As global leaders in innovative home renovation solutions, we have always strived to set industry benchmarks when it comes to a safe environment for our employees, our installers and our customers.
Are Granite Transformations surfaces installed in the home harmful to the customer?
Our surfaces are non-porous and once installed in the home are absolutely not harmful to the consumer. Our surfaces are completely safe for domestic use and comply with the strictest local and international safety standards for consumer use.
The health risk lies in the processing and fabrication of the material, if performed not in accordance with safety legal requirements, and not in the surfaces themselves.
A small amount of dust could be produced during installation or repair of Granite Transformation surfaces in the end users home. This poses no health threat to the end user such as silicosis, which is only developed as a result of ongoing occupational exposure to silica dust.
What are Granite Transformations surfaces made of?
Our revolutionary light-weight surfaces are made of quartz, glass, polymers and other naturally occurring minerals. Measuring at only 7mm in thickness, our surfaces pose the least risk of all engineered stone surfaces in the market when it comes to the processing procedure. In most cases, our product is one third the thickness of other stone surfaces, immediately reducing any risk of dust exposure by this equivalent amount compared to other, thicker surfaces.
What are Silica and Quartz?
Quartz is the most common mineral on earth, and can take on many forms. It’s most commonly found as sand on our beaches, other examples are sandstone, marble and granite. These materials contain a number of things including Crystalline Silica, which is a compound of silicon and oxygen.
Granite Transformations surfaces are made from natural materials that include crystalline silica, such as quartz, sand, and granite, which are then bound together with polymers and formed into slabs.
Crystalline Silica is a component of many manufactured products in daily use, such as glass, pottery and quartz surfaces. Silica is very commonly used in construction and at various concentrations in bricks, blocks, tiles, slabs, cement and concrete.
What is Silicosis?
Silicosis is an occupational lung disease that has been known about for more than a century and associated with many industries, with engineered stone being one of them. It may affect workers who are exposed to crystalline silica (quartz) when not using the correct safety measures.
The disease forms when silica dust particles become trapped in lung tissues, causing inflammation and scarring, and reducing the lung’s ability to take in oxygen.
Silicosis and other diseases associated with respirable crystalline silica (RCS) are 100% preventable with the correct safety measures.
Granite Transformations – At the forefront of Safe Working Practices
Due to the thickness of our slabs, combined with the use of H class vacuums and appropriate PPE, Granite Transformations boasts one of the safest methods when it comes to cutting and fabricating engineered stone. Following our Safe Operating Practices also allows us to be able to cut on-site without risk to the customer.
Our workshops have conducted air monitoring testing, resulting in well below industry standard levels of respirable crystalline silica workplace exposure.
Granite Transformations are proud to report that in the 26 years of operation no tradesmen have been affected by Silicosis.
