{"id":230503,"date":"2026-03-21T21:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T21:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/230503\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T21:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T21:50:13","slug":"my-lungs-had-nothing-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/230503\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My lungs had nothing left\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article<\/a> was produced by Capital & Main. It is published here with permission.<\/p>\n

For more than 15 years,\u00a0Oscar worked nearly seven days a week in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, cutting and polishing stone countertops for kitchens and bathrooms. He didn\u2019t know the engineered stone he was fabricating was rapidly killing him.<\/p>\n

At the age of 45, Oscar began to have difficulty breathing. He felt extremely tired and weak, unable to lift the stone slabs he once carried with ease.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy lungs couldn\u2019t take it anymore,\u201d Oscar said in Spanish. \u201cThey were already collapsing.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oscar spoke on condition that he be identified only by his first name in order to protect his privacy.<\/p>\n

In 2022, he said he was rushed to Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was diagnosed with silicosis, a progressive and incurable occupational lung disease. He said he cried when the doctor delivered the news and told him he would never be able to work again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always a hardworking person who helped my parents, my children, my family,\u201d he said in the living room of the one-bedroom apartment he shares with his sister and niece, which is dotted with toys, drawings and family photos. A statue of Jesus decorated with rosaries peers over his shoulder. \u201cI always helped them whenever I could, and working made that possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Silicosis has rapidly become a public health crisis among stone fabrication workers cutting engineered stone. In California alone, the disease has killed\u00a029 people<\/a>\u00a0and sickened hundreds more in the past few years, but, until now, little has been done to rein it in.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>After receiving a double lung transplant, Oscar\u2019s chest is marked by scars. (Photo by Semantha Raquel Norris\/Special for Capital & Main)<\/p>\n

California passed the first law in the nation, which took effect Jan. 1, aimed at protecting workers from the deadly illness and has begun taking incremental steps to prevent workers like Oscar from contracting silicosis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But many doctors and public health officials said that they believe stricter industry regulations are not enough to stop the\u00a0growing epidemic<\/a>\u00a0among stone fabricators and that only a full ban on engineered stone, as has been enacted in Australia, will stem the tide of disease and death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They said they face fierce pushback from industry lobbyists, distributors and manufacturers, who fault poor workplace conditions and claim that a ban will eliminate thousands of jobs.<\/p>\n

Engineered crystalline silica stone, also known as artificial stone or quartz, gained popularity in the early 2000s and is now the\u00a0most popular<\/a>\u00a0countertop material being installed in kitchens and bathrooms across the country. Workers who\u00a0cut, grind and polish<\/a>\u00a0the stone countertops can inhale tiny silica dust particles that scar and tear their lungs, making it extremely difficult for them to breathe. Though preventable, there is no cure for silicosis besides supplemental oxygen and, in severe cases, a lung transplant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on oxygen almost day and night because I couldn\u2019t breathe. I couldn\u2019t even take a shower because I would completely run out of air,\u201d said Oscar. \u201cEventually, even oxygen wasn\u2019t having much effect because my lungs had nothing left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oscar spent about two years on supplemental oxygen while on a waitlist for a double lung transplant, which he received in 2024. A long, deep scar now stretches across his torso, just below tattoos of his daughters\u2019 names.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThank God they were able to do the transplant,\u201d he said, now able to breathe more easily. \u201c(But) I imagine it\u2019s a process that will never end.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lung transplant is a risky and expensive procedure that typically extends a worker\u2019s life\u00a0only an average of six years<\/a>. If the worker\u2019s body doesn\u2019t immediately reject the transplant, they are still subject to a lifetime of medication, with its own set of side effects.<\/p>\n

