The Royal Australasian College of Physicians is calling on the Government to follow Australia’s lead in banning engineered stone, over its links to the incurable lung disease silicosis .
A spokesperson says inhaling even small amounts of the dust, has been linked with silicosis and other conditions including cancer and heart disease.
It is perfectly safe in use, as I understand it, it’s just not safe for humans to work it into a form suitable for installation. I can’t imagine a single reasonable scenario in which someone’s going to find their countertop ground to fine particulate dust. However if it does get pulverised and airborne, it’s way worse to get into your lungs than natural stone because of all the other contaminants that go into making engineered stone which you don’t find in the natural stuff. Think of Florida’s plan to put radioactive waste into their tarmac as another example - tarmac gets torn up and some of it does get fine enough to hang around in the air, it’s part of smog. We breathe that in. Obviously it’s not good if it’s not radioactive. Make it radioactive though and you have a much bigger problem.