California workplace safety regulators want to completely ban kitchen quartz countertops because they are linked to an incurable lung disease in the workers who make them.
The state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted to move towards prohibiting work on artificial stone to stop infection by the deadly kitchen dust, following Australia’s ban of work on the quartz material.
Workers who install quartz countertops often end up suffering from silicosis, which is caused by inhaling crystalline silica dust suffer from engineered stone.
The stone significantly more silica than natural materials like granite or marble, which is generated by cutting, polishing or grinding stones, especially high-silica engineered quartz.
Symptoms can include an irritating cough, mucus, shortness of breath, trouble breathing, fatigue, chest pain and leg swelling. While there are treatments to manage symptoms, there’s no cure for silicosis. The disease can worsen as it progresses, potentially leading to lung cancer, tuberculosis and even death.
California’s OSHA says the state is experiencing a silicosis crisis, with the number of cases surging from 52 in 2022 to 531 this year – a tenfold increase over three years.
That’s attributed to rising demand for the stone, analysts said.
A ban may be needed, regulators said, as the only viable option to increase the safety of workers, who they note are predominantly Latino and foreign-born.
“The evidence is now clear that engineered stone containing crystalline silica is too toxic to fabricate and install safely, and education and enforcement alone will not be sufficient to curtail the escalating occupational health emergency caused by this product,” said the Western Occupational and Environmental Medicine Association, a group of occupational physicians who are pushing for the ban.
But critics have blasted the proposed ban as dramatic overreach.
They noted that the ban came after failed enforcement of emergency standards in 2023, and even OSHA had admitted the ban could increase risk.
“If artificial stone remains commercially available in California, some non-compliant shops may go underground, concentrating risk in the least regulated settings,” the OSHA analysis said.
Compliance with the current regulations is very low, with the OSHA saying 94% of inspected shops in violation of the current laws, with 20% requiring emergency shutdown orders.
The roughly 140 shops inspected is only 10% of the estimated 1,342 fabrication operations statewide.
Some industry groups have been trying to push legislation for a comprehensive certification program for better oversight, but such efforts to their liking have stalled.
OSHA in February sent out a letter to district attorneys urging help to enforce anti-silicosis standards.
But Orange County DA Todd Spitzer said such violations are only misdemeanors and need a felony classification.
“They’re calling on district attorneys to step up and get behind this, my response is, why don’t you go back to your boss, the governor, and actually get statutes that we can use to make a difference? Why don’t you give us a felony classification for engaging in this kind of behavior?” Spitzer told the Cal-OSHA Reporter.
Industry groups against the ban said it would badly hurt business.
“It is not the product, but the process. These employee habits are not unique to engineered stone,” wrote Haifa Hughes, a certified industrial hygienist, in public comment.
Victims of silicosis urged for any action now.
“How many more need to die for someone to take this seriously?” Ruby Lopez, whose husband Mynor Lopez got a diagnosis, told the board.
