When an Australian worker developed a debilitating lung disease in 2015, it didn’t take researchers long to connect it to engineered stone bench tops – a popular feature in kitchens and bathrooms.
A years-long campaign, driven by doctors, trade unions and workers, was launched to ban the artificial material as silicosis cases rose among those involved in its cutting and handling.
This week, that campaign culminated in Australia becoming the first country to announce a complete ban on engineered stone, to begin next year.
Health experts, trade unions and governments from California and London are taking note.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ assistant secretary, Liam O’Brien, said Australia appeared to have learned its lesson from asbestos, which took decades to ban.
“Australia’s got a pretty horrible legacy with asbestos, so I think we know very well what happens if you don’t take action early,” he said, noting the county continues to have one highest death rates from mesothelioma and other asbestos-related illnesses.
O’Brien has now turned his attention to the United States, where he is working with his counterparts the American Federation of Labor as further research emerges about the health risks of engineered stone.
“Australia has this fascination with the product, that really no one else in the world has, but [its] market share is growing in North America,” he said.
“There are about 10,000 stonemasons in Australia and 100,000 in the US, so I suspect there is a sizeable proportion that are working with this product – and they most likely have worse controls.”
The largest US study on the material, released in July, found silicosis has claimed the lives of several stonemasons, predominantly young Latino men in California, since the first case was detected in Texas in 2015.
Between 2010 and 2018, fewer than five cases were reported each year in California. In 2022, there were more than 20 cases.
It has led to the state’s workplace safety regulator to draft emergency protections, while Los Angeles county is considering a ban.
Sheiphali Gandhi, an assistant professor of medicine from the University of California, San Francisco, who co-authored the study, said the research was the “tip of the iceberg” of the issue in the US.
“Our best estimate based off the data in the US and Australia is that probably 15 to 20% of people who work in this field have silicosis or will develop it,” she said.
“We’ve been relying a lot on Australian researchers for advice on how to approach this problem and they say it feels like deja vu.”
The UK workplace health and safety authority, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), considers silica dust “the biggest risk to construction workers after asbestos”, although rates were largely attributed to sandstone and other materials.
In 2020, the HSE warned that despite a lack of similar cases to those recorded in Australia and elsewhere, “there remains a concern that the use of artificial stone in the UK is very likely to present a potential risk to the health of exposed workers here as well”.
An all-party parliamentary group for respiratory health report released in January estimated 600,000 workers in the UK are exposed to silica dust each year.
In New Zealand, a dust disease taskforce was set up in 2019 to combat the disease, with about 190 people having lodged claims for assessment of accelerated silicosis as of September 2023.
Australia’s workplace safety watchdog investigated the issue earlier this year and its report, released in October, found stonemasons develop silicosis at a “disproportionate” rate compared to other industries. Most workers who developed the condition were under 35 and face a faster disease progression and higher mortality rate.
The report prompted several businesses, including Australian hardware chain Bunnings and Swedish furniture giant Ikea, to announce plans to phase out the sale of engineered stone products.
Jonathan Walsh, a principal lawyer at Australian law firm Maurice Blackburn which has represented hundreds of stonemasons with silicosis, said engineered stone had “exploded” through the mid-2000s as a cheaper and more durable alternative to marble and granite.
He said he was now particularly concerned about the US, which was about “five years behind Australia’s experience of a full-blown epidemic”.
Kyle Goodwin, a Maurice Blackburn client, was diagnosed with the most severe form of silicosis in 2018.
Goodwin worked as a stonemason on the Gold Coast, in Queensland, which was going through a construction boom at the time.
“All these new suburbs were popping up, people were buying homes out of a catalogue and engineered stone was a very popular choice because you’d know you’d get a very consistent finish in all the units,” the 38-year-old said.
“I reckon we were turning out 10 to 20 kitchens per day in our shed, between five to eight guys [working] at a time.”
Goodwin said he didn’t know the dust that filled the air in the workshop contained crystalline silica, which has been found to cause the deadly disease.
“The rest of the world can’t just shut their eyes and pretend they didn’t know that these kitchen bench tops were killing people,” Goodwin said.
“They need to act before it’s too late.”
