Dr. Gordon Hare

What's been most worrying here is that we've been seeing the worst or most severe form of acute or accelerated silicosis.

And as you mentioned, there is no specific treatment.

There is certainly no cure.

We can only offer supportive treatment.

And for some individuals who become very unwell, they may be considered for transplant as a treatment.

But beyond that, we can only offer supportive treatments.

Yes, I certainly do.

You know, speaking briefly about masks there, you know, masks being the

I guess, least effective way of controlling for a hazard, the most effective way is to eliminate it or ban it.

It's the only real way that we can assure that workers are not being exposed to this.

The nature of the disease is that it does occur over a number of years.

So we see a lag time

We see the most severe cases come first and then the less severe cases come in multiples of that in a lag afterwards.

So, yes, I think this is certainly something the EU needs to be looking at.

Look, there was some pushback from industry about this.

I think what was helpful is that the public were really behind us.

There was a few high profile cases in the media.

One gentleman, a man, 35, with a young family with respiratory or lung failure.

And I think because people could connect that to a person, they could understand the need to do this.

So the time to onset of disease is directly related to the nature and degree of exposure.