592 California Workers Who Cut Quartz Countertops Developed an Incurable Lung Disease, and 65 Have Received Lung Transplants

The quartz countertop in an American kitchen is inert. Cutting one is not.

California public health investigators have now confirmed 592 cases of silicosis among workers who fabricate engineered stone countertops, according to a report published in NEJM Evidence by researchers at the California Department of Public Health and academic partners. Sixty-five of those workers have undergone lung transplantation. Thirty-one have died.