We have known for at least a
hundred years that dust from silica-rich rocks, which represent many or most
rocks, kills people who work around it often. We know how to mitigate it with
safety and protective practices, but these are often not adhered to due to
inconvenience and simple ignorance of the dangers. Airborne dust particles are
very small and are known to get around defenses like masks and ventilation
systems. However, the odds of avoiding illness are improved drastically with
those safety protections.
The Cleveland Clinic defines silicosis disease as follows:
“Silicosis is a lung disease that can develop from
breathing in silica dust, usually around mining and construction sites.
Symptoms include a long-lasting cough, problems breathing, inflammation in your
airways and scarring in your lung tissue. There’s no cure. But there are ways
to manage your symptoms.”
Incidentally, Cleveland was
once the epicenter of a silicosis epidemic in the local building stone industry
that quarried and cut the Berea Grit, a sandstone with desirable building
qualities. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the industry was going
strong, many stone cutters died.
The second wave of so-called
black lung disease is really silicosis caused by mining machines cutting
through silica-rich rock between coal seams in a process known as “slope
mining.” The mining machine drivers are exposed to silica dust at high levels,
especially if unprotected or inadequately protected. The fact is that cutting
stone, whether at a quarry, at a countertop fabrication shop, or by an
underground mining machine, is very dangerous. Breathing the dust can kill.
The artificial kitchen and
bathroom countertops of concern are also known as quartz or engineered stone.
Workers at countertop fabrication shops and stone countertop fabrication and
installation companies have the highest exposures. The number of workers doomed
to a disease with no cure and the number killed is alarming.
According to an NPR report:
“In California alone, nearly 500 workers who manufacture
kitchen countertops by cutting slabs of natural and artificial stone have
fallen ill since 2019 with a serious and irreversible lung disease. There, more
than 50 have needed lung transplants, and 27 workers have died. Most are
Hispanic men in their 40s or 30s, or even younger.”
"We fear the numbers will only continue to
climb," said Alice Berliner, director of the Office of Worker Health &
Safety for Los Angeles County Department of Public Health in a December public
meeting. "Each number is a partner, a friend, a parent, a child, or a
sibling. These are human lives, not just numbers."
Minnesota-based engineered
stone manufacturer Cambria is facing around 400 lawsuits from workers with lung
disease who were employed in other companies. A Cambria spokesperson noted”
"Cambria has no control over these third party
businesses and their dangerous conditions. We don't own them and we don't
operate them. …The wrong parties are being sued."
Distribution companies are
also being sued. I do understand the concern of these companies, but at a
deeper level, we must consider the safety of human beings. Thus, a debate has
sprung up about whether to give lawsuit protection to these companies or to ban
the material outright, as has been done in Australia, where a considerable
chunk of the industry’s workers had gotten the deadly disease. Congress is
having this debate and is currently considering lawsuit immunity.
Berliner noted she visited
and inspected fabrication shops all over California:
“She said that over the last six months, while visiting
more than a hundred fabrication shops, the safety officials did not observe any
workers wearing the appropriate level of respiratory protection during
high-risk cutting and polishing tasks.”
“And even though cutting the slabs without using a
stream of water to damp down the dust can be extremely dangerous, she said that
her office estimates that "at least 25% of shops continue to dry-cut stone."
The use of masks and water to
control airborne dust are ways to cut down on the dust, but even with
protections there is still often significant exposure. One California doctor
noted that the number of new serious illnesses and deaths is "impossible
to tolerate.” It is estimated that of the 4,000 estimated countertop
workers in California, about 12% have developed serious illnesses. In
Australia, the percentages were even higher. Australia was the first country to
ban the material in July 2024. Artificial stone that contains more than 1
percent crystalline silica is banned in Australia. Other reports have noted
that the best way to prevent these tragic and unnecessary deaths is to ban the
material. I am in agreement here. Saving lives
should be the primary goal.
The spokesperson for the
manufacturing company Cambria says that the engineered quartz stone can be cut
safely with the right protections and blames the problem on “sweatshops” that
should be shut down. However, if anyone can buy the material and cut it to
size, that makes it hard to control what’s happening after it is purchased.
States are not equipped for frequent inspections of fabrication shops. There
are around 10,000 in the country. Those shops may not be financially able to
build adequate ventilation systems.
"In my years in occupational health, I have
never seen an industry say, 'We sell a dangerous product but we have no
responsibility for it once it leaves our factory, and rather than protect
workers downstream, we are the ones who need protection from lawsuits,'"
says David Michaels, an epidemiologist with George Washington University and a
former director of OSHA, the federal workplace safety agency.
