Engineered stone is often hailed as a wonder material. It’s cheap, durable, recyclable, and attractive. But it’s also killing people, according to medical researchers and public health officials around the world. They’re linking a surge in severe cases of silicosis, a progressive and incurable lung disease, to the material’s growing popularity.
Silicosis is one of the oldest occupational diseases. But the “rock dust menace,” as The New York Times described it in 1928, was mostly reined in in the U.S. after safety regulations like wet cutting, ventilation, and respirators were enacted.
However, engineered stone, also known as quartz, has significantly higher concentrations of silica than natural stone—around 90 percent (granite is around 45 to 50 percent and marble is typically below 5 percent).
Because of this, Australia banned engineered stone, and regulators in California may do so too, if widespread noncompliance with emergency workplace safety rules continues.
So what they’re saying is, this wouldn’t be a problem if the workers weren’t refusing to follow the standard safety procedures we’ve had for almost a century?
That or that companies simply won’t design the process/facility differently to eliminate this problem for the most part.
Workers will be incentivized by their bosses to hurry up or lose hourly wages… PPE takes time to wear properly.
Australia banned engineered stone recently. A lot of manufacturers had air quality checks ppe the whole lot and where doing it right but as always there where others who didn’t care or didn’t enforce safety. Since being banned we’ve seen a lot not all of the stone suppliers come out with low silica variants of their stone and a move to more porcelain tops.
I didn’t like the idea of the ban for the reason that everyone is being punished rather than the government doing its job and punishing / shutting down rogue operators. Ultimately though it’s been a slight inconvenience and it seems to have ended up with a better situation for the workers so I guess it’s a good thing.
