The Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand said the report should be released so its experts could begin implementing recommendations or push to improve them if they weren’t rigorous enough.

Dr Graeme Edwards,a former member of the national dust diseases taskforce and a Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) fellow,said he couldn’t see any justification for the report being kept hidden.

Queensland’s Industrial Relations Minister,Grace Grace,repeated her commitment to banning engineered stone,adding the “best way to manage a risk in the workplace is to remove it altogether if you can.” But she said the embargoed report from Safe Work was not Queensland’s to release.

“We are currently considering it and I look forward to upcoming discussions between WHS[work health and safety] Ministers regarding a response,” she said.

Speaking at a dinner hosted by law firm Sparke Helmore earlier this year,Burke warned banning manufactured stone products outright could have unintentional consequences.

“The issue that we will have to weigh up is,we don’t want to create a perverse outcome,where we in fact push people to a more dangerous product because we’ve done a ban across the board if it turns out that some forms of manufacturing stone are,in fact,proven to be safer than natural stone,” he said.

He qualified that he didn’t know if that would be found,“but effectively,that’s what we’re weighing up to make sure later this year,to make sure that we don’t end up with perverse outcomes.”

The NSW government submitted to Safe Work’s inquiry that 40 per cent crystalline silica should be the cut-off for the product,while the Victorian government spruiked its own regime of licensing users of engineered stone.

Master Builders Australia said it would support a ban on kitchen slabs with more than 40 per cent silica,a substance that causes irreversible lung damage,but only if tradesmen tasked with removing or modifying already installed benchtops aren’t subject to additional red tape.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry opposes a blanket ban on engineered stone as well as a licensing scheme for suppliers,arguing all products have some level of risk and “it is detrimental to shift thinking towards a defining line or label of ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’.”

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