Michaels calls the
legislation to protect manufacturing and distribution companies from liability
and lawsuits a death sentence for the fabricators. He also thinks that an
adequate level of OSHA inspections is unlikely to happen.
“Michaels, the former OSHA director, says there simply
aren't enough workplace inspectors to go to thousands of countertop fabrication
shops and make sure that they are following the rules, and OSHA is facing
funding cuts.”
Inside Climate News’ Liza
Gross notes that since 2019, twenty-seven artificial
stone workers have died of silicosis in California alone. People in their 20s
and 30s are getting the disease, and there are long lists waiting for lung
transplants.
In the Congressional
hearings, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. Called the lawsuits “abusive
litigation against the U.S. stone slab industry.” That seems backwards.
While I don’t think the manufacturers and distributors are at fault, they do
bear some of the fault due to manufacturing, promoting, selling, and
distributing a product that is of extreme danger to those who work with it.
Michaels also explained that
the Congressional hearings focused on OSHA compliance, but that might not be
enough since OSHA standards for silica dust have considerations of economic and
technological feasibility as well as health.
“They kept saying if only fabricators followed OSHA
rules, we wouldn’t have this problem, he said. But the OSHA silica standard is
based on economic and technological feasibility as well as health effects,
because the law doesn’t allow consideration of health protection alone,
Michaels explained. “So just because you’re within the silica standard from
OSHA, it doesn’t mean you’re safe.”
“Doctors are seeing patients in their twenties and
thirties,” said Rep. Henry Johnson, D-Georgia, ranking member of the
subcommittee. “Men with families and young children so sick that they require
double lung transplants, so sick that they can no longer work and no longer
provide for their families, so sick that they slowly and painfully suffocate to
death.”
“Johnson entered into the record a letter from two
physician-researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, Jane
Fazio and Sheiphali Gandhi, who oppose H.R. 5437 because it rests on a
fundamentally flawed premise: that artificial stone slabs are inherently safe
and that worker harm arises primarily from noncompliant fabrication shops. That
premise, they said, goes against clinical evidence, occupational health
research and what they see in their medical practices.
“These products contain extremely high concentrations of
crystalline silica—often exceeding 90 percent,” warned Fazio and Gandhi, who
treat patients with silicosis. “Even with modern dust controls, cutting,
grinding, and polishing artificial stone releases respirable silica at levels
that overwhelm existing engineering and personal protective measures.”
“Surely we must be here to talk about how Congress can
protect workers from artificial stone silicosis,” Johnson said, teeing up what
he saw as the reason his Republican colleagues called the hearing.
Johnson went on to note that
the millionaire CEO of Cambria was a major Trump donor.
According to Michaels:
“Republicans and the industry representatives cast the
problem as one of a few bad actors operating mostly in California. But data
from the state Department of Public Health shows that 54 percent of fabrication
shops have silicosis cases, Michaels told the committee. California has a good
screening system for workers, unlike much of the nation, he said.
“We haven’t seen that many cases around the country
because no one’s looked for them,” Michaels told the committee. “We have, no
doubt, thousands of cases if there are 500 cases in California.”
While I am not usually on the
side of bans, in this case, I am. Simply banning the material, which is
exceedingly dangerous if worked without protection and may be dangerous with
protection, seems the best course of action. There are plenty of alternative
countertop materials that are not dangerous. While I might also agree that the
manufacturing and distribution companies should have some level of protection
against lawsuits since they are presumably in compliance with regulations, they
are moving a product that has a high vulnerability to pollute and literally
kill. In this case, I think that safety should be an ironclad prerequisite, or
as they used to say, Safety First.
References:
As
Artificial Stone Countertops Kill Workers, House Republicans Discuss
Protections—for Manufacturers: Sponsors of a new bill want to give the industry
immunity from lawsuits brought by injured employees. That will kill even more
workers, experts warn. Liza Gross. Inside Climate News. January 17, 2026. As
Artificial Stone Countertops Kill Workers, House Republicans Discuss
Protections—for Manufacturers - Inside Climate News
Kitchen
countertop workers are dying. Some lawmakers want to ban their lawsuits. Nell
Greenfieldboyce. NPR. All Things Considered. January 14, 2026. Legislation
aims to stop countertop cutters with silicosis from suing : NPR
Silicosis.
Cleveland Clinic. Silicosis:
Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis & Treatment
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