Introduction
Silicosis has re-emerged as an important occupational and public safety issue in the UK. It is an irreversible and potentially fatal lung disease caused by inhalation of respirable crystalline silica ("RCS"), a fine dust generated when materials such as stone, concrete, brick, ceramics and engineered stone are cut, drilled, polished or otherwise worked. HSE guidance emphasises that RCS can cause silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ("COPD") and lung cancer, and that the particles are often too fine to be seen in normal lighting.
Although recent media attention has focused heavily on engineered stone and kitchen worktop fabrication, the underlying legal and practical issues reach much further. Universities and colleges frequently operate workshops, laboratories, design studios, estates functions, construction-related teaching environments and refurbishment projects in which silica-containing materials may be present. Where that is so, the legal duties are not confined to staff. They may extend to students, contractors, visitors and others affected by the institution’s undertaking.
This is an issue that has attracted a lot of attention and publicity of late and the HSE has recently intensified its focus on silica risk. In March 2025 it refreshed its guidance on health surveillance for workers exposed to RCS, stressing that where there is a reasonable likelihood of silica-related disease, health surveillance is a legal requirement under COSHH. In May 2026 it went further still, announcing that dry cutting of engineered stone is "unacceptable", issuing sector-specific guidance and launching a programme of more than 1,000 inspections across Great Britain.
What is silicosis, and why is it in sharp focus?
Silica is a natural substance found in many common materials, including rock, sand, clay, concrete, brick and ceramics. When these are worked, fine respirable crystalline silica dust can be released. HSE guidance explains that this dust is hazardous because it penetrates deeply into the lungs and can cause progressive and irreversible disease.
Historically, silicosis was often associated with heavy industry and developed after prolonged exposure over many years. However, recent concern has centred on engineered stone, often used in kitchen and bathroom worktops, because it may contain extremely high proportions of crystalline silica. HSE’s 2026 intervention followed evidence that dry cutting of engineered stone typically produces RCS exposure levels five to ten times higher than equivalent wet methods, and that lower-silica alternatives are available.
It has been reported that more than 50 UK cases of engineered-stone-related silicosis have been identified since 2023, with at least four deaths, and that some of the affected workers were in their twenties and thirties. At a recent round table event in Westminster attended by politicians, medical and health and safety experts it was feared that the true number of cases is likely to be higher with many workers avoiding reporting risks and red flags due to employer loyalty and fear of losing their income. The concern is not just that silicosis is reappearing, but that this newer pattern can involve accelerated disease, with serious injury developing after a relatively short duration of intense exposure.
For higher education institutions, the significance lies not in whether they fabricate kitchen worktops as a business, but in whether their own activities create equivalent exposure pathways. Courses and facilities involving architecture, construction, engineering, art and design, model-making, ceramics, sculpture, practical archaeology, geology, workshop teaching, or in-house estates and maintenance work may all involve cutting, grinding, drilling or otherwise disturbing silica-containing materials. On a large campus, visitors may also be exposed if refurbishment or construction works are inadequately segregated.
Recent HSE developments and the current regulatory climate
The HSE’s recent actions show that silica dust is no longer a peripheral issue. In March 2025, HSE updated its guidance on health surveillance for those exposed to respirable crystalline silica (G404). The refreshed guidance specifically highlighted that worktop manufacturing and installation are high-risk occupations, confirmed that health surveillance must be provided where there is a reasonable likelihood that silicosis may develop, and emphasised the need to consult occupational health professionals where over-exposure may already have occurred.
The regulatory response intensified recently and on 11 May 2026 the HSE announced a major package of measures for the engineered stone sector, including its first COSHH essentials sheet specifically for engineered stone, a statement that dry cutting is unacceptable and the launch of a nationwide inspection programme involving more than 1,000 visits. The guidance also made clear that employers are expected to switch to lower-silica materials where possible, use water suppression, control mist, provide suitable respiratory protective equipment and carry out regular health surveillance. The HSE expressly described those steps as legal requirements.
Although the guidance is directed at the engineered stone sector, its broader significance is obvious. Civil claimants and regulators alike are likely to treat these statements as compelling evidence of what constitutes reasonable and modern control of silica risk. For the tertiary education sector, the practical lesson is that silica exposure can no longer be characterised as a niche industrial hazard. It is clearly on the HSE’s list of enforcement priorities and sits within the wider emphasis on reducing work-related ill health.
Why further and higher education institutions are exposed to this risk
Further and higher education institutions can encounter silica risk in a range of operational settings. These include engineering and construction faculties; art, ceramics, sculpture and design studios; practical training workshops; technical services; estates and maintenance teams; and campus building works. Risk may arise not only from direct teaching activities but also from cutting or drilling by contractors or facilities staff in areas accessible to students or the public.
The legal analysis therefore cannot be confined to an employer/employee model. Universities and colleges may owe duties as employers to staff, but they also owe duties under health and safety legislation to persons not in their employment who may be affected by their undertaking. That category readily includes students, visitors, open-day attendees, school groups, external collaborators and members of the public who are lawfully on campus.
This is particularly important because students in higher education are generally adults and the law has been cautious about treating universities as standing “in loco parentis.” But that does not remove liability where the institution creates or controls a hazardous environment. The issue is not whether a university is a parental guarantor of a student’s welfare in the abstract; it is whether it failed to control a foreseeable and known danger arising from its premises, systems of work or taught activities.