A single lung transplant can\u00a0cost over $1 million<\/a>. Since most stone fabricators are low-wage contract workers who lack workers\u2019 compensation, the major cost of these procedures\u00a0often falls on Medi-Cal<\/a>\u00a0and, in turn, taxpayers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never knew that stone could cause harm, that it could cause so much damage,\u201d Oscar said. \u201cIf I had known that those materials caused that type of illness, I personally think that I would not have worked with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Oscar takes medication several times a day to prevent his body from rejecting his lung transplants. (Photo by Semantha Raquel Norris\/Special for Capital & Main)<\/p>\n

An epidemic on the rise<\/p>\n

Oscar is the face of a rapidly increasing and deadly threat that has caught California regulators flat-footed, sickening hundreds of low-wage, mostly Latino workers and killing dozens in the state since 2019, public health experts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a collective failure to protect fabrication workers against the dangers of engineered stone,\u201d said Robert Harrison, a physician and clinical professor of medicine who founded and directed the Occupational Health Program at UC San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to do something quite urgently to really tackle this problem,\u201d he told the\u00a0California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board<\/a>\u00a0in a public meeting in December.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Silicosis is one of the\u00a0oldest occupational diseases<\/a>, once prevalent among coal, gold and metal miners, as well as granite and sandstone quarrymen. It was thought to have been virtually eradicated through the use of personal protective equipment, such as respirator masks, proper ventilation and the use of water when excavating.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are\u00a0three types of silicosis<\/a>: chronic, accelerated and acute. In the past, it typically took a lifetime of exposure to a small amount of dust while excavating in a mine to develop simple, or chronic, silicosis. When exposed to higher dust concentrations, workers could develop accelerated silicosis. But acute silicosis, caused by brief yet high dust exposure, was rare.<\/p>\n

That\u00a0has changed dramatically in recent years<\/a>\u00a0as the stone fabrication industry has increasingly used engineered stone with higher concentrations of crystalline silica. Now, acute silicosis cases are recorded in men as young as their 20s and 30s, who have been working in the industry for only an average of 10 years, Harrison said.<\/p>\n

Harrison, who served on the Cal\/OSHA Standards Board, has been researching and treating acute silicosis for more than a decade. He described it as \u201ca kind of silicosis that we usually don\u2019t see from other kinds of silica dust exposure,\u201d adding that cases from artificial stone are \u201cvery severe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Large<\/a>A fan in a fabrication shop is covered in dust from the cutting and polishing of stone slabs. (Photo by Semantha Raquel Norris\/Special for Capital & Main)<\/p>\n

Engineered stone contains a much\u00a0higher crystalline silica content<\/a>\u00a0(more than 90%) compared to natural stone such as granite (30%) or marble ( less than 10%). It is created by pulverizing crystalline silica into a fine powder, which is then\u00a0mixed with other polyester resins<\/a>. When cutting artificial stone, the toxic soup of airborne microscopic dust particles is much easier for workers to inhale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Silicosis caused by engineered stone has quickly become a\u00a0global health crisis<\/a>. The rise of acute silicosis cases followed the influx of engineered stone, which was\u00a0first patented in Italy in 1975<\/a>. Italy, Spain, Israel and Australia have all previously\u00a0reported rising cases<\/a>\u00a0among fabricators working with engineered stone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California is now facing a rapidly surging epidemic, according to health experts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The California Department of Public Health has recorded 529 cases and 29 deaths since it began\u00a0tracking cases<\/a>\u00a0of engineered stone silicosis in 2019. Los Angeles County, which has the largest concentration of stone fabrication shops in the state, is California\u2019s epicenter, with 271 cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The workforce at risk is a vulnerable population of predominantly immigrant men from Mexico and Central America, many of whom are undocumented. Statewide, 98% of all cases are Latino men,\u00a0state data shows<\/a>. The median age of those diagnosed with silicosis from engineered stone is 46 years old, while the median age at death is 49 years old, the state Department of Health reported.<\/p>\n

Silicosis cases increased by 100% in L.A. County last year, said Alice Berliner, director of the Office of Worker Health & Safety for the county Department of Public Health.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep getting cases every week,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we\u2019re very likely to see cases continuing to rise at that rate over the next one to two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

