In Québec, quartz is one of the compounds causing the most fatalities related to workplace exposure to chemical substances. The people in charge of this project want to develop a method for analyzing quartz in materials and in the dusts deposited in the work environment, while evaluating the limits of application of the Rietveld quantification tool. This tool determines, as a percentage, the composition of each substance in a mixture.
The method developed by the IRSST’s Laboratory Services and Expertise team will allow professionals to be better supported in the production of their intervention plans by providing them not only with information on the nature of a mixture of unknown compounds, but also the quantification, as a percentage, of each of the inorganic compounds identified, including quartz.