Fissures in granite

Check out this post. Especially those of you who have granite visions!

The author looks at how a relatively unknown item like granite has become so fashionable and ubiquitous. Part of the globalisation of commodities.

Granite is found all over the world, and it is cheaper to dig it out in India and Brazil. The environmental standards are not quite as high either; in the Bangalore district, one study shows that 16% of the workers have dust and water related diseases like tuberculosis, and the air surrounding quarries is hazy with dust.

But the local real estate is flourishing, and labour cheap. So it finds its way to corners of the world!

Granite, he notes, is full of fissures and microscopic cracks that must be filled, and the counters must be maintained and sealed. Studies have shown that the crevices and fissures can become breeding areas for bacteria. A Brazilian/ portuguese study compared two plastic surfaces commonly used in cutting boards (polyethylene and polypropylene) to granite and found that "the two plastic materials were generally less prome to colonization [from salmonella] than was the granite."

Have your visions of a granite home crumbled? It makes sense to use locally available resources which are easy to mine and use, right?