California quartz countertop silicosis cases rose sharply as workers who cut artificial stone countertops reported 571 cases from 2023 through August of this year, up from 47 cases from 2019 through 2022. The California Department of Public Health provided the counts, and the pattern points to Latino men doing the cutting and polishing. David Michaels said engineered stone countertops cannot be manufactured safely and economically.
The California Department of Public Health says Latino men account for about 98% of the cases. About half of the reported illness has been in L.A. County, and the state has identified 32 workers who died of silicosis since 2019. The median age at diagnosis is 46, and the median age at death is 52.
David Michaels and OSHA
David Michaels, a professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University and co-author of the study, said the illness is moving faster than silicosis in other jobs. He said, "Silicosis among these workers is progressing much more rapidly than silicosis we’ve seen in other occupations," and added, "This is a product that we do not need that is damaging the lungs of hundreds of workers [in California] and probably thousands of workers across the country."
He also said, "It’s become clear that this product engineered stone countertops... cannot be manufactured safely and economically." Michaels said OSHA first issued an industry standard for occupational exposure to silica in 2016, when fabrication of artificial stone countertops was still very new. He said, "There was no investigation into those exposures," leaving workers to absorb dust that can scar the lungs until they fail.
California and L.A. County
The state data show the cases have climbed more than tenfold in less than four years. Workers in the study reported 16 to 25 years of silica dust exposure on the job, and the state has tracked 72 workers who have undergone lung transplants and 51 workers who have been referred for transplant evaluations.
The clearest next step for workers is to treat the danger as ongoing, not historical. Anyone fabricating engineered stone or artificial stone countertops in California faces the same dust exposure that has already driven deaths, transplants and severe disability in a workforce concentrated in the San Fernando Valley and L.A. County.
