California Lawmaker Pushes Immunity for Stone Makers Amid Silicosis Epidemic

“It is tragic that the Republican majority showed no interest in stopping this epidemic that is killing workers,” David Michaels, a former assistant secretary of labor at OSHA and an epidemiologist at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, said in a statement. “Passage of this legislation will undoubtedly result in more workers being disabled by deadly dust.”

Growing scientific evidence shows that the crystalline silica dust released by artificial stone is uniquely toxic, and stonecutters get sick with often deadly silicosis even when following safety regulations in sophisticated fabrication shops.

Measures such as cutting slabs under a layer of water to suppress dust, ventilation systems and wearing masks are insufficient to protect people, according to multiple doctors and workplace safety experts, including those at agencies such as Cal/OSHA and the California Department of Public Health.

But in his comments on Wednesday, McClintock echoed a main argument by Cambria, a Minnesota-based company, and Cosentino, headquartered in Spain, that artificial stone slabs are safe to handle as long as countertop fabrication shops downstream in the supply chain follow proper measures. McClintock and other Republican committee members said the bill is needed to protect businesses targeted by what they called frivolous lawsuits and jobs in a multibillion-dollar industry.

“This legislation addresses a fundamental question of fairness in our civil justice system. Who should be held responsible when workplace safety laws are violated? Who is liable when an otherwise safe product is misused?” McClintock, whose congressional district covers parts of the Central Valley and Sierra foothills, said. “We’re now seeing crippling lawsuits that ignore the guilty fabricators and instead sue the manufacturers, because that’s where the money is.”

This comes as California took a key step last month toward a ban on artificial stone with more than 1% crystalline silica, in an effort to prevent hundreds more workers from contracting an aggressive form of silicosis that has killed at least 31 people in the state’s industry since 2019.

More than 560 people have been confirmed with silicosis in California, the only state actively tracking the disease. Dozens have undergone lung transplants, while dozens more were found ineligible. The surge in silicosis coincides with a rise in popularity of artificial stone, which has become the top countertop material in the U.S.

Nearly all silicosis patients in California are low-income Latino men, many of them immigrants who said they didn’t know about the dangers of cutting and polishing artificial stone, also known as engineered stone or quartz, until they or co-workers got sick. The cost of their expensive medical treatment has been largely shouldered by state taxpayers, and not by workers’ compensation benefits through employers’ insurance, even though silicosis is job-related.

Several lawsuits against manufacturers have led to settlements, said James Nevin, an attorney with Brayton-Purcell, a Novato-based law firm that represents workers in most silicosis claims. So far, two of the three cases that reached verdicts have resulted in jury awards: $52.4 million for a Los Angeles former stonecutter in 2024, which was appealed, and $17.4 million for a 28-year-old stoneworker in Colorado last month.

Nevin said only 1% of crystalline silica engineered stone is manufactured in the U.S., with Cambria as the largest domestic producer. The $500 million company employed 1,800 workers in 2022.

After Australia became the first country to ban artificial stone in 2024, several major manufacturers have started selling products in the U.S. with lower or no crystalline silica, but Cambria has not.

A Cambria representative did not immediately respond to KQED’s request for comment on the bill’s progress. Cambria spent $250,000 on lobbying last year, and $50,000 in this year’s first quarter, according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit tracking money in politics. Cosentino Group spent more than $350,000 on lobbying in 2025 and $80,000 during the first quarter of this year.

At the hearing, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin lambasted the proposed legislation as preferential treatment for Cambria’s CEO Marty Davis, a Trump supporter who has asked the federal government to impose significant tariffs on imported engineered stone slabs. Raskin noted the bill does not address the growing silicosis epidemic or any solutions to it.

“Check out this legislation, which would protect one super-powerful, super-rich Donald Trump campaign donor from facing any accountability in the courts as young working men die from avoidable lung failure,” Raskin said.