Exactly. Or more precisely, ban the net effect (putting the dust into the air), and then people can find the best alternative given that constraint, whether it's a better manufacturing/installation process that doesn't put the dust into the air, or a product that doesn't produce the dust in the first place.

This was considered but the problem is it’s very difficult to enforce in practice

The product is generally installed onsite in a fast paced building industry that doesn’t have time/room to do it properly and often no supervision (1-2 often independent trades doing the installs) to ensure the appropriate measures are actually taken.

The risk has already been known for a while and in practice still lots of “YOLO” onsite cutting without even respirators.

So hold the people intentionally violating safety practices accountable.

This reeks of unnecessary heavy-handedness that hurts everyone. The specified natural alternative (granite) is nearly half silica and is a known health hazard.

All this regulation does is allow sloppy work that'll kill people a little more slowly.

> So hold the people intentionally violating safety practices accountable.

There's already an automatic process for this. They get silicosis.

Anyone else onsite also gets silicosis, too!

Why not just make employers fully responsible in case any of their workers develop silicosis?

The building industry in Australia is filled almost entirely with independent contractors. Mostly single people, working on a contract to the house builder/project manager. So there is little room for that.

But I agree, this would be good.

But I think the decision here is basically that, in practice, it's very difficult to actually get people to follow the required practices, in practice. As has been shown in practice.

In this case I guess the independent contractor ends up accepting the responsibility for not taking their own safety precautions seriously: they get silicosis.

I feel for the people who were early in the industry who had no idea this could happen to them, but now that it's known, if a contractor doesn't feel like taking appropriate precautions, then they get what they deserve.

Banning an entire industry because people cut corners is just dumb.

I wholeheartedly agree with you in theory.

But I, personally, am happy to accept the 'Human Factors' side of reality.

> then they get what they deserve.

It doesn’t just affect them. Everyone nearby gets exposed. People who come later to clean get exposed. Customers can get exposed.

asbestos was banned for similar reasons, or are you saying that it shouldn’t have been banned either because of “people cutting corners with ppe” - it too is perfectly safe when handled safely

Ya and the tax payer foots the medical bill. Show some humanity

Do you think that folks will install it on site without cutting it?

I've just had two engineered stone counter tops installed. In both cases (different companies) the fitters came and made a template from thick card of the exact size for the top. the tops arrived and fit precisely. One had to have holes for cut in, but I didn't hang around to see if they fitter used PPE

When I picked out my slab, went to the place where they locally manufactured the countertop to the specs of the kitchen. No one was wearing PPE. Installers just dropped it in and didnt need to do anything.

In my experience in Poland you leave the stuff that has to fit in the countertop at the stonemason's workshop and they measure/test fit everything there. My guy has a bunch of (perhaps?) old machines that all do the cuts flooded with something that resembles diamond tooling or grinding wheels.

As far as countertops go, field cuts are rather uncommon. Laser templating works well.

Holes on the other hand tend to be done in the field. But, people don't wear PPE even though it's simple and easy to do.

~6 years ago I got new countertops, and while they did the bulk of the cutting in their facility, they did do a few cuts in my front yard, creating a huge cloud of dust. The main parts of the counter arrived ready to assemble, but I think they cut a spanning piece for behind the stove, spanning the counters on either side.

My 8yo son came out to see what was going on, looked at the workers doing the cut without masks, and said "silicosis ain't no joke" and went back inside. I've taught him well.

All the workers clapped and one of them cried.

And who was that boy? Albert Einstein.

I'll take things that never happened for $500, linsomniac

I'm struggling to figure out why it would seem so implausible. I got the phrasing from AvE on youtube, and I've said it to him several times during our DIYing together because I'm trying to educate him on using PPE.

You phrased it exactly like the many stories posted on social media that end with a young kid expressing virtue in the words of an adult. You have other skeptical replies, so it’s not just me.

I guess I should also have told the story about the time I had thrown together some quick tables for a yard sale and after the yard sale he decided they would make a great stage, and was showing off in front of his friend, standing on the table. He says "I am walking on the ta..." but gets cut off as the table collapses.

So not everything he says is wisdom beyond his years...

Due to lack of tech work I've been installing stone countertops. I can confirm we cut on site around half the time, microplastics galore (you can smell the polyester in the air).

Would love to know your opinion on this then - is there any way onsite cutting could be eliminated, semi or fully automated with wet cutting? Or is the onus always on the contractor to use PPE?

It's on the contractor to use PPE. At my outfit we measure, take a few notes, do most of the cutting and polishing wet at the workshop. But often the hole for the faucet is cut on site after the sink is glued under the countertop in place, there is always dust, I'd rather program in JavaScript;)

The slabs should be "perfect" from the shop. This includes sink cutouts. For whatever reason, there is a tendency for faucet holes to be cut onsite. This bothers me, but it's true.

Not only is it stupidly messy, it's less precise, dangerous, and often the crews are too careless to protect the inside of the cabinet boxes (where the slug of stone that's being cut from the top will drop and bounce around).

I'd love to hear why. What is the templating process and why is it not better?

Show me a job site with square drywall and I'll show you a perfect fitting countertop:) The material is mostly cut with a diamond saw with a water jet to keep the dust down. But if an adjustment is needed there is often some cutting and polishing on site.

But that's the point of templating. It's not a rectangular slab. It's a polygon to accommodate for inconsistencies and should be scribed to the back wall.

And even if something is off, the drywall should be gouged to make the slab fit, rather than stone being cut onsite.

