A stone countertop fabricator wears a masks to assist shield in opposition to airborne particles which might contribute to silicosis at a store in Solar Valley, Calif.
Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Instances
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Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Instances
An epidemic of a lethal lung illness amongst a whole lot of employees who minimize kitchen and toilet counter tops has regulators on reverse sides of the nation contemplating two drastically completely different responses this week.
In a California listening to on Thursday, office security regulators will probably be discussing a proposed ban on reducing so-called quartz or engineered stone, a well-liked alternative for counter tops. That is as a result of this materials creates an uncommon quantity of lung-damaging silica mud when it will get minimize or polished, way over pure granite or marble.
In the meantime in Washington, Republicans on a subcommittee of the Home Judiciary Committee convened a listening to to debate a invoice that may as a substitute ban employees’ capability to convey lawsuits in opposition to the businesses that manufacture and promote the uncooked slabs of this engineered materials.
“They have it backwards. It isn’t the lawsuits that must be banned, it is the stone slabs that must be banned, as a result of they’re lethal they usually can’t be fabricated safely,” says Raphael Metzgeran legal professional in California who represents quite a few countertop employees and says a whole lot of lawsuits are ongoing.
However Minnesota-based Cambria, the primary producer of the engineered quartz slabs in the US, says that along with producing the uncooked slabs that it sells to distributors and countertop fabricators, it additionally runs a couple of of its personal fabrication retailers that minimize slabs to order whereas controlling the mud with air flow and moist reducing strategies.
“This demonstrates that quartz might be fabricated safely,” mentioned Rebecca Shult, the chief authorized officer of Cambria within the Wednesday listening to on Capitol Hill. “Our employees are protected.”
She pointed the finger at countertop companies that minimize uncooked slabs on a budget with out the required protections. “It is outrageous that these American sweatshops will not be being shut down,” she mentioned.
Whereas Cambria is going through round 400 lawsuits from employees with lung illness who have been employed in different corporations, she mentioned, “Cambria has no management over these third occasion companies and their harmful circumstances. We do not personal them and we do not function them…The mistaken events are being sued.”
Employees’ advocates do not buy that stance.
“In my years in occupational well being, I’ve by no means seen an trade say, ‘We promote a harmful product however we’ve no duty for it as soon as it leaves our manufacturing unit, and relatively than shield employees downstream, we’re those who want safety from lawsuits,’ ” says David Michaelsan epidemiologist with George Washington College and a former director of OSHA, the federal office security company.
“Not sufficient lungs”
The countertop trade is in a disaster that is been rising rapidly in recent times.
Almost 500 employees who manufacture kitchen counter tops by reducing slabs of pure and synthetic stone have fallen in poor health since 2019 with a critical and irreversible lung illness in California alone. There, greater than 50 have wanted lung transplants, and 27 employees have died. Most are Hispanic males of their 40’s or 30’s, and even youthful.
“We worry the numbers will solely proceed to climb,” mentioned Alice Berliner, director of the Workplace of Employee Well being & Security for Los Angeles County Division of Public Well being in a December public assembly. “Every quantity is a associate, a pal, a mother or father, a baby, or a sibling. These are human lives, not simply numbers.”
Extra employees have gotten sick in different states, together with Texas, New York, Colorado, and Washington. Massachusetts simply discovered their first case, in a Hispanic man in his 40s who, for the previous 14 years, had labored for stone countertop fabrication and set up corporations.
One sickened employee, Leobardo Segura Meza, advised a office security board in California in 2023 that he anxious there have been “not sufficient lungs” for all of the transplants that may be wanted on this trade, which employs about 100,000 folks nationwide.
Regardless of the latest passage of stricter office requirements in California, Berliner mentioned her workforce’s visits to small and medium-sized countertop fabrication retailers present that compliance with the foundations stays low.
She mentioned that during the last six months, whereas visiting greater than 100 fabrication retailers, the protection officers didn’t observe any employees sporting the suitable degree of respiratory safety throughout high-risk reducing and sprucing duties.
And regardless that reducing the slabs with out utilizing a stream of water to damp down the mud might be extraordinarily harmful, she mentioned that her workplace estimates that “not less than 25% of retailers proceed to dry-cut stone.”
Similarities with Australia
The regular rise in critical instances of lung illness has prompted the Western Occupational & Environmental Medical Affiliation (WOEMA), a bunch of office well being specialists in 7 Western states, to petition California’s Occupational Security and Well being Requirements Board to easily ban the reducing of engineered stone with excessive quantities of silica.
“The fabric itself is much more harmful than we thought,” says Robert Blink, a health care provider in California who focuses on work-related medical issues and who’s a former WOEMA president. He says the variety of new critical sicknesses and deaths is “inconceivable to tolerate.”
Even in retailers which have put mud controls in place, he says, researchers have measured unsafe ranges of silica.
He says there’s an estimated 4,000 countertop employees in California, which implies to date, about 12% have developed critical sicknesses. “As time goes on, and these instances proceed to be recognized, the quantity is approaching the Australia numbers,” he says, noting that after the same disaster started in Australian countertop employees, that nation banned engineered stone fully.
Such a ban is “more likely to be the best technique for the first prevention of silicosis, because it doesn’t depend on controls applied by particular person employers and employees,” in line with one report.
Cambria’s Shult disputes that, saying the quartz product is not the issue—the issue is unsafe reducing processes. “We’ve little interest in promoting to unsafe retailers,” she advised lawmakers, saying the corporate was making an attempt to work with regulators to advertise employee security.
The impact of lawsuits
Throughout Wednesday’s congressional listening to, Rep. Hank JohnsonD-Ga., questioned why Congress would successfully grant a form of authorized immunity to the makers and suppliers of a modern countertop materials.
He famous that the CEO of Cambria, Marty Davis, is a Republican donor, and mentioned the obvious objective of the proposed laws “was to provide a handout to a millionaire pal of none apart from Donald Trump” whereas countertop employees “battle to make ends meet, battle to remain alive, truly.”
Gary Talwarvice chairman of Pure Stone Assets, a family-owned stone distribution firm in Anaheim, California, advised lawmakers that his firm is going through dozens of lawsuits, regardless of being a distributor that doesn’t minimize, grind, or polish stone. He says distributors are more and more being named in lawsuits for accidents tied to reducing engineered stone.
“We’re simply being hammered,” he advised lawmakers. “Over the previous week I’ve spoken with buddies and colleagues throughout the trade. Lots of them have been named in 50 and as much as 100 completely different lawsuits. A number of have already spent a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} simply making an attempt to defend themselves, whereas paying increased insurance coverage premium renewals or not even being provided a renewal in any respect.”
“My hope is that we will refocus accountability the place it belongs,” he says, “on office security, OSHA compliance, and the events who management fabrication practices.”
Michaels, the previous OSHA director, says there merely aren’t sufficient office inspectors to go to 1000’s of countertop fabrication retailers and make it possible for they’re following the foundations, and OSHA is going through funding cuts.
He hopes this proposed laws to ban the employees’ lawsuits by no means involves a vote in Congress.
“This laws is a loss of life sentence for employees on this trade,” says Michaels. “If there isn’t a obligation of those producers and distributors to make sure that the downstream customers of their merchandise are secure, we are going to proceed to see increasingly more instances of silicosis, increasingly more lung transplant instances, increasingly more deaths.”
