Josh Eidelson wins October Sidney for Spotlighting Deadly Silicosis Epidemic from Artificial Quartz Countertops
NEW YORK — Josh Eidelson of Bloomberg Businessweek wins the October Sidney Award for shining a spotlight on a deadly epidemic of silicosis among workers who turn artificial quartz slabs into countertops, and the competing efforts to ban the trendy building material and to ban lawsuits from those injured by it.
Cutting artificial or “engineered” stone releases tiny jagged particles known as respirable crystalline silica. As these particles accumulate in the body, they cause inflammation, scarring, and shrinkage of the lungs. Breathing silica can also lead to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, kidney failure, lung cancer and a host of other ailments.
Silicosis has long afflicted workers in industries like mining and construction, but the patients that doctors were used to seeing were in their sixties or seventies after decades of silica dust exposure. Dust from artificial quartz contains far greater concentrations of silica than natural granite or marble, and the particles are smaller, which makes them more likely to infiltrate deep in the respiratory tract. In California, workers’ median age of diagnosis is 46.
Tyler Jordan is a 32-year-old father of three who was diagnosed with lung and kidney disease after working with artificial quartz in his father’s fabrication shop. Tyler has already had a kidney transplant and expects to need several more as donor organs only last a decade or two. Tyler is one of more than 6,000 workers worldwide who have been diagnosed with artificial stone silicosis and many more may be at risk. California has identified more than 600 silicosis diagnoses in-state. 35 of those have died of the disease. The danger is so great that California is poised to become the first state to ban the manufacture and fabrication of artificial quartz. Australia already has a ban in place.
The $30 billion artificial stone industry insists that its products are not to blame. Cambria Co, a leading producer of artificial quartz, claims that the silica dust levels in its own in-house fabrication shops are below the threshold of concern set by health regulators. However, confidential company records reviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek revealed dozens of instances where dust exceeded that threshold in Cambria’s facilities.
While California weighs a ban on artificial stone, Congressional Republicans have introduced a bill which would ban lawsuits against the manufacturers of the product.
“This story exposes a horrific industrial illness and the lengths to which the artificial quartz industry is prepared to go to hide the truth,” said Sidney judge Lindsay Beyerstein. “California’s proposed ban on artificial quartz would be an important first step towards protecting workers.”
Josh Eidelson is a senior reporter for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek, covering the workplace of today. His reporting is frequently cited by lawmakers, regulators, and scholars, and has been honored by groups including the Loeb Foundation and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW), as well as the Sidney Hillman Foundation.
Backstory
Q: What is artificial quartz?
A: Artificial quartz is a product that is made out of rock somewhat like the way that Pringles are made out of potatoes. So mineral is quarried and then mixed with other products such as resin, sometimes metals, compressed, de-aerated, cooked in an oven, and turned into giant slabs, which are then sent to fabrication shops to be turned into countertops.
Importantly, this product, artificial quartz, has far, far more crystalline silica than products like granite and marble that have to a large extent been displaced by artificial quartz. Crystalline silica is what causes silicosis, a debilitating, incurable, often deadly lung disease.
Q: Who’s at risk for getting this condition?
A: The people acquiring what’s now called ‘artificial stone silicosis’ are fabrication workers, the people who take the slab and polish and cut and customize it and turn it into a countertop. Over the process of turning giant slabs into countertops, workers fabricating artificial quartz are breathing in tiny jagged particles of respirable crystalline silica. It builds up in their lungs and it causes their lungs to scar and shrink and eventually to fail.
Q: Why did a doctor tell you that this condition is even worse than cancer?
A: A pulmonologist who’s studying this new wave of silicosis cases said she wishes that her patients with silicosis only had lung cancer, because lung cancer at least you can cut out.
Q: Are companies covering up the dangers of this dust?
A: There are hundreds of lawsuits against manufacturers of artificial quartz slabs, arguing that those companies peddled an unnecessarily dangerous product and misrepresented its risks. The defendants have denied wrongdoing. Companies have argued that they were forthright about the need to handle their products with care, and that the fault lies with third-party fabrication shops that are failing to take the right steps to protect workers.
Q: Are these countertops posing any risk to people who might have them in their homes?
A: The risk is not to the customer who purchases the countertop. The silica when inert is not a threat. The danger is for the workers who are turning the slabs into countertops. And there are thousands of cases that have been identified around the world of artificial stone silicosis.
Q: What is it like to succumb to artificial stone silicosis?
A: Silica can cause a range of conditions, including COPD and lung cancer.
Silicosis for many workers is a process of slow motion lung failure. One of the workers I talked to said he hasn’t been able to take a full deep breath in several years. Silicosis is not curable, and when the disease becomes sufficiently advanced, workers need lung transplants in order to stay alive.
Workers I talked to described the transformation in their lives as far as doing basic activities: Lifting or playing with your own children can become hazardous or exhausting. People are living circumscribed lives.
Q: How did one worker you describe in the story come to be struck on the head by a masked man?
A: In the ongoing litigation in California, plaintiffs lawyers allege that one plaintiff, the wife of a man with silicosis, was called out by name and attacked by an unidentified man who was pressuring her to drop her lawsuit, and she was hospitalized.
Q: Is California going to ban artificial quartz?
A: California is moving towards a ban on the use of artificial quartz. Following the publication of our article, Cal-OSHA, the California safety agency, released a draft emergency regulation to prohibit manufacturing and working with artificial quartz. There are two paths now: we see California, like Australia already did, moving towards a prohibition on this product. At the same time, in the U.S Congress, there is a push to ban lawsuits against the manufacturers of the product.
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