Editor's note

Importers and project buyers sourcing quartz slabs from California should monitor regulatory developments closely. Potential emergency standards or local bans on high-silica materials could disrupt supply chains, increase compliance costs for fabricators, and shift demand toward alternative materials with lower silica content. Sourcing from regions with stringent, enforced safety protocols may mitigate future liability and supply risks.

California is set to become the first U.S. state to adopt special measures to protect countertop fabrication workers from silicosis, an irreversible lung disease caused by silica dust. Public health experts report at least 77 cases and 10 deaths among workers, primarily young Latino men, linked to cutting engineered quartz stone, which contains high silica levels. State inspections found approximately 72% of 808 fabrication shops likely non-compliant with existing silica standards. California's Occupational Safety & Health Standards Board has voted to fast-track new regulations, with an Emergency Temporary Standard proposal expected within 3-4 months. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is considering a ban on high-silica countertop materials.

California is poised to become the first state in the country to adopt special measures to protect workers fabricating kitchen and bathroom countertops from engineered quartz stone. This action follows the identification of at least 77 cases of silicosis—an irreversible lung disease—among countertop workers in the state, with at least ten fatalities.

The median age of affected workers is 45, with almost all being Spanish-speaking Latino men. The disease is caused by inhalation of silica dust released during cutting and grinding. While natural stone contains silica, engineered quartz contains far higher concentrations, increasing the risk.

Safety inspections in 2019 and 2020 revealed that approximately 72% of California's 808 fabrication shops were likely non-compliant with federal silica exposure limits. In response, California's Occupational Safety & Health Standards Board has voted to fast-track development of new regulations.

A state spokesperson advised that an advisory committee will meet in August, with an Emergency Temporary Standard proposal expected within 3-4 months. Concurrently, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is considering a ban on this type of countertop material.

Related sales path

• Kitchen Countertops
• Quartz Stone Stock Deals
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Sources

• Young men making quartz countertops are facing lung damage. One state is taking action (npr.org)

Source article: Young men making quartz countertops are facing lung damage. One state is taking action | Source publish time: Jul 24, 2023 | Source language: en

Editor's note

Importers and fabricators should monitor escalating regulatory and legal risks around high-silica quartz. Bans in Australia and lawsuits in key markets like California signal potential supply chain disruptions and liability exposure. Consider diversifying toward lower-silica or alternative materials as fabricator capacity and insurance costs may be affected.

California public health officials report an epidemic of silicosis, an incurable lung disease, among workers fabricating quartz-based engineered stone countertops. Over 500 California workers have contracted the disease, with a median age of 46; more than 50 have required lung transplants, and 29 have died. State estimates suggest up to 850 of the state's 4,000 stone fabrication workers could develop silicosis. The disease can develop after as little as two years of exposure to silica dust from cutting, shaping, and polishing quartz slabs. Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed by workers against slab makers and retailers, including major home improvement chains.

California's public health department states that processing quartz-based slabs into engineered stone countertops is causing a silicosis epidemic. Over 500 workers in the state have contracted the incurable lung disease, with a median age of 46. More than 50 have needed lung transplants, and 29 have died.

State officials estimate that up to 850 of California's 4,000 stone fabrication workers could develop silicosis, with as many as 160 potentially dying from it. Medical experts note the disease can strike after as little as two years of working with the material.

Quartz countertops have been banned in Australia and led to legal actions in Spain and California, with retailers like IKEA discontinuing them. However, sales remain unrestricted in the U.S. and California.

Hundreds of sick and dying workers are suing quartz slab manufacturers and countertop vendors, including Bay Area shops and major retailers like Home Depot, Lowe's, and Costco. Law firms have filed nearly 400 such lawsuits and expect to file hundreds more, comparing the situation to asbestos.

Defendants are filing counter-suits against the fabrication shops that employed the workers.

