California Moves to Ban Silica Countertops

The California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted unanimously last week to fast-track an emergency rule that would ban the fabrication and installation of artificial stone products containing more than 1% crystalline silica. The decision came after dozens of physicians, job safety experts, and people gravely ill with silicosis testified at a hearing that artificial stone’s unique toxicity is causing a public health emergency.

The Board acted on a December 2025 petition from the Western Occupational and Environmental Medicine Association (WOEMA) that called for a rule that would “prohibit all fabrication and installation tasks (cutting, grinding, polishing, etc) on engineered stone that contains more than 1% crystalline silica.” WOEMA is a professional non-profit association representing over 600 occupational medicine physicians and other experts in occupational and environmental health and safety in seven western states.

California would be the first state to ban the sale and installation of engineered stone. In 2024Australia became the first country to ban not only the manufacture, but also the use and supply of engineered stone after facing a similar health crisis. Countertop manufacturers there are now using a safer material that uses less harmful crushed glass instead of silica quartz.

Killer Countertops

When workers in fabrication shops inhale tiny crystalline silica particles, the tiny particles scar their lungs, leading to silicosis, an incurable disease that makes breathing extremely difficult and eventually kills workers. A lung transplant is often the only treatment, a risky and expensive procedure that may only extend workers’ lives by an average of six years.

California Department of Public Health data shows that there have been 567 confirmed silicosis cases and 31 deaths in the state. Almost 100 workers have been diagnosed already this year. The silicosis crisis has disproportionately affected young Latino workers. Health Department data shows that 98% of the state’s silicosis diagnoses linked to stone fabrication are Latino men with a median age of 46. The average age of workers who have died from silicosis was under 50 years old.

At the day-long hearing before the Standards Board on May 21,

One worker said he feared that he wouldn’t wake up when he went to sleep. Another described not being able to play with his children after he received a lung transplant, for fear of contracting an infection. A third, who testified in person while using supplemental oxygen, said the disease has put an expiration date on his life.

“How many more of us have to die?” asked one worker in Spanish. “You have to do something to stop this evil.”

Workers report that fabricators never tell them how dangerous work on the slabs was.

Although federal OSHA issued a silica standard in 2016 — primarily targeting hazards facing construction and foundry workers — that standard has proven insufficient to protect artificial stone workers who work with materials containing a much higher silica content than concrete or stone that construction workers are exposed to.

This is the second major action that the California Standards Board has taken to protect quartz countertop workers. Following an Public Health Watch investigation in 2022, the Board approved an emergency temporary standard in 2023 that required stone fabrication employers to implement enhanced dust-suppression and respiratory protections where high-exposure tasks involved materials containing more than 10% silica content. That measure was made permanent in February 2025.

But according to Amy Heinzerling, chief of the Emerging Workplace Hazards Unit of the California Department of Public Health, enhanced regulation by Cal/OSHA “has not solved the problem….It is time to consider other approaches to this public health crisis.”

Oversight over the small countertop fabricators is extremely challenging, especially for CalOSHA which is suffering a severe staffing shortage:

The majority of inspected fabrication shops were already failing to comply with updated standards, Eric Berg, Cal/OSHA deputy chief of health and research and standards, told the board at the hearing. Since the end of 2023, he said, the department has found violations at 72% of the 181 fabrication shops where inspections have been completed, resulting in 32 stop-work orders and about $1.9 million in penalties.

Inspected shops represent only about 13% of the estimated over 1,300 operations in the state, but Cal/OSHA staff suspect the majority of uninspected shops are likely also operating with multiple violations.

CREDIT: Family photo (courtesy Public Health Watch)

Countertop Manufacturers Plead Not Guilty

The silica countertop industry is fighting back, claiming that the stone itself is not the problem; it is the state’s failure to enforce the law as well as irresponsible downline fabricators who fail to follow proper safety measures, such as wetting down slabs while cutting to suppress dust. Several testified at the California Standards Board hearing:

This includes Cosentino, one of the world’s largest engineered stone manufacturers, a representative of which spoke against the ban at the May 21 hearing. The company is headquartered in Spain, which has recorded over 2,500 industry-related silicosis cases between 2007 and 2024, according to that country’s Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social.

“Banning the product to compensate for failed enforcement is irresponsible,” said Matt Thurston, regional director of Cosentino North America, during the public meeting.

And as we reported last March, silica countertop manufacturers are asking Congress to pass legislation that would stop lawsuits by workers against countertop manufacturers, putting quartz in the same category as vaccines and firearms, products whose manufacturers are shielded by federal law from injury lawsuits. Because workers are not allowed to sue their employers (in this case the fabricators), they are filing — and winning — lawsuits against the manufacturers of the stone.

At a Congressional hearing last March, former OSHA head Dr. David Michaels called the industry’s claims “comparable to the tobacco industry saying cigarettes are safe….In my years in occupational health, I have never seen an industry say, ‘We sell a dangerous product but we have no responsibility for it once it leaves our factory, and rather than protect workers downstream, we are the ones who need protection from lawsuits,’” says Michaels.

What Is To Be Done?

The House Judiciary Committee will mark up the bill (H.R. 5437) on Wednesday, according to sources. (Although it’s not listed on the Committee website yet.) If approved, it can move to the floor of the House for a vote. The bill, introduced by California Republican Tom McClintock has only 15 co-sponsors, one of whom is Andy Biggs (R-AZ) who introduced the NOSHA Act last year which would abolish OSHA. If your Congressperson is on the Committee, this might be a good time to call them and tell them to oppose H.R. 5437.

Also, although most countertop work is currently done in California, and California, unlike most other states, has a surveillance system to monitor silica-related illness and death, there is no reason that manufacturers wouldn’t move to other states when California issues the new emergency standard. Workers and advocates should be on the lookout for the industry in other states and encourage their state health departments to monitor silica-related deaths.