This is part 2 of a series on silicosis.
In Sun Valley, the hum of saws and sanders grinding away echoes from the rows of stone fabrication shops. The young Latino men working in these shops, unknowingly, have been contracting a deadly disease while working six days a week to earn a living and support their families.
Because of the high concentration of fabrication shops, the Northeast San Fernando Valley is now California’s epicenter of silicosis cases.
This irreversible lung disease is caused by inhaling tiny particles of crystalline silica, a mineral found in certain stones, rocks, sand and clay. Stone fabrication workers who cut, grind and polish engineered stone made with high concentrations of silica inhale the fine dust, which scars the lungs and leaves them struggling to breathe.
“These guys are suffocating to death,” said James Nevin, an attorney heading the artificial stone litigation at Brayton Purcell.
Silicosis is the oldest occupational lung disease, but workers are now contracting acute accelerated silicosis at alarming rates. In the past, one may have developed symptoms over a lifetime of work, but stone fabrication workers today are contracting severe silicosis within a matter of years.
There is no effective treatment for silicosis, but once in an advanced stage, a lung transplant – a highly specialized, high-risk and expensive procedure – can prolong someone’s life by an average of about six years.
“They go from nothing to needing a lung transplant in just a few years,” said Nevin. “Our youngest client is 29, was 27 when he needed his lung transplant. The average age of our clients is probably 35.”
Engineered Stone Takes Over the Market
Starting with approximately 30 clients two years ago, the law firm now represents 350 fabricators and shop owners in cases against the manufacturers of engineered stone.
“The problem is not the shops,” Nevin claims. “The problem is the artificial stone itself.”
Engineered stone was invented in Italy in the late 1970s and was first manufactured in Italy, Israel and Spain, where cases of silicosis soared in the early 2000s. It was introduced to the United States in the late 1990s, around the same time Europe discovered the stone’s deadly properties. It quickly took over the market, becoming the most popular countertop material in the nation by 2021.
“When I moved to the valley, it was nothing but natural stone, marble and granite,” said Eric Reyes-Barriga, 36, who worked as a stone fabricator in the Northeast Valley for 15 years before being diagnosed with silicosis two years ago.
“[Artificial stone] became more popular because it was stronger, it was easier to carry and it didn’t get damaged as fast as marble or natural stone,” he continued.
Reyes-Barriga recalled how nice the finished product would look. He would often encourage clients to switch to engineered stone in their home renovations, not knowing that what he was selling was killing him. Even his own home is retrofitted with artificial stone countertops.
Although engineered stone can be cheaper, more customizable and more durable, it contains a much higher silica concentration – over 93% silica compared to granite (50%) and natural stone (2%).
“People transitioned from natural stone to synthetic stone without knowing the damage it was causing,” said Reyes-Barriga. “The warehouses, the sellers or their distributors … they didn’t say anything about the dangers of it.”
Fabricators treated the stone the same way they would natural stone, using the masks and equipment that had adequately protected them for years. In 2019, doctors started discovering rising cases of acute silicosis in the Northeast Valley.
Better PPE Doesn’t Protect Workers
In attempts to curb the silicosis epidemic, legislators have been working to put more protections in place, while the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) enforces updated regulations for fabrication shops, including wet cutting, proper ventilation and wearing respirator masks.
Although proper workplace practices can lower exposure levels, scientists and regulators are growing increasingly concerned that the safe use of engineered stone may not be possible.
According to Nevin, stronger regulations are not protecting his clients from contracting silicosis.
“You can put in $4 million of equipment and have all the licensing you want, and the workers are still going to get disease because of the unique nature of artificial stone,” he said.
In addition to the higher concentration of silica in artificial stone, producers pulverize and compress silica when constructing the slabs, making the particle dust produced much smaller than that of natural stone and, in turn, much easier to inhale.
“It’s not the dust you can see that’s the problem. It’s the invisible dust that’s killing you,” said Nevin. “If putting my hands in a big circle around my head represents one silica fragment of dust from natural stone, the size of a pin, in comparison, would be the silica from artificial stone.”
Neither an N95 mask nor a mask with respirators will protect these microscopic particles from entering the workers’ lungs, he asserted. Even wet cutting and ventilators, Georgia Tech researchers found, did not bring silica levels in fabrication shops below the recommended exposure limit.
“One of our clients got a lung transplant, but because he’s the owner, he went back to work with his new lungs,” said Nevin. “His shop is a wet shop, and he got silicosis [again] in the new lungs within a year.”
A Vulnerable Work Force
According to a 2023 Cal/OSHA evaluation, California’s stone fabrication industry “is made up almost entirely of small shops with a median of five employees,” and with a workforce that is “unrepresented and almost entirely foreign-born.”
Latino men, many of whom are immigrants or undocumented, make up the majority of stone fabrication workers. In a 2023 case study of 52 workers with silicosis, all but one were Latino men from Mexico and Central America.
“In the San Fernando Valley, it was pretty much one of the best jobs – they get paid more [than other construction professions],” said Reyes-Barriga. But now that workers are aware of the dangers, many feel stuck, he said, without the skills or resources to pivot into professions where they could earn the same amount.
Further, most fabrication shops, like the one Reyes-Barriga once owned, are mom-and-pop shops, unable to afford the cost of the expensive equipment and PPE needed to meet Cal/OSHA standards.
“They don’t make that kind of money [needed] to make the shop OSHA compliant,” said Reyes-Barriga, adding that the recommended masks alone cost $1,500. “Imagine you have three guys working for you. Are you going to be spending over $5,000 on masks? … There’s no point in spending that much money when it’s clear what is causing this disease.”
Banning Engineered Stone
Outreach workers said that since they started informing the community about the dangers of silicosis two years ago, more shops are meeting Cal/OSHA standards by practicing wet cutting and using proper PPE, and that workers are more aware of the dangers associated with the material and are getting tested for silicosis.
However, many outreach workers, scientists, doctors, officials and regulators are concluding that the only real solution to prevent future deaths from silicosis may be a complete ban on engineered stone.
“The more that I learned, the more that I read, the more that I take care of these patients, the more that I have no confidence that this material can be worked with safely,” said Dr. Jane Fazio, pulmonary and critical care physician at Olive View UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar, who discovered the silicosis epidemic in the Valley.
In 2024, Australia became the first country to ban the sale and use of engineered stone in new construction.
Nevin is doubtful that similar legislation to ban the product in the U.S. will come anytime soon. He hopes lawsuits will “put the economic pain on these slab manufacturers and suppliers to get them to stop making it,” the same way lawsuits pressured manufacturers to voluntarily remove asbestos from most products by 1985, while legislation banning asbestos wasn’t passed until 2024.
A jury found the engineered stone manufacturers at fault in the first case to go to trial in LA, awarding 34-year-old stone fabricator Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez, who underwent a double lung transplant, $52 million last August.
Some manufacturers have already introduced “low silica” engineered stone alternatives in response to the Australian ban and piling expensive lawsuits.
But Reyes-Barriga is skeptical about these products, questioning what materials are being used instead of crystalline silica and what the repercussions could be 10 years down the line.
“For us as fabricators or owners of shops, it’s better to remove the material from the market and continue working with natural stone,” said Reyes-Barriga.
Next week: Part 3 – How silicosis impacts the wider community.