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• Kitchen Countertops
• Quartz Stone Stock Deals
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Sources

• ‘Nobody told us it was dangerous’: Quartz countertop boom linked to incurable lung disease among Bay Area workers (mercurynews.com)

Source article: ‘Nobody told us it was dangerous’: Quartz countertop boom linked to incurable lung disease among Bay Area workers | Source publish time: Mar 16, 2026 | Source language: en

Crystalline silica, which is released into the air when workers cut and polish engineered stone for kitchen countertops, can scar human lungs beyond repair.

César Manuel González, 37, used to work with stone that was engineered to endure: dense, polished slabs designed to outlast the kitchens in which they were installed. Engineered quartz countertops have surged in popularity in the home renovation market, with industry analysts estimating the global engineered stone market at around $30 billion .

It's continuing to expand as quartz surfaces replace natural stone in kitchens in the United States and worldwide. When González was working, the dust that rose from his saw didn't look extraordinary. It settled on his clothes, in his hair, across the shop floor.

In a small countertop fabrication shop, he cut marble and granite before shifting to engineered stone after the 2008-09 recession, when demand for cheaper quartz countertops surged. But the crystalline silica released while the engineered stone was cut and polished also settled into his lungs, scarring them beyond repair.

What began as breathlessness hardened into silicosis, an irreversible disease that stiffens the lungs until even ordinary movement becomes effort. A lung transplant was his path forward.

The procedure can extend survival, but it redraws the boundaries of a life: anti-rejection drugs every day, constant monitoring, vulnerability to infection, the knowledge that breathing depends on the fragile acceptance of another person's donated organ.

González, who was diagnosed with silicosis in 2023, is not alone in dealing with a disease that once was associated with miners at the end of long careers. It's now prevalent among the much younger, often Hispanic men who work in this industry, physicians and public health officials say.

In the United States, cases are appearing in countertop fabrication shops from California to Texas, Florida, and the Northeast. Because silicosis is not a nationally reportable disease and surveillance varies by state, no comprehensive national count exists.

But clinicians who treat occupational lung disease say the number of workers — often men in their 30s and 40s — diagnosed after cutting engineered stone has risen sharply over the past decade. As of early March , California had identified 519 confirmed cases of engineered-stone-associated silicosis and 29 deaths since 2019.

The median age at diagnosis is 46; at death, 49. Doctors don't debate whether working with engineered stone can scar lungs. Manufacturers argue, though, that proper ventilation, wet cutting, and respirators can make fabrication safe.

Workers, physicians, and plaintiffs' attorneys counter that a material composed almost entirely of crystalline silica may be impossible to handle safely at scale. "This is comparable to the tobacco industry saying cigarettes are safe," said Dr.

David Michaels, an assistant labor secretary under President Barack Obama who led the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. More than 370 lawsuits have been filed by workers who say engineered stone manufacturers failed to warn employees about the risks or sold a product that cannot be fabricated safely.

At the same time, members of Congress are considering legislation that would largely shield manufacturers from liability in those cases, turning a workplace health crisis into a national debate over regulation, responsibility, and the limits of civil litigation. Gustavo Reyes, 36, is part of that debate.

Like González, he spent the early years of his career cutting marble and granite before shifting to engineered stone, a quartz-based material that can contain up to 95% silica and generates far more hazardous dust when cut. In the shop, he said, cutting was done with water to control the dust. But finishing work — sanding and shaping — generated heavy dust.

He said he wore disposable respirator masks or a reusable elastomeric respirator with filters. A door was kept open. Fans ran overhead.

When he was diagnosed in 2021, he did not know what silicosis meant. The doctor told him that there was no medication and that he had three to five years to live. He received a lung transplant in 2023.

Asked who he believes is responsible, Reyes answered: "The industries who created the artificial stone, the product." Manufacturers dispute that characterization. Major companies say engineered stone can be fabricated safely when employers follow OSHA dust controls, including wet cutting, ventilation, and respirator use. Silicosis is not new.

It was synonymous with mining disasters and sandblasting, most notoriously in the Hawks Nest Tunnel tragedy , when hundreds of workers drilling through silica-rich rock in West Virginia in the early 1930s developed acute silicosis after months of unprotected exposure to dust.

