The Price of a Countertop

In February 2024, federal safety inspectors entered Florenza Marble & Granite Corp., a countertop manufacturer in Chicago, and found a workplace shrouded in a haze of dust.

They discovered that employees were laboring with improperly used respirators amid silica dust levels measured at nearly six times the legally permissible limit. The inspection was not random; it was triggered by an imminent danger alert. A 31-year-old employee of the company was in urgent need of a double lung transplant after suffering from accelerated silicosis, an incurable, progressively disabling lung disease.

His 59-year-old father, a co-worker, was also on a transplant list for the same condition. The U.S. Department of Labor later issued more than 30 violations and proposed over $1 million in penalties, noting that the company owner was “indifferent to his employees’ suffering” and had made “little or no effort to protect them”.^[1]

This harrowing case, a multi-generational tragedy unfolding within a single family business, is not an isolated incident. It is a stark, human-scale snapshot of a burgeoning public health crisis in the United States, one that mirrors a disaster that has already forced another nation to take unprecedented action. The culprit is engineered stone-a popular and affordable material for kitchen and bathroom countertops that has become, in the words of Australian health advocates, the “asbestos of the 2020s”.^[2]

This is not hyperbole. It is a reflection of a modern, ubiquitous consumer product fueling the resurgence of silicosis, a deadly occupational disease once thought to be a relic of a bygone industrial era.^[3]

The Australian Precedent

The alarm bells in Australia began to ring with the first reported case of silicosis in an engineered stone worker in 2015.^{[3, 5]} What followed was a rapid and devastating escalation.

By 2024, more than 570 cases had been officially identified, with studies revealing a horrifying prevalence rate: in one large cohort of stone benchtop industry workers, a staggering 28% were diagnosed with the disease.^[3]

The victims were disproportionately young men, their lives cut short by a disease that advocates described as feeling like having “concrete in their lungs” as they struggled to breathe.^[2]

The sheer speed and severity of the disease in these workers pointed to a terrifying reality: engineered stone was not just another silica-containing product. It was uniquely and profoundly hazardous. Scientific investigation revealed a trifecta of dangers that set it apart from natural stone like granite or marble.

First was the extreme concentration of respirable crystalline silica (SiO2). While natural granite contains between 5% and 50% silica, engineered stone slabs can contain up to 95%, creating a far more potent source of toxic dust when cut or ground.^[5]

Secondly, studies indicated it contains a greater proportion of ultrafine or “nanoscale” particles. These microscopic particles can bypass the body’s natural defenses and penetrate deeper into the lungs, potentially explaining the more rapid disease progression and higher mortality rates seen in engineered stone workers compared to those in traditional silica-exposed industries like mining.^[6]

Thirdly, the manufacturing process binds the crushed quartz with polymer resins, pigments, and other chemical constituents. When fabricated, the resulting dust contains these additional elements, which researchers believe may contribute to the toxic effects, either alone or by exacerbating the damage caused by the silica particles themselves.^[5,6]

The nation’s decision to prohibit engineered stone was not a sudden or impulsive move, but the culmination of a decade-long battle waged by doctors, unions, and dying workers against a product that proved too dangerous to control.
If a hazard cannot be controlled, it must be removed. This realization was amplified by a relentless, years-long advocacy campaign from a powerful coalition of medical professionals, trade unions like the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), and the workers and families who were bearing the ultimate cost of the product’s popularity.^[3]

The final steps toward a ban were swift and decisive. On December 13, 2023, work health and safety ministers from the Commonwealth and all Australian states and territories unanimously agreed. Australia would become the first country in the world to ban engineered stone.^[7]

The regulatory framework they constructed was comprehensive, designed to shut down the supply and use of new engineered stone while carefully managing the risks posed by materials already in homes and supply chains. The rollout was multi-staged:

Strengthened Silica Regulations (September 1, 2024): Recognizing that silica risk extends beyond engineered stone, the government amended the model WHS Regulations to impose stronger controls on work with all materials containing at least 1% crystalline silica. This includes new requirements for risk assessments to determine if processing is “high risk” and additional duties for any such work.

Domestic Ban (July 1, 2024): Across all states and territories, it became illegal for a “person conducting a business or undertaking” (PCBU) to carry out, or direct a worker to carry out, any work involving the manufacture, supply, processing, or installation of new engineered stone benchtops, panels, or slabs.

Import Ban (January 1, 2025): To prevent the market from being flooded with foreign products, a complete ban on the importation of engineered stone benchtops, slabs, and panels was scheduled to take effect, effectively sealing the border to the material.^[6]

America’s Echo

While Australia was implementing its landmark ban, a disturbingly similar story was gathering pace across the Pacific. The United States, the world’s largest market for engineered stone countertops, is now grappling with its own epidemic of accelerated silicosis.

