Next Black Lung: Countertop Silica Dust Cases Pile Up in Courts

For three months, Tyler Jordan awoke in the middle of the night soaked with sweat and struggling to breathe. His chest was tight and hardened. Over-the-counter painkillers had no effect.

His doctor suspected non-Hodgkin lymphoma, until what was supposed to be a 15-minute lung biopsy ended up taking three hours. The diagnosis: silicosis, an incurable, irreversible, and progressive occupational lung disease. Jordan was 27 years old.

Jordan’s diagnosis came after a decade working in his parents’ Colorado-based fabrication shop where he cut, shaped, and polished quartz slabs of the kind that have become the most popular material in the US for kitchen countertops, tabletops, and mantles.

He planned to take over what his parents built. Now, he can no longer work. He will need a lung transplant in the years to come.

On April 13, Jordan’s lawsuit against manufacturers of so-called engineered stone, including Cambria Co. LLC and Caesarstone USA Inc., is scheduled to go to trial in a state court in Denver. It’s one of the first that looks to spread the litigation beyond its base in Southern California, where a landmark jury verdict in August 2024 awarded more than $52 million to a 34-year-old former countertop fabricator.

While no national tracking of silicosis cases exists, an estimated 100,000 US workers in the stone fabrication industry have been potentially exposed to high levels of respirable crystalline silica, according to a study by researchers with the University of California and the California Department of Public Health.

That’s why some lawyers and safety advocates foresee silicosis litigation becoming the next landmark occupational health crisis, reminiscent of black lung among coal miners and asbestos-related diseases among shipyard and industrial workers. Engineered stone manufacturers and distributors see a potential wave of thousands of lawsuits across states as such an existential threat that they’ve asked Congress to shield them from liability.

Although the trajectory of silicosis litigation is still unfolding, much of the staggering costs of asbestos and black lung diseases ended up with companies and taxpayers.

The US government has paid benefits to coal miners disabled by black lung disease since the early 1970s. If a responsible mine operator can’t pay, benefits are provided through the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which was established in 1977 and is financed primarily by an excise tax on coal producers. Court-ordered asbestos trust funds financed by bankrupt producers, starting in 1988, also still pay benefits.

“When somebody gets injured or killed, there’s no question that somebody is going to pay, the only question is who,” said Michael Duff, a professor of law at Saint Louis University School of Law and the grandson of a Kentucky coal miner who died from black lung disease. “It shows up in Social Security. It shows up in Medicare. It shows up in Medicaid. We will all be footing the bill.”

Silicosis cases related to engineered stone cutting are developing more rapidly and affecting younger workers than with black lung and asbestos, where severe health issues mostly emerged after decades of exposure. Workers who develop accelerated silicosis from engineered stone often die within a few years of their diagnosis. Being diagnosed with silicosis means needing a lifetime of medical care for it, but many affected workers are ineligible to be covered by government health plans.

Stone manufacturers have argued that quartz slabs aren’t defective because they don’t contain respirable crystalline silica, that workers haven’t sufficiently alleged causation of injury, and that the product was misused.

At a congressional hearing in January, Cambria’s chief legal officer said none of the approximately 1,000 employees who have worked in Cambria-owned fabrication shops have developed any occupational disease.

“Despite complying with all applicable law, including OSHA regulations, we are under attack from hundreds of lawsuits,” Rebecca Shult said, referring to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

“The problem is the process, not the product,” she added.

Cosentino Group, which is also a defendant in many lawsuits and was in Jordan’s case until settling, declined to comment on the litigation it faces. It noted it launched a mineral surface product late last year called “ÉCLOS” that has zero silica content.

Irene Williams, a Caesarstone spokesperson, said the company isn’t commenting on pending litigation.

Micah Aberson, a spokesperson for Cambria, said “reckless employers” are exposing workers to deadly working conditions and violating the law. Aberson also said the company protects its own workers in its three owned fabrication shops by keeping silica exposure levels below the OSHA action level.

“Cambria is committed to promoting the health and safety of all workers in the stone fabrication and installation business through our tuition-free Cambria University, safety warning labels placed on every Cambria slab and our advocacy before federal and state agencies to support stronger compliance and enforcement of safety regulations, along with the prosecution of reckless employers,” Aberson said.