In 1938, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins advised that the disease could be prevented if dust controls were conscientiously applied. What is new is the industry in which it has resurfaced.

Related sales path

• Kitchen Countertops
• Quartz Stone Stock Deals
• Porcelain & Sintered Stock Deals

Sources

• Disease once linked to mining hits workers in countertops industry (CBS News)

Source article: Disease once linked to mining hits workers in countertops industry | Source publish time: Mar 12, 2026 | Source language: en

Editor's note

This study signals potential future regulatory and operational pressures on engineered stone fabrication. Importers and project buyers should anticipate possible supply chain disruptions or cost increases as shops implement stricter safety controls, mandatory respirator use, and enhanced dust mitigation systems to comply with evolving occupational health standards.

A study by Georgia Tech researchers, published in Oxford Academic, identifies significant health hazards for workers in engineered stone fabrication shops. Engineered stone slabs can contain over 90% crystalline silica, far exceeding the typical 40% or less found in natural granite or marble. During cutting and shaping with powered tools, respirable silica dust is released, posing a high risk of lung inflammation and acute silicosis. The research, based on air-sampling data from 11 Georgia fabrication shops over six years, found all workers in a shop are at risk, not just those directly cutting the material. The team recommends all workers wear respirators, with powered air-purifying respirators for the most exposed employees.

Research from Georgia Tech's Safety, Health, and Environmental Services (SHES) program highlights a critical safety distinction between natural and engineered stone. Engineered stone, popular for countertops, can contain over 90% crystalline silica, compared to 40% or less in natural granite or marble.

Fabrication processes like cutting and polishing with powered tools release respirable silica dust, which can cause acute silicosis. The study, involving air sampling at 11 fabrication shops in Georgia, categorizes workers into four risk groups and finds everyone in a shop is exposed, not just cutters. The findings were published in Oxford Academic.

The research team's primary recommendation is the mandatory use of respirators for all workers, with higher-grade protection for those with the most exposure.

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• Kitchen Countertops
• Quartz Stone Stock Deals
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• Scientists Pinpoint Hazards for Engineered Stone Fabrication Shop Workers (Georgia Tech News Center)

Source article: Scientists Pinpoint Hazards for Engineered Stone Fabrication Shop Workers | Source publish time: Jul 28, 2025 | Source language: en

Engineered stone countertops are found in kitchens nationwide, but some workers who cut them are facing a silent health crisis with a deadly toll.

URBANA, Mo. ( InvestigateTV ) — Countertops made from engineered stone are found in kitchens and bathrooms across the country. Made of crushed quartz mixed with resins and polymers, they’re marketed as being better than marble or granite.

But some workers who cut and shape these stone slabs in small local fabrication shops are becoming deathly ill from a disease called silicosis. Tyler Jordan, 31, lives in Missouri with his wife and three children. He used to work in his family’s stone fabrication shop in Colorado alongside his father, Jimmy.

“Trying to take a deep breath, there’s just a point where there’s no more,” Jordan said. “I feel like I should be able to breathe deeper, but I can’t, I can’t. It’s tight.” Jordan said he looked up to his father and planned to take over the family business someday.

That changed in spring 2022 when he started having chest tightness followed by pain. Doctors initially thought it might be cancer, but the diagnosis was something else. “And then now, looking back, cancer would have been a better outcome,” Jordan said.

Jordan was diagnosed with silicosis, a life-threatening, incurable disease. Doctors told him it came from breathing silica dust while working in his family’s shop. Silica is present in natural stones like marble and granite, but studies show engineered stone often contains far higher amounts — as high as 90%.

Much of it exists in tiny, nano-sized particles that can lodge deep in the lungs. State data in California shows more than 480 workers have been diagnosed with silicosis over the past seven years. Twenty-seven have died.

Dr. Jane Fazio of the UCLA School of Medicine treats many of these workers. She said the silica particles are extremely toxic to the lungs.

“So you’re not able to take in the amount of air that you really need to,” Fazio said. “So they really do become hard. They become essentially stone.” The lungs of silicosis patients harden, then shrink and over time stop expanding.