The parallels are stark and sobering: an explosion in cases among a vulnerable workforce, a federal regulatory system struggling to keep pace, and a surge in litigation that is forcing a confrontation with the true cost of the product. The Australian experience is no longer a foreign curiosity; it is a potential preview of America’s future.

The epicenter of the American crisis is California. While the first U.S. case of engineered stone-associated silicosis was reported in Texas in 2015, it is in California’s sprawling countertop fabrication industry that the scale of the disaster has become most apparent.^[1,2] Data compiled by public health officials and researchers paints a grim picture.

A 2023 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine analyzed 52 silicosis patients in California diagnosed between 2019 and 2022. The findings were devastating: the median age at diagnosis was just 45. A shocking 38% of patients already had progressive massive fibrosis-the most advanced and severe form of the disease. Within this small cohort, ten people (19%) had died. By November 2024, the numbers had climbed even higher, with California public health officials having identified a total of 219 cases, including at least 14 deaths and 26 workers who required lung transplants to survive.^[3,4]

Spurred by the alarming cluster of cases revealed by public health reporting and investigative journalism, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) took emergency action. On December 29, 2023, an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) went into effect, creating a much stricter set of rules specifically for the stone fabrication industry. These emergency rules were then made permanent in February 2025, cementing a new, higher standard of care in the nation’s largest state.^[5,6,7]

The California standard represents a paradigm shift. Rather than just setting an exposure limit, it targets “high-exposure trigger tasks”-including cutting, grinding, polishing, and drilling performed on artificial stone (defined as containing more than 0.1% silica) and certain natural stones (containing more than 10% silica). For these tasks, the regulation^[7,8,9]:

Strengthens reporting requirements, compelling employers to report confirmed cases of silicosis to both Cal/OSHA and the Department of Public Health within 24 hours.

Prohibits dry fabrication outright and mandates specific wet methods, such as continuous water flow or submersion.

Requires enhanced respiratory protection, specifically powered air-purifying respirators (PAPRs), which provide a higher level of protection than standard masks.

Mandates more frequent air monitoring (at least every 12 months for high-exposure tasks) to ensure controls are working.

The momentum in California continues to build. Proposed legislation, such as Senate Bill 20 (SB 20), seeks to go even further by establishing a statewide licensing and certification system for fabrication shops and individual workers. Under this proposal, suppliers would be prohibited from selling stone slabs to any unlicensed fabricator, creating a powerful enforcement mechanism that extends liability up the supply chain.^[10]

As the country’s largest market, California’s regulations will compel major manufacturers and distributors to adapt their products, warnings, and safety protocols nationwide. It is often more cost-effective for a national company to adopt the highest standard across all its operations than to maintain separate, less-safe procedures for other states. Furthermore, California’s regulations now provide a ready-made legislative and regulatory template for other states or a future federal administration to adopt when they inevitably confront their own silicosis clusters. California is not just an outlier; it is serving as a laboratory and a bellwether for the future of engineered stone regulation in the entire United States.

While the policy debate continues, the most decisive pressure is now coming from the courts. The last few years have seen an explosion of silicosis lawsuits filed by sick workers and their families against the manufacturers, distributors, and suppliers of engineered stone. The central allegation in these cases is that manufacturers knew, or should have known, that their high-silica products were extraordinarily hazardous, far more so than natural stone, and failed to adequately warn fabricators of the extreme risks and the sophisticated controls needed to mitigate them.^[11,12,13]

This legal onslaught is proving to be a game-changer. In August 2024, a Los Angeles County jury delivered a landmark verdict, awarding $52.4 million to a worker who developed accelerated silicosis and required a lung transplant. Crucially, the jury pierced the industry’s liability shield by apportioning partial fault directly to the manufacturers,15% to Caesarstone and 10% to Cambria. This verdict sends a powerful signal that manufacturers cannot simply blame fabricators for injuries caused by their products. This rising tide of litigation, which is rapidly evolving into a mass tort on the scale of those seen for asbestos or glyphosate, creates a level of financial and reputational risk that could force systemic change where regulation has so far failed.^[12,14,15]

Solid surface materials will be a safe alternative that falls outside of these upcoming regulations as they are a silicate free option. At Onmark, we only stock and work with silicate free products. These products, such as the original Corian® by DuPont, HI-MACS® by LG, and Wilsonart® Solid Surface, are fundamentally different from engineered stone. They are made from a composite of acrylic or polyester resins combined with a filler called alumina trihydrate (ATH). This material contains zero crystalline silica.

References:

Price of a Countertop & The Australian Precedent

America’s Echo

The Dust Hasn’t Settled: Why Australia’s Silicosis Crisis Is Coming to America

The Price of a Countertop

The Australian Precedent

America’s Echo

References: