The video was filmed after work on a job site in New South Wales, Australia, the company owner told 7News.<\/p>\n
Drilling concrete can cause silica dust, a fine, invisible particle, to become airborne.<\/p>\n
Breathing in the dust can cause silicosis, a progressive and deadly lung disease and is known to cause cancer, according to WorkSafe New Zealand.<\/p>\n
The video, posted to TikTok by Genesis Carpentry, went viral, getting more than 91,000 likes and 890 comments.<\/p>\n
Many comments were negative, saying the prank was dangerous and irresponsible.<\/p>\n
Some of the critical comments the video received.<\/p>\n
\u201cA prank is us sending an apprentice to Bunnings looking for a tool that doesn\u2019t exist for a few minutes. Bit of fun, no one is hurt, everyone has a good laugh, and they bank it so they can do it to the next one. A prank isn\u2019t giving someone a disease,\u201d one said.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Why does nobody want to be our apprentice?\u2019\u201d asked another.<\/p>\n
Speaking to 7News, the owner of the company, Michael Zaatini, defended the prank.<\/p>\n
He said the video was planned and intended as a joke.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe counted down from three, and Connor held his breath.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once the prank was finished, \u201che washed his face … and then we edited the video together and posted it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The backlash in the comments did not faze Zaatini and the workers, he said.<\/p>\n
It even motivated the tradies to film another video.<\/p>\n
The clip, titled \u201cno one is safe\u201d, followed the same formula, with someone using an air compressor to spray concrete dust into a worker\u2019s face as they drill a hole.<\/p>\n
Zaatini was surprised by how negative some of the comments were, with some being threatening, he said.<\/p>\n
He told 7News the intent of the pranks was never sinister and that the company takes safety protocols seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very strict, we\u2019re always in masks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always do wet cuts, we\u2019re never cutting dry. So there\u2019s never dust in the air. We\u2019re never doing any of that.<\/p>\n
Zaatini said he did not feel he needed to apologise because the prank was misunderstood.<\/p>\n
The apprentice, Connor, told 7News he was fine and confirmed the video was planned.<\/p>\n
The outlet reported workplace safety officials visited the work site on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The video was filmed after work on a job site in New South Wales, Australia, the company owner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24741,45607,8172,1656,1770,45609,3039,45606,156,1872,78,111,139,69,1642,2738,45604,45608,45605,5143,24358,2201,540,5977,102],"class_list":["post-53547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-apprentice","tag-apprentices","tag-backlash","tag-company","tag-concrete","tag-defending","tag-defends","tag-dust","tag-entertainment","tag-face","tag-in","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-online","tag-owner","tag-prank","tag-sparking","tag-sprayed","tag-viral","tag-wave","tag-went","tag-where","tag-which","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}