Archinect - News

Engineered quartz countertops pose hazards for material fabricators

2019-12-02T18:47:00-05:00

workers have gotten sick, and even died, after cutting this engineered stone and breathing in its dangerous dust, public health officials say. Overseas, some are even calling for a ban on selling engineered quartz for countertops.

NPR takes an investigative look at some of the workplace safety issues that have arisen amid explosive growth in the engineered quartz industry over recent decades.

The report looks into the incidence of silicosis—a debilitating and progressive lung disease caused when someone inhales silica dust in large and regular quantities—among engineered quartz workers. Silica is a major component of many engineered stone varieties, including in Cosentino's Stone System and Silestone product lines, which are highlighted in the report. The report delves into the company's hit-and-miss efforts to reduce and eliminate the creation of the toxic dust particles that cause the disease by replacing "dry cutting" and "dry grinding" processing operations with water-mediated techniques.

What You Don’t See

2018-09-18T19:06:00-04:00

Follow the intricate supply chains of architecture and you’ll find not just product manufacturers but also environmental polluters. Keep going and you’ll find as well the elusive networks of political influence that are underwritten by the billion-dollar construction industry.

In "What You Don't See," Brent Sturlaugson examines the supply chains of architecture to make the case that designers must expand their frameworks of action and responsibility for thinking about sustainability.

Unraveling the networks of materials, energy, power, and money that must be activated to produce a piece of plywood, Sturlaugson argues that "any full accounting of environmental, economic, or social sustainability has got to consider not merely individual buildings and sites but also the intricate product and energy supply chains that are crucial to their construction."

Mindy Thompson Fullilove is a psychiatrist for cities

2015-08-22T21:47:00-04:00

Fullilove increasingly came to see cities as ecosystems, with streams and channels, one flowing unseen into the next, disruptions wreaking havoc, threatening vitality everywhere. In a 1999 article in The International Journal of Mental Health, she showed federal urban renewal policies to be a fundamental cause of disease

Robert Sullivan profiles Mindy Thompson Fullilove. Trained as a psychiatrist, she studies the links between the environment and mental health and adapted the concept of "root shock" from gardening, which she applied to her studies of urban planning/policy and community psychology.