cheating safeguards (usually High Voltage) or knowingly not adhering to sops.

Relevant to the article on one occasion one of the guys responsible for maintaining the ‘super clean’ area went to the onsite Doctor complaining of nausea. The Doctor called me down saying he was going to admit him to hospital for possible poison – We immediately collected his equipment (its checked and signed as serviceable every day by the operative and replaced every 28 days) and found that he had cut a slit in the rear (for air) but worse than that he had removed the filter elements in the breathing equipment. We had 6 people and checked all 6 and found 2 others had done the same. These are not dumb people this guy had an Engineering degree from Bandung but he chose to cheat the system even though he knew the dangers.

The point I am making is that the guy in question may (he may not) have been provided with safety equipment and training BUT had this been here there would have been a better than even chance of him failing to use it – and we take it very seriously.


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Dhaka, Bangladesh. Suman Howlader was thrilled to land a job in a Bangladeshi factory sandblasting new jeans to make them look old, but he now believes the diktats of fashion have exacted a heavy toll on his health.

After working for three years, he started vomiting blood, coughing badly and struggling to breathe before being admitted to a specialist respiratory hospital in Dhaka.

Workers’ groups say Howlader and many others like him have been misdiagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis because of ignorance about silicosis — an incurable disease caused by inhalation of silica particles.

The minute, fast-moving particles are released during sandblasting, a process used to give new jeans the “worn” look that has been popular for many years around the world.

Sandblasting has long been banned in Europe and the United States, but Bangladesh’s cheap-labor garment factories still use it to condition jeans for top western brands.

Gucci, Levi’s, H&M and Gap have all vowed to stop selling sandblasted products, while Dolce & Gabbana has been targeted in an Internet campaign to take a similar stance.

“One day, when I was working, blood started gushing out of my mouth and nose,” Howlader said from his hospital bed.

“They told me the work was safe. But the constant sandblasting made the room fill up with dust and sand. You end up swallowing and inhaling a lot of it.”

Howlader fired high-pressure sand at denim jeans with just a cloth mask for protection, treating 200 to 300 pairs in a 10-hour day.

“Sandblasting is booming here,” said Kalpana Akhter, general secretary of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity, which records many silicosis-like symptoms among workers in the sector.

“Doctors are not looking out for silicosis, so cases get diagnosed as tuberculosis instead,” she said.

As most Bangladeshi companies have no health insurance, many of those who become sick simply quit their jobs and return to their villages in dreadful health, she added.

Tens of thousands of Bangladeshi workers are involved and at least 500 factories use sandblasting, said Khorshed Alam, who runs a labor rights group.

“Workers hardly have any protective gear to prevent [silica] dust from entering their system,” he said.

According to Alam, many large factories are aware of the health risks of sandblasting and to avoid potential liability they often subcontract out the work to small, standalone factories.

“We used home-made compressors and sand-guns, which are 20 times cheaper than the ones used by big jeans plants,” Delwar Hossain, supervisor at the small Meridian unit in Dhaka, said.

Because of the high pay — 7,500 taka ($100) a month, double the minimum wage — they have no shortage of workers like Mohammad Ilias.

With only a thin cloth wrapped around his face, the 21-year-old from a village in the country’s remote north was blasting sand with a homemade pressure-gun onto a pair of new jeans.

“In some factories, they use masks and other gear to keep sand off, but here we use cloth. ... There is no escape from sand, but we’ve got used to it,” he said.

“I swallow so much sand doing this work but enough water and a banana a day sort out the health problems. I don’t mind inhaling sand as long as the wages are good,” he said.

The labor rights group Clean Clothes Campaign has run a successful campaign to shame famous brand names into using other, safer, techniques but in Bangladesh it remains profitable and therefore common.

Gap said it halted all sandblasting at its Bangladeshi suppliers in August following a review last year, though for many local factory owners there is an acceptance that the needs of fashion overrule health concerns.

“We are still a LDC [least developed country], please don’t think that we are Switzerland,” said Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin, head of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturer and Exporters Association, explaining that a national ban was unlikely.

Agence France-Presse