A workplace safety board in California is set to vote May 21 on whether to ban cutting high-silica quartz countertop material. The decision follows an expanding silicosis toll among countertop workers—while major manufacturers argue that the risk hinges on how
When Wade Hanicker’s chest pain began to creep in after years of cutting and polishing stone slabs, his first thought wasn’t his lungs. “We were more worried about getting crushed by slabs or getting cut with blades and stuff like that,” the 39-year-old says. “Not getting a lung disease.”
Hanicker. who lives near Tampa. Florida. started making countertops about 15 years ago using power tools to cut and polish heavy stone.. He wore simple face masks, telling himself the dust risk was manageable.. He says he mostly cut “quartz. ” a popular composite made from bits of quartz mined from quarries mixed with binders and pigments.. Compared with granite or marble. manufactured quartz contains far more of the mineral silica—dust that can cause lung damage when inhaled.
In California, that danger has already become impossible to ignore.. State officials have tracked over 550 sickened countertop workers—almost all Hispanic men—with most cases surfacing over the last few years.. More than 30 workers have died, and more than 50 have had lung transplants, according to a public dashboard that keeps climbing.
On May 21. a workplace safety board in California will vote on whether the state should ban the cutting of high-silica quartz countertop material.. A group of doctors has petitioned the state to do so. arguing that the severity of workers’ disease suggests the problem may extend beyond silica itself to other toxic ingredients in the material—such as pigments or resins.
The debate is sharpening into an industry-versus-evidence fight.. Rebecca Shult. a lawyer for the major quartz company Cambria. said during a March hearing that her company objected to the idea that any one subset of silica-containing products should be singled out.. “For this reason. we take issue with the very nomenclature of ‘engineered stone silicosis’” used on California’s disease-tracking dashboard. she said.
Other states have offered a different picture. Hanicker’s home state of Florida hasn’t reported seeing large numbers of countertop workers getting sick. Shult also told lawmakers in Congress earlier this year that there were only “a handful of silicosis cases in the other 49 states.”
But David Michaels. an epidemiologist with George Washington University and an expert on workplace safety. says California’s numbers are high partly because officials have been aggressively searching for cases.. “Thousands of countertop workers across the country likely have unrecognized lung damage,” Michaels says.. “We could easily have 10. 000 workers here with silicosis and possibly far more. ” he adds. pointing to an estimated 100. 000 people working in the industry in the U.S.. and to studies done in Australia finding lung disease in over ten percent of the countertop workforce.
Michaels also warns that diagnosis can fall apart at the clinic level. “Many doctors aren’t familiar with silicosis, and they don’t always ask about a person’s job,” he says. Workers who try to get help may end up misdiagnosed.
Hanicker’s path to a diagnosis shows how quickly that can happen.. He says the pain started about five years ago as a knot under his shoulder.. He took ibuprofen and “powered through.” When it began creeping around his chest. his wife insisted he go to emergency care.. He recalls that doctors took an X-ray, diagnosed pneumonia, and sent him home with antibiotics that didn’t help.. A CT scan followed, revealing nodules in his lungs.. A biopsy then showed silicosis.
He remembers breaking down and crying with his wife.. “We realized that, hey, this is life-changing.. There is no cure for this,” Hanicker says.. He now lives with pain, weakness, and shortness of breath.. Doctors say he will eventually need a lung transplant, and he also has a silica-related autoimmune disease.
For Hanicker, the medical impact is inseparable from the personal one.. “The two biggest things that hurt me is how it affects my marriage and not being able to be a father the way I want to with my kids. ” he says.. He can’t play sports with his children or run alongside them to teach them to ride a bike.. He has sued the makers and distributors of quartz slabs.
Quartz manufacturers point to controls on the worksite.. Quartz manufacturers like Cambria say breathing dust while cutting any high-silica material—such as natural stone quartzite—can be dangerous. but they maintain their products are safe when fabrication workshops use sufficient precautions.. They cite vacuum systems and water sprays to control dust.
Attorney Khaled Taqi-Eddin. who represents Cambria. draws a line between product and process: “Workplace safety is a huge thing. ” he says.. “If you don’t have good workplace safety practices. whether it’s a quote-unquote ‘natural’ stone or whether it’s a quartz stone. you are going to end up having people continuously getting sick.”
Doctors pushing for California’s ban say safety education and enforcement alone will not be enough.. They describe the material as “too toxic to fabricate and install safely. ” adding that education and enforcement alone won’t curtail what they call an escalating occupational health emergency caused by this product.
That urgency sits beside a growing legal record. A few weeks ago, in the first quartz and silicosis lawsuit to come to trial outside of California, a jury in Colorado awarded damages to an injured worker named Tyler Jordan, finding that actions by several companies led to his illnesses.
Jordan said he started working in his family’s small countertop shop as a teenager and worked full-time after graduating from high school.. After about a decade, he was diagnosed with silicosis.. In an interview with NPR. he described feeling stunned and distrustful of the result: “I felt like I was too young.. It felt like there was going to be some sort of mistake.. It felt wrong.”