Litigation Front

Caesarstone, which has to disclose its litigation risks as a publicly traded company, faces lawsuits covering at least 618 people worldwide, with roughly 427 in the US, according to its most recent financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It anticipates losses of 35 claims at up to $13 million a piece, which could vary significantly going forward. The company is appealing the $52 million jury verdict in California.

Caesarstone estimated its litigation losses last year more than tripled to at least $25.6 million, thanks to new claims and settlements mainly in the US and Australia. The company’s stock price sits at around $1, down from a high of $71.74 in July 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The California law firm Brayton Purcell LLP has represented workers in much of the engineered stone litigation, and says it has secured nearly $200 million in verdicts and settlements.

It has filed 15 cases outside of California, including in Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Kentucky, Florida, and Colorado—Jordan’s among them. It’s not clear how many total cases have been filed outside California, since many local courts have no online access to records.

“These companies can and have always had the ability to make a much safer product and they chose not to,” said Evan Hoffman, an attorney at Brayton Purcell who represents Jordan.

Outcomes have been mixed so far in the three major cases in the US that have gone to a jury.

Caesarstone achieved a win last May when a jury found it wasn’t negligent and that quartz slabs didn’t contain a design defect. Caesarstone contended that the product was misused and that a third party, rather than the product, caused the injury to workers.

“The defense verdict demonstrates to us that these affirmative defenses work, that most jurors have experience with Cal/OSHA and OSHA and know the importance of safety in the workplace, so our themes resonate with them, and I think it makes it easier for them to determine that there really is no defect in the stone slab,” said Peter Strotz, a partner with King & Spalding in Los Angeles who was lead attorney at the trial.

The firm will be trial counsel for Caesarstone in about 20 more cases over the next year and a half.

Insurers’ Dilemma

Most states require business owners with employees to carry workers’ compensation insurance, which generally prevents an employee from suing them for work-related injuries regardless of fault.

On top of that, because smaller shops typically have less capital compared to larger businesses, many workers in Jordan’s shoes are seeking compensation from the bigger players in the supply chain.

Manufacturers have responded by trying to shift liability down the supply chain to smaller employers like Jordan’s parents.

Insurers, meanwhile, are fighting stone producers to avoid covering the rising costs of silicosis-related lawsuits by narrowing down what their policies cover.

The earliest silicosis litigation had prompted many liability insurers to add silica exclusions to their policies. But a California federal judge last week ruled that those exclusions don’t unambiguously bar coverage, meaning some insurers could be on the hook for stoneworkers’ claims against companies.

A legal outcome that limits insurance coverage would have a “material adverse effect” on Caesarstone’s business, according to the company’s annual report.

Vulnerable Population

Silicosis is caused by inhaling tiny particles of crystalline silica, a mineral found in sand, rock, and concrete. Crystalline silica becomes airborne during activities like cutting, drilling, or mining. When people breathe in this dust, the particles enter their lungs where over time it leads to irritation and scarring of lung tissue.

As the scarring worsens, the lungs lose their ability to take in oxygen effectively, causing coughing and shortness of breath. In severe cases, it can be life-threatening.

California has an outsized number of silicosis cases due to the localized concentration of engineered-stone fabrication businesses in the Los Angeles area. This has prompted state regulators to implement more safety regulations and conduct robust medical surveillance.

California has identified at least 538 cases of confirmed silicosis associated with engineered stone as of April, with at least 29 deaths and 57 lung transplants. The median age at diagnosis is 46; the median age of death, 49.

Nearly all of the state’s reported cases of silicosis from engineered-stone exposure are in Latino men. Many are undocumented immigrants who work in fabrication shops too small to draw attention to already extended national occupational-health oversight. These workers often lack proper safety training, protection, and access to health care.

“The employers that hire them are very small businesses that largely don’t have the capital to invest in protective controls to support these workers,” said Jenny Houlroyd, an occupational health scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology. “It’s a perfect storm to create a health hazard crisis for this population.”

Luis, 46, a migrant worker from Mexico, will need a lung transplant after his silicosis diagnosis last year. He spent 17 years working in fabrication shops in Southern California.

Luis, who asked not to be identified by his full name because he’s living in the US without legal authorization, started working in stone fabrication in 2008 after walking the streets to find work. He started by polishing the quartz products and cleaning around the shops. He would eventually graduate into cutting the stone.

The shops varied in safety practices, he said. Some were very clean; others were dusty and over the years some would adopt tools that would wet the products before cutting, Luis noted.

Wet-cutting seeks to reduce a worker’s exposure to silica dust by using saws with a tank that feeds a continuous stream of water onto the blade. But this doesn’t completely eliminate the risks; OSHA recommends also establishing extra ventilation to ensure air flow.

“I feel sad that this has changed my life forever,” he said. Since his diagnosis, Luis says he has stopped working at fabrication shops.

Emerging Issue

Engineered stone is a man-made mixture of finely-ground rock bound together by resin. For countertops and tabletops, the rock is often quartz. Pigments may be added to the resin for color.

Cases of workers diagnosed with silicosis from engineered stone first emerged in Israel and Spain more than a decade ago, with thousands of cases more since being identified worldwide, according to the National Institutes of Health.

It became the most popular material for kitchen countertops in the US in 2021, driven by a rapid increase in low-cost slab imports and consumer aesthetic preferences, according to The Freedonia Group, an international research firm that specializes in manufacturing, industrial, and heavy industry market research.

But as authorities in Australia discovered, regulations and laws pertaining to working with engineered stone were often ignored. That was a reason why it became the first country to ban the use, supply, and manufacturing of engineered stone in 2024, based on a recommendation by the country’s workplace safety agency.

“The nature of the engineered stone industry has also arguably contributed to non-compliance and hence the extent of cases of silicosis in the industry. It is comprised of mostly small businesses with few barriers to entry and a lower understanding of (work health and safety) obligations,” Safe Work Australia said in a report.

OSHA has two federal standards to protect workers from respirable crystalline silica. One focuses on construction and the other for general industry. Both require employers to limit worker exposure to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

Key requirements for the general industry, which fabrication shops fall under, include conducting exposure assessments as well as implementing engineering controls like wet methods, ventilation, and providing respirators.

David Michaels, a professor at George Washington University who was OSHA’s assistant secretary when the agency issued its silica standard in 2016, testified alongside Cambria at the congressional hearing earlier this year.

He said those updated standards aren’t adequate because the agency must also look at economic and technological feasibility. “We could not drive the level down to a purely safe level because the law doesn’t allow that.”

Jordan says his shop implemented the safety control measures prescribed by OSHA, such as increasing fresh air flow throughout the shop and using water-based dust-suppression tools like wet saws. Yet, he got sick.

“We did things the way they want us to, and it’s still too dangerous,” said Jordan.

Regulatory Limitations

Cambria was one of the manufacturers encouraging lawmakers to back H.R. 5437, sponsored by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and nine other Republicans. Cambria has spent $250,000 on lobbying efforts since last year, according to lobbying disclosure reports.

The legislation hasn’t moved beyond introduction in the House. The bill would protect manufacturers or sellers of the stone slab products from what fabricators do with their products, but doesn’t speak to protection for fabrication businesses.

Gary Talwar, the vice president of a California family-owned stone distributor, told lawmakers his industry colleagues are thinking about closing shop as litigation grows.

“Two of them told me they don’t know how they can keep fighting because the legal cost and time demands are overwhelming,” said Talwar. “They’re being forced to choose between defending themselves and actually running their small businesses.”

Until a robust approach is taken to address the safety issues, costly civil litigation will encourage manufacturers to either invest in safety or go out of business, Duff said.

“If you impose damages on a manufacturer, on any wrongdoer, what you do is force that wrongdoer, tortfeasor, to internalize risky conduct,” he said. A tortfeasor is a person or entity that commits a tort.

Health Crisis

Jordan started learning the trade under his father’s supervision at 13. He joined full time after graduating from high school at 17.

Now 31, he lives in Missouri with his wife and three children.

The family left Colorado after Jordan couldn’t go on at his dad’s shop, unable to make a living. His wife now works to support the family while he focuses on his health and household responsibilities such as caring for their children and the family’s livestock.

He can get short of breath just walking from one room to another.

“There should be more there, I feel like I can breathe more, but there’s none,” said Jordan.

Like Luis, Jordan at some point will need a lung transplant—a process that involves a waiting list placement, surgery, and long-term recovery. And a lung transplant isn’t considered a permanent cure; the average life expectancy is 6 to 6.5 years after the surgery.

It’s a reality Jordan doesn’t want to expose his three children; Faith, 11, Hunter, 6, and Tannen, 4, to just yet.

“I don’t want to think about that because I don’t want that to affect life now with them,” said Jordan. “I know at some point they probably will, and I don’t know what to do.”