public health expert California is pushing to ban engineered quartz to protect countertop manufacturing workers from the spread of a deadly lung disease, but Republicans in Congress are trying to protect the industry with a bill that would ban lawsuits against manufacturers.
Silicosis cases are on the rise among workers who cut, grind and polish terracotta for kitchen and bathroom countertops. This incurable lung disease is caused by workers breathing in crystalline silica dust, which scars and constricts the lungs. In extreme cases, only an intensive and dangerous procedure called a lung transplant may be able to prolong life. In California alone, stone-related silicosis has killed at least 29 people and sickened more than 500.
The rise in silicosis lawsuits is threatening quartz manufacturers financially, including those whose CEOs are major donors to President Donald Trump. Companies have lobbied for federal legislation that would protect their liability while preventing workers from seeking compensation for irreparable health damage. The bill, introduced last fall by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), would give the industry the kind of legal immunity that previously applied only to vaccine makers and weapons manufacturers.
The proposal has faced pushback from public health officials and Democrats, who say civil lawsuits are essential to protect workers from harm and hold companies accountable.
A worker is wet-cutting a terracotta countertop using hand tools in a manufacturing plant.
While lawmakers debate, medical experts are calling for swift action to tackle the silicosis epidemic, saying time is running out to protect thousands of vulnerable stone workers.
“Unless we take steps to change what’s happening in a very dramatic way, more workers will continue to develop silicosis and die from silicosis,” said David Michaels, an epidemiologist and professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health and former Commissioner of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Michaels said he worries that because the hoaxers are largely Latino immigrant men and are overlooked, the level of public outrage needed to protect them has not been generated.
He testified against the federal bill at a Congressional subcommittee hearing in January, calling it a “death sentence” for workers in the industry.
When asked for comment, McClintock’s office referred to his remarks at the hearing.
“No one is against health and safety regulations,” McClintock said at the hearing, accusing California officials of “turning a blind eye to illegal activities by sweatshops that violate immigration, labor, health and safety laws and expose workers to silicosis-causing dust.”
In industries from tobacco to asbestos, lawsuits brought on behalf of consumers and workers have played a key role for decades in holding companies accountable for defective or harmful products. And advocates say the mounting civil judgments often force manufacturers to be more conscientious in product development and labeling, or to switch to safer alternatives.
Protecting manufacturers from lawsuits may only heighten the stakes in the ongoing public debate in California and other states over government and industry responsibility for addressing the silicosis health crisis.
legal argument
Hundreds of product liability lawsuits have been filed on behalf of workers against companies alleging that engineered stone manufacturers sold products that were unsafe to manufacture or failed to warn of the dangers of handling their products. Some of those same companies are now asking Congress to grant immunity to the industry and protect it from potentially large judgments and payouts.
That includes Minnesota-based Cambria. Cambria is the nation’s largest producer of synthetic stone and is a defendant in hundreds of silicosis lawsuits.
Cambria CEO Marty Davis has donated more than $350,000 to support Mr. Trump, according to campaign finance records. Davis also contributed to other Republican candidates, including Rep. Brad Finstad (R-Minn.), one of the bill’s co-sponsors.
Representatives from Cambria and other quartz manufacturers and distributors argued that the wrong parties were being sued and that workers should instead file workplace injury lawsuits against their employers. They blame the rise in silicosis cases on “rogue” manufacturing plants downstream in the production chain that do not follow OSHA requirements for wet cutting, ventilation, exposure monitoring, training, and personal protective equipment.
“Cumbria has no control over these third-party companies and their dangerous situations,” Cambria’s chief legal officer, Rebecca Schulte, said at a hearing in January. “It’s outrageous that these American sweatshops aren’t being shut down.”
Wet cutting engineered stone produces a slurry of water and ultra-fine silica dust. Wastewater can be dangerous if inhaled or allowed to dry.
In written testimony to Congress, Schulte claimed that Cambria had successfully manufactured quartz slabs for 20 years without a single employee reporting silicosis.
“The problem is not the product, it’s the process,” she said at the hearing.
Cambria declined an interview request and did not respond to written questions from Capital & Main.
California has more than 1,300 manufacturing plants and more than 500 confirmed cases of silicosis related to engineered stone, according to the state Department of Public Health.
But attorney James Nevin, who represents more than 500 stone workers in California and 200 more nationwide, argued that this is a serious undercount and said his law firm’s own data suggests the actual number of silicosis cases is much higher.