There is no cure. The only treatment for dying workers is often a risky double-lung transplant. California state data shows more than 50 workers have required transplants in recent years.

A 2023 study by Fazio and others found an estimated 100,000 stone fabricators in the U.S. are at potential risk for silicosis. Fazio said there’s a simple solution: ban engineered stone.

“The easy solution is to change, change the product. Ban the high silica material,” she said. But Minnesota slab manufacturer Cambria disagrees.

Micah Aberson, a company executive vice president and former president, said the responsibility lies with fabrication shops, not manufacturers.

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• Kitchen Countertops
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• Some engineered stone countertop workers facing deadly lung disease from silica exposure (investigatetv.com)

Source article: Some engineered stone countertop workers facing deadly lung disease from silica exposure | Source publish time: Jan 19, 2026 | Source language: en

Some safety experts want California to stop the cutting of quartz countertops saying it can't be done safely. Lawmakers, meanwhile, contemplate a ban on workers' lawsuits against quartz manufacturers.

An epidemic of a deadly lung disease among hundreds of workers who cut kitchen and bathroom countertops has regulators on opposite sides of the country considering two drastically different responses this week.

In a California hearing on Thursday, workplace safety regulators will be discussing a proposed ban on cutting so-called quartz or engineered stone, a popular choice for countertops. That's because this material creates an unusual amount of lung-damaging silica dust when it gets cut or polished, far more than natural granite or marble.

Meanwhile in Washington, Republicans on a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee convened a hearing to discuss a bill that would instead ban workers' ability to bring lawsuits against the companies that manufacture and sell the raw slabs of this engineered material. "They've got it backwards.

It's not the lawsuits that should be banned, it's the stone slabs that should be banned, because they are deadly and they cannot be fabricated safely," says Raphael Metzger , an attorney in California who represents numerous countertop workers and says hundreds of lawsuits are ongoing.

But Minnesota-based Cambria, the main manufacturer of the engineered quartz slabs in the United States, says that in addition to producing the raw slabs that it sells to distributors and countertop fabricators, it also runs a few of its own fabrication shops that cut slabs to order while controlling the dust with ventilation and wet cutting techniques.

"This demonstrates that quartz can be fabricated safely," said Rebecca Shult, the chief legal officer of Cambria in a Wednesday hearing on Capitol Hill. "Our workers are protected." She pointed the finger at countertop businesses that cut raw slabs on the cheap without the necessary protections.

"It's outrageous that these American sweatshops are not being shut down," she said. While Cambria is facing around 400 lawsuits from workers with lung disease who were employed in other companies, she said, "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." "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.

The countertop industry is in a crisis that's been growing quickly in recent years. 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 in California alone. There, more than 50 have needed lung transplants, and 27 workers have died.

Most are Hispanic men in their 40's or 30's, 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." Additional workers have gotten sick in other states, including Texas, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Washington. Massachusetts just found their first case, in a Hispanic man in his 40s who, for the past 14 years, had worked for stone countertop fabrication and installation companies.

One sickened worker, Leobardo Segura Meza, told a workplace safety board in California in 2023 that he worried there were "not enough lungs" for all the transplants that would be needed in this industry, which employs about 100,000 people nationwide.

Despite the recent passage of stricter workplace standards in California, Berliner said her team's visits to small and medium-sized countertop fabrication shops show that compliance with the rules remains low.

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 steady rise in serious cases of lung disease has prompted the Western Occupational & Environmental Medical Association (WOEMA), a group of workplace health experts in 7 Western states, to petition California's Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to simply ban the cutting of engineered stone with high amounts of silica.

Related sales path

• Kitchen Countertops
• Quartz Stone Stock Deals
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Sources

• Kitchen countertop workers are dying. Some lawmakers want to ban their lawsuits (kuow.org)

Source article: Kitchen countertop workers are dying. Some lawmakers want to ban their lawsuits | Source publish time: Jan 14, 2026 | Source language: en