solidsurfacealliance.org Blog

Joanna Duggan doesn’t have to be introduced to many of those in the solid surface industry, but for those outside the industry she is a Founding Member of International Solid Surface Fabricators Association (ISSFA), a receipiant of the Hall of Fame Award from ISSFA, and holds a Lifetime Achievement Award from ISSFA. She was also the Publisher of SOLIDSURFACE/Surface Fabrication Magazine for many years.

Joanna sent this letter to the community a few days ago and was gracious enough to allow us to reproduce it here. I find that I agree with every word she writes.

Dear Friends,

There is an important movement afoot concerning the radon in granite.

Here are a few facts.
Most granite has very low and safe levels of radon, a radioactive gas founding nature.
In the past 10 years, with granite becoming very popular here in the U.S., millions of tons of it are now being dumped into the U.S. from all over the globe.
Recently, a few pieces of granite tested were found to have very high levels of radioactivity.
This is a serious concern for consumers, and also for fabricators.

How will this affect your business? It could be very damaging, especially if we, the solid surface industry, take a blind eye. I believe that if we are pro-active, step up to the plate, face this and deal with it head on, it would be a powerful sales tool.

Consider this scenario.

After the facts are released, the solid surface industry steps up to the plate and announces the facts to their customer base.
You could do a mailing to your clients saying something like this. “On very rare occasions, radon levels in granite can be high, and could possibly cause serious health problems. The solid surface community is now testing all granite at purchase and before fabrication to be certain that the products they sell are safe for their clients, their workers and themselves.”

This is a powerful sales pitch, having to do with truth and customer safety.
You could offer granite testing (maybe at a discount) by partnering with a tester. You could offer countertop replacements at ‘special pricing’ – even if the counter is not ‘hot’.

When granite testing becomes standard, probably not soon enough, [and hopefully before the products enter the U.S. market,] the solid surface industry will have been the first to lead the charge and make an important commitment to the consumer. How great would that be? Why wait for others to do this?

A non-profit organization called Build Clean is working very hard on this, and they need our support. They have been successful at finding some of the ‘hot’ granites, but their task has just begun.

I have spoken with these people, and they are passionate. They won’t be able to tell you everything they told me, but you can believe me that some very important people in our industry are very concerned about these findings of radioactivity. Build Clean is doing us all a great service.

However, it is not an inexpensive task. THEY NEED OUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT.

Visit www.buildclean.org and help to support them. I’ve already done so.

Joanna Duggan

Joanna.duggan25@gmail.com