WARNING TO TRADIES Don't take your lungs FOR GRANTED

PETER IS RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT THE DANGERS OF SILICOSIS

- Katherine Chatfield

When Peter Orton began feeling out of breath doing the simplest of tasks, he automatically assumed he was just getting unfit.

The dad of two, now 50, from Brisbane, QLD started upping his exercise in the hope he'd soon feel better. But the more active Peter was, the more "puffed" and "tired" he felt.

"It hurt to breathe," Peter tells New Idea. "It felt like I was constantly being given a bear hug by someone."

In 2020, Peter was playing with his daughters, Xitise and Kiara, when he felt a stabbing pain in his chest.

"It only lasted 30 seconds but the ache lasted for days afterwards," he says.

Peter's wife, Melita, made him go to the doctor, who ran tests. An ECG determined that Peter's heart was healthy, but an X-ray showed "some white in his lungs".

Peter was eventually told that this white substance was silica fibres.

He was then diagnosed with silicosis an incurable lung disease.

"I'd never heard of it, and I didn't know how I'd got it," says Peter.

Melita, 51, adds that the diagnosis was "devastating.