Michael Nolan has urged work health and safety authorities meeting on Wednesday to reduce the silica dust limit. Photograph: Nolan family

A Victorian father who has a life expectancy of only five to 10 years if he doesn’t get a lung transplant soon says the new national mandatory limit for silica dust exposure doesn’t go far enough and that the decision will “cost lives”.

Michael Nolan, 33, is a former stonemason who was diagnosed in March this year with silicosis and is on a waiting list for a transplant. He wanted the present dust exposure limit, of 0.1 milligrams per cubic metre over an eight-hour shift, dramatically cut to save lives.