As Artificial Stone Countertops Kill Workers, House Republicans Discuss Protections—for Manufacturers

Sponsors of a new bill want to give the industry immunity from lawsuits brought by injured employees. That will kill even more workers, experts warn.

This January 17th, 2026 article from Inside Climate News shows how a bill being considered in the United States congress could increase the incidence of silicosis in the artificial stone industry by relying on OSHA standards to protect the workers which do not address the source of the problem - a high concentration of crystalline silica. H.R. 5437 introduced by House Republicans is a bill to eliminate lawsuits against manufacturers who comply with OSHA standards. The following quotes from the article summarize the issue.

….As the minority party, the Democrats exercised their right to call a witness, and chose America’s longest-serving occupational health and safety chief, epidemiologist David Michaels, who ran OSHA from 2009 to 2017….

“Doctors are seeing patients in their twenties and thirties,” said Rep. Henry Johnson, D-Georgia, ranking member of the subcommittee. “Men with families and young children so sick that they require double lung transplants, so sick that they can no longer work and no longer provide for their families, so sick that they slowly and painfully suffocate to death.”

Johnson entered into the record a letter from two physician-researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, Jane Fazio and Sheiphali Gandhi, who oppose H.R. 5437 because it rests on a fundamentally flawed premise: that artificial stone slabs are inherently safe and that worker harm arises primarily from noncompliant fabrication shops. That premise, they said, goes against clinical evidence, occupational health research and what they see in their medical practices.

“These products contain extremely high concentrations of crystalline silica—often exceeding 90 percent,” warned Fazio and Gandhi, who treat patients with silicosis. “Even with modern dust controls, cutting, grinding, and polishing artificial stone releases respirable silica at levels that overwhelm existing engineering and personal protective measures.” 

“Surely we must be here to talk about how Congress can protect workers from artificial stone silicosis,” Johnson said, teeing up what he saw as the reason his Republican colleagues called the hearing….

Republicans and the industry representatives cast the problem as one of a few bad actors operating mostly in California. But data from the state Department of Public Health shows that 54 percent of fabrication shops have silicosis cases, Michaels told the committee. California has a good screening system for workers, unlike much of the nation, he said.

“We haven’t seen that many cases around the country because no one’s looked for them,” Michaels told the committee. “We have, no doubt, thousands of cases if there are 500 cases in California.”….

Yet there are many changes manufacturers could institute to keep workers safe. One option is to stop manufacturing the product and switch to safer alternatives, which is the path Australia took after silicosis cases took off.

H.R. 5437 has drawn a clear contrast between protecting the artificial stone industry versus by relying on existing OSHA regulations, and protecting workers against the known source of silicosis, a high concentration of crystalline silica.

CECC recommends that architects should use safer alternatives until this issue is resolved.