All right, welcome. My name is Divine. This is episode 657 of the Divine Intervention Podcasts.

And today's podcast, we're going to be continuing this series on our occupational medicine board review.

And again, you know, we've done the OSHA-led standard, osher, asbestos standard. Those are pretty high-yield.

And we're going to do another pretty high-y called the OSHA Crystalline Silica standard, right? So again, I'm going to talk about a lot of things that I think are very important to know for your exams, right? So let's just jump, kind of jump right into it, right? So again, we're going to focus on the OSHA crystalline silica standard, right? They love to test this

on the exams. It's on the Occmed exam blueprint. You've got to know this stuff, right? They love to test

this. It's a very common hazardous exposure. It's a very common occupational long disease.

So if you're sitting for the boards, you want to make sure you know this stuff and you know this

cold, right? So let's start with some context, right?

So the thing is crystalline silica is one of the most abundant minerals on Earth, right? You'll find it in quartz, you know, which makes up a pretty big chunk of the Earth's crust, right? You'll find it in Christobalite, in Tritamite, right? and those are higher temperature forms of silica that you encounter in a lot of industrial processes, right?

So the thing is when nitrolyte amyte, right? And those are higher temperature forms of silica that you encounter

in a lot of industrial processes, right? So the thing is when rock or concrete or break or

motor, you know, it's caught, is ground, is drilled, it's blasted, it generates fine

respirable silica particles, right? Those particles are the hazard, right? And the thing is

OSHA, they finalized the

occurring silica standard in March of 2016, you know, after years and years and years of rulemaking.

This is why the OSHA silica, this is why OSHA standards take a long time to change. The

federal rulemaking process is extremely long. Literally takes years, sometimes decades, right right? So it replaced an older standard that had been on the book since like 1971, right?

So the OPL, you know, it was based on some really outdated formula, you know, that permitted exposures that

these days were like, wait, why did we do that back in the day, right? They're like clearly harmful.

So the new rule lowered the PEL significantly, right, and added we do that back in the day? They're like clearly harmful. So the new rule

lowered the PEL significantly, right? And added, you know, medical surveillance, exposure

control planning, hazard communication requirements that were not there before, right? So compliance

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