We do scribe the drywall at times, it depends on what's off, by how much and in relation to what. Can't scribe into a cabinet side, and mistakes happen. Even the sink cutouts are cut dry at the shop, so there's a ton of dust exposure for sure. The trades are a messy business. And 'get er done' usually comes before PPE in most trades even now that we have a better idea of what's bad for us, it's a temporary job for me. The slabs are sometimes 500lbs so I can skip the gym at least.

Dry cut in the shop? You are making me want to cry.

I give up. Everything is screwed.

Your job is temporary, but please wear a respirator. :-)

Do everyone a favor and call OSHA on your last day. Nothing about this sounds "okay".

>But, people don't wear PPE even though it's simple and easy to do.

are you saying that wearing the PPE is simple and easy to do, or did you mean they don't wear PPE because the job is so simple and easy to do?

The first. Workers tend to be lazy. How many guys do you see all the time using noisy commercial lawn equipment without any sort of hearing or eye protection? Those guys will all be deaf (if lucky) or have severe tinnitus (if unlucky) by 50.

You see it in factories too, where workers will disable safety devices just to save them a tiny amount of movement.

I’ve watched a contractor cut holes in a countertop in the field. They did it wet. I’d still wear safety glasses if I were doing this, but IIRC there was no dust.

I’ve never seen someone cut a countertop on site. They do it in a shop. (Why didn’t Australia instead ban all countertop cutting in shops that doesn’t use dustless tools?)

Hmm, I just looked it up. Home Depot sells the tool for under $30.

Just because you can’t see the dust doesn’t mean there isn’t dust. Often it’s the tiniest particles that are the most dangerous because they can attach to the walls of the lungs but are too small to then actually be dislodged by, a say, coughing.

I haven’t looked for lab data, but certainly what appears to happen is that the swarf ends up suspended in the water. Some water will spray, which will be a bit messy, but mostly it will be in droplets that don’t stay in the air. (And presumably aren’t going to get to one’s lungs either.) And the majority of the swarf just stays in a puddle.

This is in contrast to cutting dry, which causes all the swarf to fly into the air.

So the exposure isn’t zero, but it’s low. It would be interesting to see if it registers on a particle counter (Plantower, etc).

I made an at home modification to our stone counter top when replacing the stove/oven. The new unit was 1/4" too wide. I did the whole tenting and wet cutting, but not nearly wet enough for the obvious reason. I was in full spaceman suit though, as I was sure the amount of water wasn't going to cut it.

I would NOT recommend this to anyone though. At the time, the turn time and expense of having the counter removed, altered at a proper shop, redelivered and installed was prohibitively expensive.

> people don't wear PPE even though it's simple and easy to do

Maybe we should mandate people wear PPE, but if they decide to flaunt the rules and risk their health for no reason, I just don't really feel all that sympathetic.

My exact experience! Got a hole added for water filter tap and I think he didn’t wear PPE. Had I known about this I would have ensured everyone out the house while it was being done.

Even if they did cut on site, is that any worse than cutting natural stone?

Yes, per the article.

"Safe Work found that while silicosis cases could emerge in several industries, the numbers were "disproportionate" among engineered stone workers. Engineered stone workers also suffered a faster disease progression and were more likely to die from it, the report said."

If you mandate that it has to be ordered to fit from the production facility, then yeah it's probably safer.

> If you mandate that it has to be ordered to fit from the production facility, then yeah it's probably safer.

A mandate isn't really necessary. Everyone involved has every incentive to cut stone in a shop rather than in the field.

The problem is people don't wear PPE. Guess what? Everyone already has a mandate to wear PPE.

Sometimes you can't fix stupid.

The last time I speced something like this, they wanted exact measurements and the result arrived in exactly that shape and size. So I think you're right.

Asbestos and lead are also minimal risk undamaged in-situ. Both are now banned, and for good reason.

"Undamaged" is the key word there; asbestos at least seems very easy to damage. Is the same true for engineered stone? And even if you do damage it, I would expect it would not kick up enough dust to be a problem.

One difference is that stone countertops are not a danger to homeowners or people doing future basic renovation.

But they are - and the article mentions it. Alterations years later will still Produce dust.

Altering the manufactured stone is a deliberate act, and appropriate safety precautions can be mandated. (If people choose not to take those safety precautions, that's on them.)

Asbestos can get into your air through accidental damage to insulation, or in the case of lead, paint chipping or pipes aging can do the trick. This is just something that happens incidentally through the regular lifetime of the material, not because someone decided to do something to it.

Countertops are isolated units that can be removed safely without damaging them. Worst alteration I can think of is drilling a hole, another small operation that you can cover with water and vacuum.

Opening up a dry wall on the other hand, will inevitably dust up the whole house.

Install a new sink, gotta enlarge the opening, make lots of dust...

Asbestos was banned but lead is still used in many things.

It’s been banned in new residential construction since 1978.

What about faucets?

Lead is used in brass for corrosion resistance even in handling drinkable water. It does not markedly leach into the water and increases the usability of the plumbing from less than 5 years to more than 30 years.

Gas welding the material results in lead fumes. There is a big quarrel about the usage of lead in water pipe connector brass parts going on in the EU.

Lead was banned in a few specific products like paint.

You can still find it all over the place in things like cabinet pulls, door handles, and even ceramic tile.

Wood dust is also dangerous... Basically you should just try to breath air and not solids

Yes. They should have just banned or limited dry cutting. Cutting stone wet, with running water, produces practically no dust whatsoever.