To curb the epidemic, the county health department launched an outreach campaign in 2023 to educate workers and employers about the dangers of the disease and the state\u2019s job safety guidelines for working with engineered stone.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOngoing enforcement and education is key,\u201d Berliner said. But now that most workers are informed about the disease, screening and diagnosing it is the \u201cnext hurdle,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Detecting silicosis often requires a CT, or computed tomography, scan rather than the faster and cheaper chest X-ray. Health officials said they believe the number of cases in California is much higher as many workers go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is in part because workers have not been screened yet for the disease\u201d or they \u201chave been misdiagnosed as having other diseases like tuberculosis or cancer,\u201d Berliner said.<\/p>\n

\"Several<\/a>Stone slabs are lined up outside a showroom in Los Angeles on Feb. 18, 2026. (Photo by Semantha Raquel Norris\/Special for Capital & Main)<\/p>\n

The California Department of Public Health estimates there are\u00a0more than 1,300<\/a>\u00a0countertop fabrication operations in the state, and in August 2025, Cal\/OSHA\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0about 4,600 stone fabrication workers in the state. With the global rate of cases around 17%, public health experts said they believe the true number of cases in California could be nearing the thousands.<\/p>\n

One\u00a02023 Australian silicosis screening study<\/a>\u00a0found that almost one-quarter of workers fabricating engineered stone had silicosis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California is currently the only state actively tracking silicosis cases. It was among the first in the nation to import and fabricate engineered stone in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Berliner said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe time in which the workers in the industry have been exposed (in California) has been slightly longer (than that of other states), which is why we\u2019re starting to see these cases first,\u201d Berliner said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are likely to see these cases start popping up all across the country,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reports of silicosis are already emerging nationally, including in\u00a0Texas<\/a>,\u00a0Colorado<\/a>,\u00a0Illinois<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Massachusetts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A new California law to regulate the industry<\/p>\n

Most of the engineered stone manufacturers are foreign companies, with Cambria being the leading domestic manufacturer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of slabs in the U.S. are imported,\u201d Rebecca Shult, the chief legal officer of Cambria said during the\u00a0February<\/a>\u00a0Cal\/OSHA meeting. \u201cLast week, the US International Trade Commission issued a report that less than 12% of the entire market for US quartz is from domestic producers like Cambria. That is over 88% are imported from foreign producers.\u201d<\/p>\n

These companies use vibro-compression machines to press the stone slabs, meaning people are not breathing the toxic materials during the production phase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Distributors and showrooms buy the stone slabs from manufacturers and sell them to consumers. They then send those slabs to fabrication shops for workers to cut and customize with tablesaws and hand tools so they can be installed in kitchens and bathrooms. When cutting the stone, the toxic materials are released as dust that can enter workers\u2019 lungs.<\/p>\n

In addition to producing engineered stone, Cambria fabricates a portion of its own product with the use of state-of-the-art machines and wet-cutting hand tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCambria knows that our product can be fabricated safely,\u201d Marshall Engstrom, industrial hygienist for Cambria, said during the February meeting. \u201cIt has been proven in our three fabrication shops where we have worked with Cambria products exclusively for over 20 years, without being aware of a single case of silicosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in the meeting, Shult acknowledged that none of the company\u2019s workers have been screened with CT scans for silicosis. Cambria declined Capital & Main\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Most fabrication shops, however, are typically small businesses with five to 10 workers that often struggle to meet the updated requirements for working with engineered stone, Harrison said.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Close-up<\/a>
\nA wet-cutting machine is used to minimize dust at a stone fabrication shop in Los Angeles. (Photos by Semantha Raquel Norris\/Special for Capital & Main)<\/p>\n

