Is quartz safe? Silica, silicosis and what it means for your kitchen

Engineered quartz can contain up to around ninety per cent crystalline silica. Cutting it dry throws off respirable crystalline silica, a fine dust that causes silicosis, an incurable and irreversible lung disease. Unlike the traditional form, which took decades, engineered stone silicosis has affected young workers within a few years. The United Kingdom has recorded cases and deaths, mostly among fabrication workers.

This is a serious matter and we are not going to talk it down. It is also, precisely, a workplace problem. The dust is created by machinery in a workshop. It is not present in a cured, sealed slab bolted to your cabinets.

On 11 May 2026 the Health and Safety Executive published guidance on working with engineered stone, and announced a programme of over a thousand inspections of fabricators. The guidance requires water suppression at the tool, which in practice means dry cutting cannot meet the standard. HSE research found dry fabrication produces exposure five to ten times higher than wet methods.

One point of accuracy, because it is widely reported wrongly. This is enforceable guidance under existing health and safety law, not a new statute and not a ban. The HSE's own wording is that it effectively rules out dry cutting. Anyone telling you engineered stone has been banned in Britain is mistaken. The government considered a ban and declined it in June 2026, partly because silicosis also arises from natural stone and a narrow ban risks complacency about everything else.

The clearest statement on this comes from Australia, which did ban the manufacture and supply of engineered stone. Even there, the regulator's advice to households is that there is no need to remove engineered stone already installed, and no health risk from having it in the home, provided nobody cuts, drills, grinds or polishes it.

The practical consequence for you is small but worth knowing. If a fitter ever needs to modify your worktop in place, for a new tap hole or an appliance change, that is a job for someone with water suppression and extraction, not for a cordless grinder in your kitchen.

We advise on the stone, template your kitchen, cut it, fit it and carry the guarantee. That means the safety question is ours to answer rather than somebody else's, and we treat it that way.

We cut wet with suppression at the tool, extract at source, and provide respiratory protection and health surveillance for our people, in line with current HSE guidance. It is the right thing to do, and it is also self interested: a fabricator who ends up in the news for harming workers has already failed at the job.

Several manufacturers now sell reduced silica ranges, and some market products as silica free. Two things are worth knowing before you pay a premium for the label.

First, low silica is an unregulated marketing term in the United Kingdom. There is no British threshold it has to meet. The only formal number anywhere is Australia's one per cent definition. Second, silica free almost never means zero. The most credible products in this category qualify their own claim in the small print to less than one per cent, which is genuinely low and is not the same as none.

There is also a common assumption that porcelain is the safe alternative. Published data puts crystalline silica in porcelain slabs at roughly 15 to 25 per cent, which is higher than several low silica quartzes. The material category tells you very little. Only the published figure for the specific product does.

If a low silica surface matters to you, ask us and we will tell you what the manufacturer's own safety data sheet says for the specific range, or tell you that we cannot get one. We are not going to repeat a supplier's marketing claim on a health question.

Granite contains substantially less crystalline silica than engineered quartz. Marble and quartzite vary. If the coverage has genuinely unsettled you, natural stone is a reasonable answer and we are happy to steer you there. It is a legitimate preference and you will not get an argument from us.