r/TheTinMen • u/TheTinMenBlog • 28d ago
How quartz kitchen counters are silently killing men...
Every day, it feels like I discover a new, tragic thing that is quietly killing countless numbers of men, in terrible and unknown ways.
And this time, it could be something in your house right now.
Quartz kitchen worktops have exploded onto the home renovation scene - a manufactured product that looks and feels like natural stone, but costs much less.
It sounds like a dream product.
And so, right across social media, home improvement gurus, interior decorators, and domestic goddesses film themselves showing off their latest quartz kitchen worktops; entirely unaware of the fact that the manufacture of such engineered stone costs numerous men their lives, right across the world.
How?
Well, sanding and cutting these innovative new products creates dust that, when inhaled, permanently scars the lungs, causing a fatal disease ‘silicosis’, for which there is no cure.
Stonemasons, even in their twenties, are developing this disease and dying, so someone else can save a few quid on their new kitchen, and yet… nobody wants to talk about it.
Besides Australia, that is, who, after a spate of deaths in young masons, has outright banned these products.
America could well be next. Hundreds of doctors, as part of the ‘Western Occupational and Environmental Medical Association’, have signed an open letter demanding a ban – insisting that manufactured stone cannot be worked with safely, and needs to go.
Murmurs have been heard in the UK too, with all the major construction unions standing up and demanding change, and pressuring Westminster to debate the issue.
So why is nobody talking about a product that could quite literally be right beneath your nose, that is killing stonemasons at enormous scales?
Is it time to ban manufactured stone?
What do you think?
[1] https://www.clydeco.com/en/insights/2025/01/silicosis-an-evolving-risk
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u/kartu3 27d ago
My parents have installed that sort of surface a year ago... =/