To address the rise in silicosis cases, Cal\/OSHA has over the last couple of years instituted temporary regulations requiring fabrication shops to use full coverage respirator masks, to increase ventilation and to use wet-cutting methods.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing high noncompliance, primarily across small- and medium-sized shops, where we are not seeing workers in the correct personal protective equipment,\u201d Berliner said, adding that a small percentage of shops are still dry cutting, and \u201cworkers are not receiving the mandated screening and training.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those regulations were codified last year, when California passed\u00a0SB 20<\/a>, the first law in the nation to address the growing epidemic.<\/p>\n

The law imposed stronger regulations on the industry by banning dry cutting of stone countertops, mandating that employers provide adequate training and requiring the state health department to provide education about silicosis prevention and diagnosis to the affected workforce. It also for the first time classified silicosis from artificial stone as a \u201cserious injury or illness\u201d in an effort to boost enforcement response from Cal\/OSHA by reducing reporting time and increasing violation penalties.<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s author \u2014 state Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat who represents the northeast San Fernando Valley, the region most affected by the deadly disease \u2014 posted a statement in\u00a0October<\/a>\u00a0after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law.<\/p>\n

Menjivar said that her constituents \u201chad lost hope that their elected officials would take action to protect their fathers, husbands, and brothers from this scourge on stone fabrication workers in our communities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cWhile this bill alone will not end silicosis from stone fabrication activities, we are taking decisive steps to increase tracking, accountability, and enforcement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In public meetings, industry representatives have championed the bill, calling for incremental regulations over a full ban on the product. They have argued that engineered stone is safe to work with as long as fabrication shops implement proper protective measures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not simply a materials issue; it is a failure of operations, training, culture and oversight,\u201d Laurie Weber, CEO of the International Surface Fabricators Association, said at the state Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board\u2019s December meeting. \u201cHuman factors and organizational weaknesses are the primary drivers of exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n

At another board meeting on Jan. 15, Weber presented the industry\u2019s plans for complying with the new law, which included a phased rollout of a certification and licensing process for fabrication shops.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that bans happen when systems fail, and we are here to help fix the system,\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n

Is a ban the only real solution?<\/p>\n

Public health advocates argued that the law doesn\u2019t go far enough and is short-sighted in the face of such an urgent health crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Internationally, many medical professionals have agreed that there is no safe way to work with the extremely toxic product \u2014 a conclusion that\u00a0Australia came to in 2024<\/a>, when it became the first nation to ban the importation and sale of engineered stone containing more than 1% crystalline silica.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe that enforcement and inspections are going to be enough to put an end to this urgent epidemic,\u201d said Harrison at UC San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to set up a shop and be able to work with (engineered stone) safely,\u201d he added. \u201cIt requires a high level of investment and automation that the vast majority of shops will not be able to achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison took a research trip to Australia in November to examine how the industry has fared since the implementation of the ban and presented his findings to the Cal\/OSHA Standards Board at its December meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is like a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu,\u201d he said about the conditions in Australia before implementing the ban. The country had restrictions similar to those in California, a comparable number of cases and high noncompliance among small fabrication shops.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A year after the ban, Harrison said, consumers still have a wide variety of material choices, with safer amorphous silica stone substitutes manufactured by the same companies. He found little to no effect on jobs in the industry, while safe workplace practices are still being enforced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Western Occupational & Environmental Medical Association<\/a>, a nonprofit that represents occupational medicine physicians and other experts in occupational and environmental health and safety in seven Western states, filed a\u00a0petition<\/a>\u00a0with Cal\/OSHA in December urging California to follow Australia\u2019s lead in banning engineered stone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to see my patient be put in that dilemma to choose between their health and their livelihood,\u201d said Harrison, who supported the petition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cProhibiting artificial stone and going to safer alternatives is a form of a safety seat belt to protect workers against the most toxic form of silica,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019ll be a very effective tool in starting to end this epidemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Capital & Main<\/a> is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and social issues of our time, including economic inequality, climate change, health care, threats to democracy, hate and extremism and immigration.\u200b<\/p>\n

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