The Dust That’s Killing Britain’s Kitchen Workers: The Hidden Danger Behind Your Quartz Worktop

You’ve probably seen them in countless kitchen showrooms gleaming quartz worktops, smooth and pristine, a symbol of modern home design. For the homeowner, they represent nothing more dangerous than an aesthetic choice. Yet for the workers who cut, grind, and shape them, those same surfaces can be a death sentence. Silica dust. Two words that are fast becoming the UK’s most urgent occupational health emergency.

What Is Silica Dust — And Why Does It Kill?

Engineered stone, used in the vast majority of modern quartz worktops, is a man-made composite built primarily from crushed natural quartz bonded with resins and pigments. It looks beautiful. It’s durable. Yet according to the British Safety Council, it can contain up to 95% crystalline silica.

When stone fabricators cut, drill, grind, or polish engineered stone, it releases respirable crystalline silica (RCS) a fine, invisible dust that penetrates deep into the lungs. Once inhaled, it causes silicosis: a progressive, incurable scarring of the lung tissue. There is no cure. There is no going back. In the most severe cases, the only potential intervention is a lung transplant — and moreover, many patients deteriorate too quickly to qualify for one.

Silicosis doesn’t work like most occupational diseases. As the HSE confirmed in its May 2026 guidance, silica-related disease typically takes decades to develop with natural stone. However, exposure to engineered stone dust can cause silicosis in a matter of months or years. As a result, workers can suffer permanent, irreversible lung damage before experiencing a single symptom.

By the time they notice something is wrong, it is often far too late.

“I’m Sure More People Will Fall Ill”

He was 48 years old, a father of three, and he gave his interview from a hospital bed at London’s Whittington Hospital, knowing he had only weeks to live.

Marek Marzec, originally from Poland and living in London, had worked for several engineered stone manufacturers in north London and Hertfordshire since 2012. Subsequently, he was diagnosed with silicosis in April 2024. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and by the time he was too unwell to receive a potentially life-saving lung transplant, he was speaking publicly to warn others.

Image courtesy of Leigh Day

As reported by Leigh Day Solicitors, Marek said: “I arrived in the UK hoping to build a better life and wanting to make sure that my young daughters were financially secure. Instead, because of the work I did cutting quartz worktops, I have been left unable to breathe and in terrible pain.”

He described working in a “tornado” of dust as reported by Richardson-Hill with only a mask and no extractor for protection. Furthermore, he spoke not in anger for himself alone, but in warning for those still working in the same conditions.

“I’m sure more people will fall ill,” he said. He died shortly after.

Consequently, his solicitor, Ewan Tant of Leigh Day, described the case as “tragic,” warning that unless action was taken, the industry could expect more cases with “similarly appalling and potentially fatal outcomes.”

A 28-Year-Old Who Should Have Had His Whole Life Ahead of Him

Marek’s death was devastating. But he was not alone.

Wessam al Jundi was 20 years old when he started working for Yes Marble Ltd, a stonework company in west London, in May 2016. He was originally from Syria and had come to the UK to build a life. Wessam worked with engineered stone and, as a result, was diagnosed with silicosis just five years later, in 2021.

He died at Harefield Hospital on 22 May 2024. He was 28 years old. The cause of death, as recorded in the official Prevention of Future Deaths report published by the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary: respiratory failure due to occupational silicosis.

Subsequently, West London Senior Coroner, Lydia Brown, investigated his death and in October 2024 issued that Prevention of Future Deaths report — a formal, urgent intervention typically reserved for cases where a coroner believes further deaths are likely unless action is taken.

The report was damning. As detailed by Construction News, the coroner found that Wessam had developed an untreatable lung condition probably caused by exposure to RCS in his workplace, noting the company had operated in “completely unsafe conditions” with no adequate water suppression, inadequate respiratory protection, and absent ventilatory systems.

Wessam’s widow, Malak Al Safade, said through Leigh Day: “My husband had worked with stone for many years yet within five years of starting to cut engineered stone he lost his life. The coroner has said he was working in terrible conditions with dust all around him and without the proper safety equipment. Sadly, none of us knew at the time that this would cost him his life.”

The coroner’s report was sent directly to the Health and Safety Executive, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, demanding a formal response outlining proposed action.

The Scale of the Problem

These are not isolated tragedies. They are the visible tip of what experts warn could become a very large iceberg.

Since mid-2023, Dr Jo Feary, a lung disease specialist at London’s Royal Brompton Hospital, has been treating the UK’s first identified cluster of engineered stone silicosis cases, as reported by Hazards Magazine. Alarmingly, her initial patient group of eight men with an average age of just 34 has since grown considerably. In fact, as of early 2026, more than 50 quartz stonemasons in the UK have been diagnosed with silicosis, predominantly young men in their twenties and thirties. Furthermore, four have now died. Most disturbingly of all, at least one patient — aged just 23 — has been referred for a lung transplant.

