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Comment by yeeeloit | Hacker News Reader

Cutting stone and keeping 100% of it out of your lungs is nearly impossible, especially when you are working in uncontrolled environments like someone's kitchen that is being renovated.

The PPE available for this sort of work is just not up to the job.

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Making driving 100% safe is nearly impossible, but we drive cars built to good crash standards with seatbelts, ABS, AEB, etc. People still die on the roads, but these safety features reduce risk to an acceptable level. Likewise, using decent PPE won't 100% eliminate risk, but it will greatly improve it. Just because PPE isn't 100% effective doesn't mean you shouldn't use it.

The other kind of obvious solution with engineered stone is to avoid cutting it at the installation site. If it's cut to spec at the factory in a controlled environment (surely not that difficult in this age of CAD design etc), you wouldn't be blasting dust around during installation.

You inadvertently make a good point that driving should probably be taxed a lot heavier in most places.

It's reasonably safe for other people in cars, but it's hell for pedestrians, wheel-chair users and cyclists. So much so, that we have re-organised our whole society around avoiding this danger. Eg kids don't play on the streets anymore.

I agree with this. But perhaps a lot of it is just perception? In my country pedestrian deaths have fallen dramatically since the mid-1980s, by about 80%, despite the size of the vehicle fleet getting much larger. Were there more pedestrian deaths in the 1980s because more kids played on the streets? Or because cars and drivers were less safe and less aware of the risks? It certainly wasn't because there were more cars!

Cars and streets have also been getting safer here: advanced pedestrian and cyclist-aware AEB is already in many cars - and becomes mandatory in all new cars in Europe from July 2024. Streets are getting safer with better designs (more choke points, raised pedestrian crossings, etc), and speed limits being reduced in urban/residential areas.

Of course, details depends on the country in question.

I'm mostly worried not so much about the actual number of casualties, but about the avoidance actions people engage in, ie not playing outside.

Why not use other materials?

Modified acrylic or compact laminate?

That will save lives.

Although good materials, acrylics and laminates are not quite as durable as engineered stone countertops. They tend to show more wear over time, and are more prone to damage from extreme heat etc. Some may consider the look and feel of stone to be more "premium".

But of course they're cheaper and lighter and probably still cheaper than stone even if you end up replacing them a couple of times over the lifetime of the kitchen...

Polished concrete is another decent alternative to engineered stone, although again perhaps not as durable.

Polishing, sanding concrete will produce tons of tiny dust particles just as cutting the stone.

Yes, but the dust from concrete or natural stone doesn’t seem to be anything like as dangerous as the dust from engineered stone.

(You still should use PPE and avoid inhaling it, of course!)

Don't know about 2000+ grit polishing concrete, it's likely to be wet sanded but still. The particles would be a lot finer.

The 'engineered' stone is just very fine dust along with binders.

You can repolish an acrylic top and it looks brand new. Most professionals should only take an hour or two to do it.

Geopolymer to the rescue!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000888460...

> Cutting stone and keeping 100% of it out of your lungs is nearly impossible, especially when you are working in uncontrolled environments like someone's kitchen that is being renovated.

I'm building a house, and I have a stone countertop installed. None of the cutting was done on-site. All the work was done in a specialized workshop.

I believe it’s always done that way in the US when you order granite or other stone countertops. Cutting large heavy slabs on site isn’t efficient.

I thought all you had to do was use water with the saw and wear a respirator. Am I misinformed?

No, you're not misinformed, but some people will conflate a non-perfect protection with 'protection is useless'

It's just bog standard denialism

I think that’s simply untrue. You’re not cutting the stone in kitchens, it’s cut at the warehouse and transported to the kitchen. In the US we’ve regulated this and while our record isn’t 100% safety due to non-compliance (which is always the case) we’ve got a much lower rate than Australia despite presumably selling a lot more of it.

PAPR is fine? and available?

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