The statutory framework
The principal statutory framework is found in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 ("HSWA") and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 ("COSHH"). Under HSWA, employers must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of employees, and must also protect persons not in their employment who may be affected by their undertaking. HSE’s own legislative guidance describes the Act as imposing duties not only toward employees but also members of the public.
COSHH imposes more specific and onerous duties where hazardous substances are involved. In the case of silica, that means assessing the risk of exposure, preventing exposure where reasonably practicable, and otherwise adequately controlling it. COSHH also requires suitable maintenance and testing of control measures, provision of information and training, and health surveillance where there is an ongoing risk of ill health. The HSE’s updated guidance on RCS surveillance in 2025 makes clear that surveillance is not optional where the threshold of risk is met.
For universities and colleges, compliance will often require a layered approach: risk assessment, engineering controls such as local exhaust ventilation and importantly now that the HSE has raised it, wet methods and water suppression is a legal requirement. Furthermore, suitable respiratory protective equipment, safe cleaning systems, supervision, training, and occupational health input where exposure might remain are all necessary too. To avoid potential litigation the institution would have to prove that these steps were actually implemented, monitored and enforced in practice and were not merely a consideration.
Recent silica enforcement examples: why they matter in civil litigation
There is, at present, a relative lack of recent reported appellate civil judgments specifically on engineered-stone silicosis in England and Wales. However, there are highly relevant criminal and enforcement examples showing what the HSE considers unacceptable practice.
In early 2025, reporting on the prosecution of Warmsworth Stone Limited recorded guilty pleas for failure to comply with an Improvement Notice, failure adequately to control exposure to RCS under COSHH, and failure properly to examine and test local exhaust ventilation. The company was fined, and the director also faced sanction. HSE described the company as having shown “reckless disregard” for relevant guidance and basic worker protection.
In May 2025, Inova Stone Ltd was fined after repeated failures to protect workers from silica dust, with inspectors finding the workshop floor “caked in dust,” little improvement over time, and continuing non-compliance despite improvement notices. HSE said the case should send a clear message that risks from engineered stone must be taken extremely seriously.
These are not civil liability judgments, but they are likely to be highly influential in future litigation. They illustrate the kinds of failings that now look glaring: inadequate risk assessment, poor housekeeping, lack of effective extraction or wet cutting, weak management ownership and failure to heed regulatory advice. In a claim against a university or college, a claimant would likely rely on such material to argue that the necessary controls were well known, practicable and already being enforced elsewhere. Conversely, a defendant institution with robust controls, surveillance, records and competent advice will be much better placed to distinguish itself from the non-compliant operators highlighted in these cases.
Potential claims and evidential issues
If a claim was to be made the duty owed will depend on the setting, but in practice the steps that should be taken include: identifying silica-generating tasks; assessing exposure; eliminating or reducing dry processes; ensuring local exhaust ventilation and/or wet cutting; providing and enforcing suitable RPE; safe cleaning and waste-handling; restricting access; warning and segregating visitors; and putting in place health surveillance where needed.
Silicosis claims still raise causation complexities. Some cases involve long latency periods, multiple sources of dust exposure, smoking histories or mixed occupational backgrounds. Those features may continue to provide defendants with substantial causation arguments.
That said, the newer engineered-stone pattern of disease may reduce some of the traditional difficulties, because the alleged exposure can be more intense, more time-limited and more closely linked to a particular activity or environment. The greater the concentration of exposure evidence - for example, repeated cutting in a particular workshop without wet methods or extraction - the easier it may be for a claimant to draw a causal link between institutional failings and illness. HSE’s recognition that dry cutting produces significantly higher exposure levels is likely to be especially important in that regard.
For institutions defending a potential claim, documentation is therefore critical. Exposure measurements, maintenance records, COSHH assessments, respiratory protective equipment fit testing, training records, contractor management documents, cleaning regimes, surveillance arrangements and incident reports will all be central both to breach and causation. The COSHH regulations are particularly onerous and so an HEI which cannot produce contemporaneous evidence of prevention or control is likely to face difficulty defending the proposition that reasonable care was exercised.
Practical implications for higher education organisations
The current combination of regulatory attention, medical concern and media reporting should prompt those who use or are involved with silica in any way to review their arrangements. As a minimum, institutions should identify every environment in which silica-containing materials may be worked or disturbed, whether in teaching, maintenance or building projects. They should also review whether any dry process remains in use, whether local exhaust ventilation is present and tested, whether wet methods and water suppression are used wherever appropriate. They should also consider whether contractors are properly managed, whether visitors can enter risk areas and whether those with recurring exposure are under health surveillance. The HSE’s recent guidance shows that the legal expectation is not passive awareness but active control, monitoring and intervention.
For institutions with art, design, architecture, engineering, or construction-related teaching provision, there is a further governance point: the separation between academic autonomy and health & safety responsibility should be carefully managed. A department may decide pedagogically what is taught, but the institution as occupier and employer remains responsible for ensuring that facilities, methods and supervision comply with the law and recent guidance.
Silicosis is an active and developing risk area and one that is currently under a fairly intense spotlight. If there is any concern of students, staff or visitors being exposed, proactive steps must be taken to prevent or control that exposure to the lowest level possible. If such steps are not taken the risk is run of serious illness or even worse, but with the appropriate steps and systems in place such harm can be avoided.
This article was first published in the UMAL Claims Digest July 2026 edition and is reproduced here with the kind permission of UMAL.