Globally, the picture is even more alarming. Research published in the National Library of Medicine (PMC) found that by November 2024, researchers in California had tracked 219 cases of engineered stone silicosis in that state alone, including at least 14 deaths and 26 lung transplantations. Cases have been reported from Spain, Israel, Italy, Australia, Belgium, China, and the US.

The British Safety Council notes that HSE-commissioned research estimated silica exposure was responsible for the deaths of more than 500 construction workers in 2005 alone — across all industries. Engineered stone represents a concentrated, accelerated version of that broader risk.

This Is Not a Danger to the Homeowner — But It Is a Danger to the Worker

It’s important to be clear. The finished quartz worktop in a kitchen poses no meaningful danger to the family who use it every day.

Silica within the stone is locked in place. The risk is created entirely during the fabrication process. When the stone is cut, ground, drilled, and polished in workshops and on-site by skilled tradespeople.

The problem is not the product in the home. It’s what happens in the workshop. Often a small unit with no windows, no effective dust extraction, no water suppression, and workers equipped with little more than a basic dust mask. That only offers wholly inadequate protection against respirable crystalline silica particles.

These are people doing a skilled job. They deserve to come home safe.

How Does it Compare to Asbestos?

Industry experts have begun making an uncomfortable but apt comparison. The Federation of Master Builders said in a May 2026 briefing: silica dust is starting to feel like the new asbestos. Not because it is the same material, but because it carries the same uncomfortable pattern. Invisible, easy to underestimate, and often only taken seriously once the damage has already been done.

Like asbestos, silica dust is invisible to the naked eye, it causes incurable disease. Like asbestos, small businesses have for years operated without adequate controls — often without even knowing the risk. And like asbestos, the reckoning is coming.

What Is the HSE Doing?

For years, critics argued the Health and Safety Executive moved too slowly on engineered stone silicosis. That changed significantly in May 2026.

On 11 May 2026, the HSE announced its most significant intervention in the sector to date. New guidance explicitly declaring that dry cutting of engineered stone is unacceptable and that water suppression techniques are now the legal standard. The announcement was backed by the launch of a nationwide inspection programme. More than 1,000 visits to stone fabrication workshops and sites across Great Britain, running through 2026 and 2027, with enforcement action taken against those who fail to comply.

HSE research published alongside the guidance found that dry cutting produces silica dust levels five to ten times higher than equivalent wet-cutting methods. As Vent-Tech reported, Mike Calcutt, HSE Deputy Director, put it bluntly: “To every employer in this sector: the guidance is now published, the expectations are clear, and our inspectors are coming.”

The new guidance underpinned by the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH) sets out exactly what employers must now do:

• Switch to engineered stone with a low silica content
• Use on-tool water suppression during all cutting operations and control the resulting mist
• Provide appropriate Respiratory Protective Equipment (RPE),
• Include a Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPR) with an Assigned Protection Factor of at least 20
• Install adequate Local Exhaust Ventilation (LEV) systems
• Carry out regular health surveillance for all workers exposed to RCS
• Never dry sweep or use compressed air on silica slurry residue

As CMS Law notes, while this is not a new law in itself, it represents the benchmark against which courts are expected to assess employer negligence, and any business failing to meet these standards will find itself with very little legal cover.

The UK Workplace Exposure Limit for respirable crystalline silica is currently 0.1 mg/m³ over an eight-hour time-weighted average. Notably, as Vent-Tech highlights, both the United States and Australia have set their WELs at half that figure.

Should Engineered Stone Be Banned?

That is the question now dominating the industry — and opinion is sharply divided.

Australia became the first country in the world to ban engineered stone in July 2024, following a national task force that concluded hazardous exposure levels persisted even after tightened regulations. As PMC research confirmed, the ban on manufacturing and supply was extended to importation in January 2025.

In the UK, as reported by Homebuilding, leading silicosis expert Dr Carl Reynolds has been unequivocal: “Silicosis is a devastating, incurable, and entirely preventable disease. I can see no justification for artificial high-silica stone use in the UK and fully support a ban.”

The trade union Unite went further following the May 2026 HSE guidance. As Build News reported, Unite called the measures insufficient and demanded a full ban, particularly for localised cutting work carried out in domestic properties. Jason Poulter, Unite’s national officer for construction, said: “Engineered stone is a dangerous material, and people should not be exposed to its dust — Unite will not stop fighting until its use in the UK is ended.”

The HSE has stopped short of recommending a ban — though it has stated it is open to considering any interventions that will positively impact reduced risk.

What is not in dispute is this: the current situation is unacceptable. More workers will be diagnosed. More will die. The only question is how quickly — and decisively — the UK acts.

The Dust Is Invisible — The Danger Isn’t!

Wessam al Jundi. Marek Marzec. Two names. 2 families. Two entirely preventable deaths.

They will not be the last unless the UK stone fabrication industry, its employers, its clients, and its regulators take this with the seriousness it demands.

The worktop in the showroom is beautiful. The dust that creates it is lethal. And unlike the stone itself, the damage it does cannot be polished away.