Jordan said the disease derailed his plans. He had hoped to take over the family business but now can’t work anywhere near silica. He also developed silica-related kidney failure, had to go on dialysis, and received a kidney transplant from his father.
One of Jordan’s doctors is Cecile Rose. an occupational pulmonologist with National Jewish Health and the University of Colorado in Denver.. Rose was part of a team that reported some of the first cases of severe silicosis in young U.S.. countertop workers.. Back then. in 2019. she had seen seven cases in Colorado. including women who worked as cleaners and were exposed when they swept up silica dust.. Rose said the severity and young age of the victims alarmed her.
Now, Rose says she and colleagues have seen about 20 cases in Colorado.. She and other doctors created a voluntary registry where physicians can share experiences.. “We have cases from Illinois. from Missouri. Montana. New Mexico. South Carolina. Wyoming. ” Rose says. adding that the registry is scattershot because physicians hear about it through word of mouth.
James Nevin. an attorney whose firm represents both Jordan and Hanicker. says his team represents workers in about 25 states and points to pressure that keeps people quiet.. “They’re terrified of losing their jobs, if they are still able to work.. They’re terrified of being deported,” he says.. “They’re afraid to come forward.”
State numbers suggest how uneven the country’s view can be.. In December, Massachusetts announced its first case, and since then state officials have found two more.. New York Department of Health officials told NPR they knew of only four cases.. Washington state similarly knew of four cases across three different businesses handling quartz.. At one countertop maker in Chicago, federal inspectors found several cases.. Rose says those figures likely understate the reality.. “I’m 100% sure that there are many more cases in Florida. and New York. and probably every state in this country. ” she says.
Kurt Hegmann. director of the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health in Utah. hosted a conference on the issue.. “This is the worst situation I’ve seen affecting a workforce in my 35 years,” he says.. Hegmann said sick workers have started showing up in clinics in his state.. While he said no one knows how many cases exist in Utah because it’s not being systematically tracked. he pointed to a case study from one fabricator where “38% of the workforce is affected.” He also said. “I believe that California is actually leading the country. correctly. in how to address this problem.”
The federal approach has been trying to catch up as well.. In 2023. because of concerns about silicosis in this industry. the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration started a targeted inspection program.. Its staff has inspected over 400 countertop workplaces in at least 25 states. and it effectively checked worksites of more than 7. 500 workers. a Department of Labor spokesperson said.
Sampling during the inspections found widespread exposure concerns.. The spokesperson told NPR that about 20% of samples taken during the program were high enough to exceed the “permissible exposure limit. ” the maximum workers can be legally exposed to.. In addition. 33% of the samples collected were above the “action level. ” requiring employers to take additional precautions such as health screenings and increased air testing.. Inspectors also issued over 75 citations for lack of medical surveillance. and the spokesperson added there is evidence from publicly available research showing a general lack of medical surveillance related to silica exposure.
Kenneth Rosenman. an expert on silicosis and workplace disease at Michigan State University. points to a survey showing most countertop shops don’t offer medical exams to workers.. He also cites studies highlighting inadequacies in the federal system for collecting data on non-fatal workplace accidents or illnesses.. “We have a lousy system that is dependent on employer reporting,” Rosenman says.. “We’re missing at least half of the work-related amputations in the country that occur.. We’re probably missing 95% of the cases of silicosis that occur in the country.”
Michaels agrees the gap needs to be closed quickly.. “This is nothing that I’ve ever personally seen in my 43 years of working with silicosis. ” Rosenman says of the situation in California.. To understand how widespread lung damage is in the U.S.. countertop industry, Rosenman argues that a survey is needed across multiple states.
Michaels says a research agency like the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health could conduct a study of fabricators in multiple states.. He also says the current administration fired almost all NIOSH staff, and that those positions were reinstated earlier this year.. He adds that the administration had wanted to cut the agency’s budget by about 80 percent. though Congress didn’t go along with it.
Michaels says exposure reductions are necessary now, not later.. “Unless something drastic is done to reduce worker exposures, the numbers will continue to rise,” he says.. That’s why he favors the ban on quartz being considered in California this week.. “There is no reason. ” Michaels says. “to think that workers doing the same work in other states will avoid the same terrible consequences that workers in California are facing.”
The pattern in the evidence is hard to miss: California’s dashboard keeps rising as officials track cases. while inspection sampling finds many worksite exposures above legally defined thresholds and citations for missing medical surveillance—at the same time. other states report far fewer cases. which Michaels attributes to searching less thoroughly and to doctors not consistently asking about job exposure.
For workers like Hanicker, the dispute isn’t academic.. It’s about whether a process can be changed before more diagnoses turn life into something else.. He can’t play sports with his children, and he said his disease has strained his marriage.. He is part of the lawsuit trail now moving through courtrooms. while California prepares to vote on whether the cutting of high-silica quartz should be banned.
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