What a price to pay for a new kitchen!

As a Civil Litigation Solicitor, I have worked on many personal injury cases over the last 25 years, some of these have been pretty traumatic industrial disease type cases with one of the worst being Silicosis.

Silicosis is a fatal lung disease that is a lot less known about than say Asbestosis due to the fact the number of diagnosed cases I believe are a lot less than say Asbestosis.

Over the years gone by it affected a great many Stonemasons, that often worked in very dusty environments without adequate personal protective equipment.  They were working with stone such as sandstone that has a high silica content that when the Stonemasons were cutting and shaping the stone, particularly when using power tools, would cause it to break into a very fine dust which they would subsequently inhale.

The dust is fine so it permeates the lungs and as well as possibly causing Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and Lung Cancer it can also cause Silicosis.

Apparently the Health and Safety Executive commissioned research not too long ago and they estimated that silica was responsible for the death of over 500 construction workers in 2005 alone.   As this is not thousands or even tens of thousands of workers, this condition has not been widely publicised.

That is not until more recently!

It has been discovered literally within the last few years that engineered/artificial stone kitchen worktops have a high silica content.

With natural products such as those actual worktops made from marble and granite, often prohibitively expensive for home owners, more affordable materials like engineered stone which is a manmade composite material primarily composed of crushed natural stone containing quartz and resin formed into a slab have become more popular.

Unfortunately quartz has an extremely high silica content and therefore cutting quartz worktops can pose serious health risks.

It seems that even these days without the proper information/protection the risks from this very dangerous condition known as Silicosis become more apparent than ever.

The lack of personal protective equipment for these workers cutting these kitchen worktops have led to more than 50 of these “quartz workers” being diagnosed with Silicosis since the first UK cases were detected in mid 2023.  Just as alarming is the fact that the average age of the first 45 cases in the UK was 31 years old, with the youngest aged just 23, who apparently was referred for a lung transplant just last year.

Most recently a Stonemason died after working with the engineered stone worktops at 48 years old only 7 months after being diagnosed with Silicosis.

It is not simply in the UK that this is becoming a very serious problem, as in 2024 Australia became the first country in the world to ban quartz, after hundreds of young Stonemasons, most aged under 35 contracted Silicosis between 2015 and 2022 and in Spain nearly 6000 cases of Silicosis have been discovered between 2007 and 2024.

It is hoped that the Government will take decisive action in conjunction with the Health and Safety Executor, as otherwise despite Solicitors like myself being able to run claims for compensation for workers in this area who contract Silicosis, there is currently no cure and quite often it simply ends up being the case that compensation ends up going to the loved ones of the worker/Stonemason given the often extremely aggressive nature of the disease with many of these workers dying at a very young age.