Silica, silicosis and your worktop: an occupational hazard, and whose it actually is

01 / 05

The answer, before the detail

Silicosis is an irreversible lung disease caused by breathing in fine silica dust. HSE describes it plainly: the dust is fine enough to reach deep inside the lungs, it can cause irreversible lung damage, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer, and damage may be done before any symptoms appear. Its own deputy director put it in one sentence in the May press release: "Silicosis is incurable, but it is entirely preventable."

None of that is a statement about a worktop in a kitchen. It is a statement about a workshop with a cutting bench in it. The distinction is not a convenient one we have invented. It is the structure of the regulation itself, which sits under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 and applies to employers controlling workers’ exposure. There is no consumer-facing duty in it, because there is no consumer-facing exposure.

02 / 05

What the regulator actually published, in May 2026

On 11 May 2026 HSE announced a package of measures, and the specifics are worth having accurately rather than through a headline.

• New guidance "making clear that dry cutting of engineered stone is unacceptable and that water suppression techniques, already used by many industry leaders, are how businesses should meet the legal requirement."
• A nationwide inspection programme: "Over the next 12 months, HSE inspectors will conduct more than 1,000 visits to fabricators across Great Britain, with enforcement action taken against those failing to meet the required standards."
• The evidence behind it: HSE’s research "found that dry fabrication typically results in exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS) five to ten times higher than wet methods using equivalent tools."
• A finding about materials: it "also found that lower-content silica engineered stone is available at the same quality, removing any reason for businesses not to switch to less dangerous products."
• And the scale of the underlying problem: engineered stone "can contain up to 95% crystalline silica", and recent cases suggest exposure to its dust can cause silicosis in a matter of months or years rather than the decades associated with natural stone.

The first-ever COSHH guidance sheet for the sector, ST3A, sets out what employers must do in five plain requirements: switch to engineered stone with a low silica content; use on-tool water suppression; control the mist that water suppression generates, because that mist contains crystalline silica too; provide appropriate respiratory protective equipment; and carry out regular health surveillance. HSE states that these are legal requirements rather than good practice.

Read past the summary and ST3A gets specific in ways that are useful for judging any workshop. It calls for powered air purifying respirators with an assigned protection factor of at least 20 during processing, cleaning and machinery maintenance. It requires tight-fitting RPE wearers to be clean shaven and face fit tested. It says work clothing goes to a contract laundry and is not laundered at home. It requires at least Class M vacuum equipment, and it puts three words in bold: "No dry brushing."

03 / 05

Our own position, stated so it can be checked

It is easy to write an article about somebody else’s duty. Here is ours, in the same terms the guidance uses, because a company answering this question ought to answer it about itself.

04 / 05

Low-silica material: what the numbers are and who published them

HSE’s first requirement is to work with stone containing the lowest crystalline silica content, and its research concluded that lower-content material of equivalent quality is available. That makes what manufacturers publish about their own products directly relevant to a buying decision for the first time.

Cosentino publishes figures for Silestone. It describes the range as a mineral low-silica surface, states that its Hybriq+ technology reduces crystalline silica content, and publishes a per-colour label giving the maximum percentage present. In its own statement on the subject it puts it numerically: "Silestone Q10 and Q40 products now contain a maximum 10% and 40% crystalline silica content respectively." It also states that since 2023 all Silestone colours are manufactured with low crystalline silica content, and that its technology obtained independent certification in 2023 from SGS Australia for containing less than 40% crystalline silica across the entire colour portfolio.

Beyond low-silica engineered stone there is a second category: sintered materials formulated without crystalline silica at all, marketed on exactly that basis. We are not going to publish a figure for any of them, for a simple reason. We could not open the manufacturer’s own technical file at the time of writing, and this is not a subject on which to repeat a number found somewhere else. If a silica-free product is being offered to you, ask for the maker’s own published statement and read it. That is the same test we apply to every figure on this page.

05 / 05

What it means for the worktop you already have, and the one you are buying

This applies to every stone we cut, which is a short list, the full account of what we fit and what we refuse to fit is published separately, and every material on it is machined in the same wet workshop. For an installed worktop: nothing. It is a finished, solid, sealed surface, and there is no mechanism by which it generates respirable dust while it sits there. Cosentino says as much about its own product. That it has been certified as safe and not generating any type of risk for the final consumer, and that fabrication is fully safe as long as the fabricator follows appropriate safety measures. The whole of the risk sits in that second clause, and that second clause is about us.

There is one genuine exception and it is worth stating clearly, because it is the only place a householder can put themselves in the way of this. If you ever take a grinder, a drill or a diamond blade to a stone worktop yourself (cutting in a new tap hole, enlarging a cut-out, trimming an upstand) do not do it dry, and do not do it in an enclosed kitchen. That is the same operation the guidance is written about, done without any of the controls it requires. It is a job to hand back to a fabricator.

• Ask any fabricator you are considering how they cut. "Wet, with on-tool water suppression" is the answer the guidance describes; anything that sounds like extraction alone is a different and weaker control.
• Ask whether they control the mist as well as the dust, because the guidance treats those as two problems.
• Ask whether the material you are being quoted has a published silica figure, and who published it. This is a new question, and it is a fair one now that the regulator has told the industry to prefer lower-content material.
• Ask what happens on site, not just in the workshop. Site work is where the temptation to make one quick dry cut lives.
• If a price is far below every other quote, ask what is in it. Cutting safely is a real cost, and so is templating, edge work and waste.