“It’s not just a few bad guys. It’s the majority of stores, including some very sophisticated stores,” Nevin added, pointing to a customer in Colorado who contracted silicosis after working at a manufacturing plant with “state-of-the-art equipment.”
Public health experts agreed that California’s official tally of silicosis cases is likely an undercount. The state Department of Public Health said it does not have an estimate of the percentage of manufacturing plants where people worked where cases of silicosis were reported.
economic impact
Industry representatives and Republican lawmakers have suggested that such a lawsuit, or an outright ban on engineered stone, would cost Americans jobs.
“Everyone wants to protect workers, but we don’t want to drive a $30 billion industry out of the country, and that’s where this issue is headed,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said during a Congressional hearing.
But public health officials say the industry could continue to thrive if recycled glass panes are used instead of engineered stone.
Two years ago, Australia became the first country to ban artificial stones containing more than 1% crystalline silica. This has forced the country’s stone processing industry to switch to safer amorphous silica products made from recycled glass, Michaels said. So far, there is no evidence that the industry is shedding jobs.
“I don’t see any jobs being lost. I think the only people being saved are workers,” Michaels said.
Amorphous silica stone slabs can be made on the same machinery used to make crystalline silica stone slabs, so American manufacturers can easily make the same switches they make in Australia, Nevin said.
The dust generated when cutting the slate covers the surfaces of the manufacturing plant.
However, he added that Cambria may have good reason to oppose the ban because it has invested heavily in mining quartz raw materials, and the transition to safer alternatives threatens its bottom line.
Since 2018, Cambria has purchased three quartz mines in Canada and spent $100 million expanding its slab production plant in Le Sueur, Minnesota. In August, the company announced plans to invest $80 million to build a quartz processing plant and rail center in Dakota County, Minnesota, and an additional $40 million in rail services.
Cambria says it is difficult to compete with foreign quartz manufacturers flooding the domestic market, and it is among domestic manufacturers pushing for stricter trade practices targeting foreign producers.
Domestic producers account for less than 12% of U.S. man-made stone. Foreign producers such as Caesarstone and Cosentino account for most of the market.
The liability Cambria and other companies face in the civil suit is likely to be significant. In the first silicosis case to go to trial, a Los Angeles jury awarded $52 million two years ago to Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez, a 34-year-old stone fabricator who was diagnosed with silicosis and required a double lung transplant.
“Relief from this onslaught of litigation is urgently needed to keep our mills operating productively to provide critical stone products to the U.S. market,” Schulte said in written testimony to Congress.
But Nevin said the bill giving legal immunity to quartz manufacturers would protect “foreign companies and MAGA Trump major donors at the expense of the lives of American manufacturing workers.”
Cumbria did not respond to questions about its chief executive’s campaign contributions.
“Unique request”
At a Congressional hearing, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) questioned why Congress should grant quartz manufacturers the kind of “blanket immunity” previously reserved for gun manufacturers, weapons manufacturers, and vaccine manufacturers.
“So guns, bombs, vaccines, and high-end kitchen countertops and slab quartz products? That’s the list that this prestigious organization is constructing in terms of immunizing various industries?” Neguse said, adding, “I think these arguments are best presented to a jury rather than the United States Congress.”
Schulte responded that Cambria’s request for liability protection may be a “unique request,” but added that the company cannot protect itself from the 400 pending lawsuits.
“What’s happening in California courts is de facto regulation through litigation, and it’s having a national impact on businesses across the country,” Schulte said.
That’s exactly the kind of change Nevin hopes to see in the industry. Industry liability for harm to workers or consumers is often met faster through the courts than through changing regulations or laws.
“It was only through third-party civil lawsuits that the industry changed its ways and removed carcinogens and toxins from its products,” Nevin said, comparing his case to asbestos lawsuits in the 1970s.
Asbestos was once widely used to make heat-resistant and durable building materials and other consumer goods. Nevin said the industry knew for decades that it caused lung cancer, mesothelioma and other health problems, but continued to use it until costly third-party civil lawsuits forced companies to remove it from their products.
Asbestos will not be banned in the United States until 2024.
“I’m not holding my breath,” Nevin said of a ban on crystalline silica products being distributed in the United States in the near future. “Too often in this country we see profit over people.”
Copyright 2026 Capital & Main.
Photo: Semantha Raquel Norris.
