It seems quite reasonable to assume that the way to go is preventing people from breathing in ground-up countertops instead of trying to make countertops that would magically be healthy to inhale.
I would expect that a shop that specializes in cutting countertops would have equipment to cut them with essentially no dust exposure. Water jets come to mind (and people even sell waterjet tools specifically designed for cutting countertops), but a CNC mill with good dust collection ought to be able to do the job pretty well, too.<p>So why is there so much dust exposure to begin with? Here's an article showing someone attacking a countertop with an angle grinder without dust collection at all:<p><a href="https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/07/425871/deadly-dust-engineered-stone-making-california-workers-sick" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/07/425871/deadly-dust-enginee...</a><p>Even a basic dust collector attached to that angle grinder (these are cheap!) should make a pretty big difference.
This seems like… a no duh? Sure I admire finding alternatives that are less bad for you… but when you grind almost anything into a fine dust and aerosolize it, breathing it is really bad. Proper PPE is essential for almost any industry like this.
Somewhat related: There's a dish detergent brand in the US that has a spray version. Not a pump handle squirt-squirt-squirt type, instead it aerosolizes the detergent.<p>My wife likes it. I'm less enthused, because it definitely feels like I'm breathing part of it in when it's used near me.<p>Haven't we learned yet that making airborne particles of something is usually a bad idea if people are around?
I'm not sure if the point here is to suggest that marble/granite solid slabs are better, personally perhaps due to rockclimbing experience it pisses me off that there is no pushback on people buying slices off a mountain to put in their kitchen, when there are reasonable alternatives, even very nice ones.
There is this thing called 'Granito/Terazzo' here, it was pretty popular pre-war and well into the 60's when more modern materials took over. And definitely not a rich people thing, you'd see this stuff everywhere. Hallway floors, showers, bathroom floors, bench tops etc. Polishing and cutting that stuff is pretty messy but you can wear proper protection and then it is manageable if you don't do it every day. Any kind of long term exposure to airborne solids is detrimental.
So you want to replace stone with some shitty plastic aggregate or some other godawful synthetic material instead of just wearing breathing protection for the couple of hours you’re cutting it? That makes no sense.
The risk of <i>using</i> this bench top is minimal. The risk is for the workers making them (or demolishing).<p>The fix is to never saw this material. Always cut it with a water cutter. Problem solved.*