From dawn to dusk, six days a week, Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez spent his days cutting engineered stone, a man-made product that has become a popular choice for kitchen countertops. and bathrooms.
Glazed slabs are stain resistant, highly durable and come in many colors. They are also full of fine silica: tiny particles that can irreparably damage the lungs if inhaled.
By the time Reyes Gonzalez reached his 33rd birthday, his lungs had been damaged by silicosis, an incurable disease. He was forced to rely on an oxygen tank and became weaker and weaker. He said that he once asked God to take him so that his suffering would end.
His doctor says the 34-year-old is still alive today because both his lungs were replaced – and the painful operation could buy him another six years.
“We don’t know how long he’s had that lung,” said his wife Wendy Torres Hernandez in a Los Angeles courtroom. After the appointment, she has to take a lot of medicine, restrict the food she eats and keep a close eye on her blood pressure and sugar levels.
He said, all those measures “will continue until he dies.”
In Los Angeles County, a jury will examine a recurring question in the stone industry: Are companies that manufacture or distribute engineered stone culpable?
Read more: California workers who cut countertops die from an incurable disease
Health researchers have linked the rise in cases of silicosis among countertop cutters to the growing popularity of engineered or synthetic stone, which is often much higher in silica than marble. natural or granite. In California, many workers with silicosis have filed lawsuits against companies such as Cambria and Caesarstone.
Reyes Gonzalez is the first of them to go to trial, according to his lawyers. An L.A. County civil case is testing whether companies that make engineered stone can be held responsible during the silicosis outbreak, which has killed more than a dozen stone cutters. -countertops across California in recent years.
Dr. Robert Harrison, a professor of occupational medicine at UC San Francisco who has researched silicosis among countertop cutters, said the plaintiff’s decision will “send a message to manufacturers that they have a responsibility to produce a product as toxic as engineered stone.”
Regardless of the outcome, Harrison said the court case “shines a spotlight on the workers behind the products we buy.” That would increase public awareness that “there are workers who make our products who are sick and dying,” he said — and hopefully spur new efforts to stop it.
Marissa Bankert, executive director of the International Surface Fabricators Assn., which represents companies that manufacture slabs, said that “regardless of the outcome of this case, it is important that all companies that deal with high technology and workers They should be taught, and follow, the safety procedures.”
Read more: Doctors said the cutting countertops damaged his lungs. He had to fight for a staff computer
In a trial that lasted weeks, Reyes Gonzalez’s lawyers argued that the manufacturers of engineered stone failed to provide proper warnings about the dangers of their product. Lawyer Gilbert Purcell called it a “terrible and dangerous poison” and “flawed in design,” arguing that its risks far outweighed its benefits.
The question is, “why don’t you eliminate this product completely? The organization does not need this product,” Purcell told the jurors. “It certainly doesn’t need the carnage it causes.”
Attorneys for the engineered stone manufacturers countered that the blame lay with workers at the Orange County workshop where Reyes Gonzalez worked. Such “artificial shops” cut slabs made by manufacturers.
“We know this product is safe,” Cambria spokeswoman Lindsay Weiss said, “when handled safely.”
Reyes Gonzalez testified that he worked at a chain of shops in Orange County cutting engineered stone slabs. He said that at times the air was dusty almost foggy. He testified that his mask grew “very dirty.” Even when he used water while cutting, Reyes Gonzalez said that after it dried, “a lot of dust would come out.”
Caesarstone argued in court that the company provided the stores with all the information they needed to protect workers, including ventilation and water shut-offs to reduce dust. Its spokesman, Peter Strotz, said what happened to the employee was tragic, but preventable.
It could have been prevented if “those who owned and operated the store where he worked had done what Caesarstone asked them to do,” Strotz argued.
Read more: California adopts emergency laws to protect countertop workers from untreated silicosis
He and other attorneys representing engineered stone manufacturers sought to target members of the Silverio family, who had paid Reyes Gonzalez for his work at Orange County stores.
The worker’s attorneys argued that the Silverios were not his employers and that Reyes Gonzalez was an independent contractor. Fernando Silverio Soto, founder of Silverio Stone Works, proves that all he knows about risks is what he is told: Reduce the risk by wearing masks and using water while cutting.
Strotz showed the court the Caesarstone form that Silverio had signed, which stated that he had received the security information and the instructional film. In court, Silverio denied ever seeing such equipment.
Jon Grzeskowiak, Cambria’s senior vice president of research and development and operations, said the company offers free training to stone masons and that safety information for the products it is available on its website. Fernando Silverio Soto said during his testimony that he had never seen that website, nor had he ever gone to Caesarstone’s website for such information.
“I was never told I needed to,” he said on Caesarstone’s website.
Defense attorneys also brought expert witnesses who testified that engineered stone can be cut and polished safely with proper use of workplace safety precautions. Reyes Gonzalez’s attorneys also turned to experts who argued that measures such as masks or using water while cutting were sufficient.
Among them was industrial hygienist Stephen Petty, who testified that the N95 mask was not enough to protect the worker from the dust produced by grinding artificial stone.
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Petty says that even the best type of respirator available, which provides the worker with fresh air from a tank, will not work well in the long term because it is so uncomfortable that workers often have to adjust it, to break the seal.
UCSF’s Harrison, who did not testify in the case, said it is very difficult to protect workers who cut engineered stone. “It takes a lot of money and a pretty sophisticated, skilled employer with a lot of expensive machinery and ventilation systems to protect workers from exposure to artificial stone dust.”
Safety managers around the world are grappling with the dangers of engineered stone as its popularity grows. In Australia, the government finally banned artificial stone amid a public outcry over masons falling ill and dying. Workplace safety officials have called it “the only way to ensure another generation of Australian workers don’t contract silicosis in the workplace.”
In California, state officials stopped after the ban, instead imposing stricter rules on silica exposure at work. Another proposal that would have restricted businesses from logging was held up this summer by its author, Assemblymember Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood), who said state officials “were do not accept” to create a system to track authorized stores.
Cal/OSHA officials have warned in the past that if enforcement does not show results, they may move forward with a ban on engineered stone. However, in a recent report, the agency said that it has so far rejected the idea because the ban may encourage “the establishment of illegal stores hidden from the authorities.”
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This story appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
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