Anyone who has renovated a kitchen in recent years knows how expensive stone benchtops can be. Artificial stone looks similar and is much cheaper. But it can come with a significant health burden to the maker, and the workers installing it.

Silica dust is a very fine dust produced when products such as bricks, concrete and pavers are cut or drilled. Artificial stone is a particularly potent source. When inhaled, it can scar the lungs and cause cancer.

Epidemiologists Renee Carey and Lin Fritschi estimate that without action on silica dust, Australian workers would develop more than 10,000 future lung cancers and almost 104,000 silicosis cases during their lifetime.

Fron Jackson-Webb

Deputy Editor/Senior Health Editor

Banning artificial stone could prevent 100 lung cancers and 1,000 cases of silicosis, where dust scars the lungs

Renee Carey, Curtin University; Lin Fritschi, Curtin University

Artificial stone, which is used mainly for kitchen benchtops, is a potent source of silica dust, which can scar the lung and cause lung cancer. Banning artificial stone could save lives.

Climate change is white colonisation of the atmosphere. It’s time to tackle this entrenched racism

Erin Fitz-Henry, The University of Melbourne

Most rich white countries, including Australia, refuse to accept the climate debt they owe to poorer countries and communities.

Is Vladimir Putin the greatest Russophobe of all?

Robert Horvath, La Trobe University

The Russian president might claim to be confronting hate speech, but he is drawing on the ideas of anti-Semitic extremists

From shopping lists to jokes on the fridge – 6 ways parents can help their primary kids learn to write well

Anabela Malpique, Edith Cowan University; Deborah Pino Pasternak, University of Canberra; Debora Valcan, Murdoch University; Susan Ledger, University of Newcastle

A new survey of Australian primary teachers found almost 65% of teachers never asked students to write at home with the support of a family member.

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