As Worker Silicosis Deaths Mount, GOP Moves to Shield Companies From Liability

Public health experts in California are pushing to ban engineered quartz in an effort to protect countertop fabrication workers from a growing epidemic 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 rapidly rising among workers who cut, grind and polish engineered stone for kitchen and bathroom countertops. This incurable lung disease develops when workers breathe in crystalline silica dust, which scars and constricts their lungs. In extreme cases, only a lung transplant, an intensive and risky procedure, can prolong their lives. In California alone, engineered stone-related silicosis has killed at least 29 people and sickened more than 500. 

Mounting silicosis lawsuits threaten quartz manufacturers financially, including a company whose CEO is a major donor to President Donald Trump. The companies have lobbied for federal legislation to shield them from liability while preventing workers from seeking compensation for irreversible health damage. The legislation, introduced last fall by U.S. Reps. Tom McClintock (R-CA) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ), would grant the industry the kind of legal immunity previously extended only to vaccine makers and weapons manufacturers. 

The proposal has received pushback from public health officials and Democrats who say civil lawsuits are essential to protect workers from harm and to hold companies accountable. 

A worker uses a hand tool to wet cut an engineered stone countertop at a fabrication shop.

While lawmakers debate, medical professionals are calling for swift action to address the growing silicosis epidemic, saying time is running out to protect thousands of vulnerable stone fabrication workers. 

“Unless steps are taken to change what’s going on now, in a very dramatic way, we’ll continue to see more and more workers 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 a former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

Michaels said he fears that the level of national outrage needed to protect fabricators is not being generated because they are an overlooked population of mostly Latino immigrant men. 

He testified against the proposed federal legislation in a congressional subcommittee hearing in January, calling it “a death sentence” for workers in this industry.

When reached for comment, McClintock’s office referred to his remarks during the hearing.

At the hearing, McClintock said “no one opposes health and safety regulations” and accused California officials of “turning a blind eye to lawbreaking by sweatshops that are breaking our immigration laws, labor, health and safety laws, exposing their employees to the dust that causes silicosis.”

In industries from tobacco to asbestos, lawsuits filed on behalf of consumers or workers have for decades played an important role in holding companies accountable for defective or harmful products. And the piling up of civil judgments has often pushed manufacturers to be more conscientious in developing and labeling products or to switch to safer alternatives, advocates said.

Shielding manufacturers from lawsuits may only raise the stakes of an ongoing public debate in California and other states over government and industry’s responsibilities for addressing the silicosis health crisis.

The Legal Debate

Hundreds of product liability lawsuits have been filed against companies on behalf of workers who claim that engineered stone manufacturers sold a product that cannot be safely fabricated or failed to warn them of the dangers of working with it. Some of the same companies are now urging Congress to grant their industry immunity and shield them from potentially large judgments and payouts.

That includes Minnesota-based Cambria, the largest domestic producer of engineered stone, which is a defendant in hundreds of silicosis lawsuits.

Cambria’s chief executive officer, Marty Davis, has contributed more than $350,000 to support Trump, according to campaign finance records. Davis also contributed to other Republican candidates, including one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. Brad Finstad (R-MN).

Representatives of Cambria and other quartz manufacturers and distributors have argued that the wrong parties are being sued and that workers should instead be filing workplace injury lawsuits against employers. They blame rising silicosis cases on “bad actor” fabrication shops down the production chain that do not follow OSHA requirements for wet cutting, ventilation, exposure monitoring, training and personal protective equipment. 

“Cambria has no control over these third-party businesses and their dangerous conditions,” Rebecca Shult, Cambria’s chief legal officer, said at the January hearing. “It’s outrageous that these American sweatshops are not being shut down.”

Wet cutting engineered stone produces a slurry of water and ultra-fine silica dust. The wastewater can be hazardous if inhaled or allowed to dry.

In written testimony to Congress, Shult claimed that Cambria has successfully fabricated its quartz slabs for 20 years without a single reported case of silicosis among its workers.

“The problem is the process, not the product,” she said at the hearing. 

Cambria declined an interview request and did not answer written questions from Capital & Main.

In California there are more than 1,300 fabrication shops and over 500 confirmed cases of silicosis related to engineered stone, according to the state Department of Public Health. 

But James Nevin, an attorney representing more than 500 stone fabrication workers in California and another 200 nationally, claimed that this is a severe undercount and said his law firm’s own data suggests the actual number of silicosis cases are much higher.

