Thousands of U.S. countertop workers could have damaged lungs, safety expert says

NPR Science LISTEN & FOLLOW NPR App Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music iHeart Radio YouTube Music RSS link Science Thousands of U.S. countertop workers could have damaged lungs, safety expert says May 18, 20266:00 AM ET Nell Greenfieldboyce Wade Hanicker poses for a portrait at his home in Brooksville, Fla., on March 23, 2026. Hanicker was diagnosed with silicosis after years of cutting quartz countertops. Tina Russell for NPR hide caption toggle caption Tina Russell for NPR Wade Hanicker lives near Tampa, Florida, and he started making countertops about 15 years ago. He used saws and other power tools to cut and polish big, heavy slabs of raw stone so that they'd fit perfectly into customers' kitchens and bathrooms, and wore simple face masks to help protect himself from any dust. "We were more worried about getting crushed by slabs or getting cut with blades and stuff like that," he says, "not getting a lung disease." He says he made some countertops out of granite, but mostly he cut "quartz," a popular composite made by factories that take bits of quartz mined from quarries and mix it with binders and pigments. Compared to granite or marble, manufactured quartz contains far more of the mineral silica — and silica dust can cause lung damage, if you breathe it in. Sponsor Message That danger has become dramatically clear in California, where officials have been grappling with an epidemic of silicosis, an irreversible lung disease. They've tracked over 550 sickened countertop workers, almost all Hispanic men, with most of the cases emerging over the last few years. Over 30 workers have died, and more than 50 have had lung transplants, according to a public dashboard where the numbers keep going up. On May 21, a workplace safety board in California will vote on whether or not the state should ban the cutting of high-silica quartz countertop material, as a group of doctors has petitioned the state to do. Those doctors say the severity of workers' disease suggests tha...