From local road works to national crisis
In mid-April 2026, it emerged that crushed stone and gravel imported from Austrian quarries and used in the western Hungarian city of Szombathely were contaminated with asbestos. The hazardous material had been used for years in road construction, on pavements, and as private garden surfacing. What initially appeared to be a local issue quickly escalated: over 250 municipalities across Hungary are now believed to be affected, with more than 100,000 tonnes of contaminated aggregates distributed across the country.
The scandal exposed a major regulatory gap in the European Union. Current EU bans prohibit dedicated asbestos mining and the sale of products with intentionally added asbestos fibres — but they do not prohibit mining and trading rock that naturally contains asbestos. As ELTE University geologist Dr. Tamas Weiszburg explained: "asbestos is not a separate substance — it is the rock." Under EU Regulation 1272/2008 (CLP), materials exceeding 0.1% asbestos by mass must be labelled as containing asbestos, but labelling alone does not block market placement. Four quarries in Burgenland, Austria — including sites at Pilgersdorf and Badersdorf — were shut down in December 2025 after stricter EU occupational exposure limits (reduced from 100,000 to 10,000 fibres per cubic metre, effective January 1, 2026) triggered inspections that revealed severe contamination. At least 14 additional quarries in Austria produce similar material.
Laboratory analysis of the material identified high levels of tremolite and actinolite fibres — both members of the amphibole group of asbestos minerals, which are considered more dangerous than chrysotile due to their needle-like shape and extreme biopersistence in lung tissue. Airborne fibre concentrations in affected areas were measured at levels dozens of times above established health limits. As a recent RIVM study has confirmed, even ultrafine asbestos fibres invisible to standard microscopy contribute to cancer risk — making thorough analysis with Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) essential for accurate assessment.
In some regions, asbestos-containing gravel was even used to fill hiking trails and forest paths in recreational areas. Geologists and environmental groups are calling on the European Commission to map Europe's asbestos-bearing geological zones and permanently close the legal loophole that permitted the trade of these hazardous materials.