“It’s not a few bad actors. It’s a majority of the shops, including the very sophisticated shops,” Nevin added, pointing to clients in Colorado who contracted silicosis after working in a fabrication shop with “state-of-the-art equipment.” 

Public health experts agreed that the official tally of silicosis cases in California is likely an undercount. The state Department of Public Health said it does not have an estimate of the percentage of fabrication shops where people with reported silicosis cases have worked.

Financial Implications

Industry representatives and Republican lawmakers have suggested that these lawsuits, or a complete ban on engineered stone, would kill American jobs. 

“Everyone wants to protect workers, but you don’t want to drive a $30 billion industry out of our country, which is where this thing is headed,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), said in the congressional hearing. 

But public health officials have said the industry could continue to thrive if it substituted engineered stone with recycled glass slabs. 

Two years ago, Australia became the first country to ban engineered stone containing more than 1% crystalline silica. That forced the country’s stone fabrication industry to switch to a safer amorphous silica product, made from recycled glass, Michaels said. So far, there’s no evidence its industry is shedding jobs.

“I don’t see any jobs being lost. I see only workers being saved,” Michaels said. 

Because amorphous silica slabs can be made on the same machines used to make crystalline silica stone slabs, Nevin said, American manufacturers could easily make the same switch that they have in Australia. 

Dust from cutting stone slabs coats the surfaces of a fabrication shop.

But Cambria may have good reason to fight a ban, he added, because it has invested a lot in extracting the raw quartz materials, making a transition to safer alternatives a threat to its bottom line.

Since 2018, Cambria has bought three quartz mines in Canada and spent $100 million to expand its slab production plant in Le Sueur, Minn. In August, the company announced that it invested $80 million to build a quartz processing plant and rail center in Dakota County, Minn., with plans to invest another $40 million in rail services. 

Cambria has said it is difficult to compete with foreign quartz manufacturers flooding the domestic market and is among the domestic manufacturing companies that have lobbied for stricter trade practices aimed at foreign producers. 

Domestic producers account for less than 12% of engineered stone in the United States; foreign producers such as Caesarstone and Cosentino make up the majority of the market. 

The liability that Cambria and other companies face from civil lawsuits is likely to be significant. In the first silicosis case to go to trial, a Los Angeles jury two years ago awarded $52 million to Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez, a 34-year-old stone fabricator who was diagnosed with silicosis and required a double lung transplant.

“We urgently need relief from the onslaught of these lawsuits so that we can continue to productively operate our factory to provide important stone products for the U.S. market,” Shult said in her written testimony to Congress. 

But Nevin said that the bill to grant quartz manufacturers legal immunity would protect “foreign companies and a big MAGA Trump donor … at the cost of the lives of fabrication workers in the U.S.”

Cambria did not respond to questions about their chief executive’s campaign contributions. 

A ‘Unique Request’

During the congressional hearing, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO.) questioned why Congress should grant quartz manufacturers a kind of “blanket immunity” previously awarded only to gunmakers, arms manufacturers and vaccine producers. 

“So guns, bombs, vaccines and luxury kitchen countertop, slab quartz products? That’s the list that this august body will have built in terms of giving immunity to different industries?” Neguse said, adding: “I think these are arguments that are best positioned to be delivered to a jury, not to the United States Congress.” 

Shult responded that Cambria’s push for protection from liability may be a “unique request” but added that the company cannot defend itself against 400 pending lawsuits. 

“What’s happening in California state courts is effectively regulation through litigation, and it’s having a nationwide effect on businesses across the country,” Shult said.

That type of industry change is exactly what Nevin said he hopes for. Industry accountability for harm to workers and consumers has often come sooner through the courts than by changing regulations or laws.

“The only thing that has ever gotten industry to change their ways and take the carcinogens and toxins out of their products is third-party civil lawsuits,” Nevin said, comparing his cases to the asbestos lawsuits of the 1970s. 

Asbestos was once widely used to produce heat-resistant and durable construction materials and other consumer goods. For decades, the industry knew that it would cause lung cancer, mesothelioma and other health problems, but continued to use it until costly third-party civil lawsuits pushed companies to remove it from their products, Nevin said. 

Asbestos wasn’t banned in the U.S. until 2024. 

“I’m not holding my breath,” Nevin said about a ban on crystalline silica products passing in the U.S. anytime soon. “We see all too often in this country: profits over people.”

Copyright 2026 Capital & Main.

Photos by Semantha Raquel Norris.