Episode 8: When Good People Are Tricked by Bad Companies
Host: James Nevin, Partner at Brayton Purcell LLP
Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of From Dust to Verdict. I'm your host, James Nevin, a partner at the law firm of Brayton Purcell LLP. This podcast is dedicated to the epidemic of accelerated silicosis in artificial stone countertop fabrication workers. In each episode, we explore important topics and issues about this occupational health epidemic as well as the associated lawsuits.
Today in Episode 8, When Good People are Tricked by Bad Companies, we will be discussing California Senate Bill 20 from Senator Menjivar, Occupational Safety High Exposure Trigger Tasks on Artificial Stone, which was signed into law October 2025. According to industry estimates, over 95% of artificial engineered stone slabs, which are large, rectangular, unfinished products, are dumped here by foreign manufacturers from China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Iran, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Canada, and Israel.
These foreign, artificial unfinished slabs are shipped to US states, such as California, where they must then be fabricated, cut, polished, beveled, etcetera, in local countertop fabrication shops before they can be actually installed in kitchens and bathrooms.
Throughout the many decades when only natural stone slabs were used to fabricate countertops, not a single case of a countertop fabrication worker developing silicosis was ever published in the global peer reviewed medical literature. Let's repeat that: throughout the many decades when only natural stone slabs were used to fabricate countertops, not a single case of a countertop fabrication worker developing silicosis was ever published in the global peer reviewed medical literature.
All this changed when foreign companies began to make and sell artificial stone slabs. A trend has emerged. As this foreign artificial stone slab product has become popular in any given geographic market, it displaces natural stone and the silicosis rates in fabrication workers rapidly increases from a baseline of zero to epidemic levels.
In California, the Department of Public Health or CDPH, maintains the Engineered Stone Silicosis dashboard, which tracks the artificial stone fabrication worker silicosis epidemic in California. The epidemic in California began in 2019 with only 13 patients. The prevalence has exponentially risen each year. And as of today, the number of confirmed patients is now 431.
Again, remember that for several decades when only natural stone was fabricated in these same countertop fabrication shops, that number was zero. Now it's 431 and rapidly growing. California is clearly the US epicenter of this global pandemic, and the epicenter within California is District 20, including Burbank and San Fernando Valley, represented by Senator Carolyn Menjivar.
A child of Salvadorian immigrants – she's first gen, and she honorably served as a U.S. Marine before becoming a politician. She was elected to the State Senate in 2022 and is a fierce advocate for her district. She is without a doubt, a good person and a great leader. Alarmed by the growing epidemic, Senator Menjivar introduced California Senate Bill 20 - Occupational Safety, High Exposure Trigger Tasks on Artificial Stone.
While her goal was to protect California fabrication workers from the dangers of artificial stone, Senator Menjivar's bill was hijacked and edited by foreign slab manufacturer lobbyists. And now, after being signed into law in October 2025 by Governor Newsom, it is having the opposite effect, actually hurting California countertop fabrication workers while failing to stop the artificial stone fatal silicosis epidemic.
While those lobbyists who edited SB 20 pretend to be advocates for countertop fabrication workers, according to their own websites, most of their members and most of their funding comes from the foreign slab manufacturers, not countertop fabrication workers. That is why Senator Menjivar is this episode's example of a “good person tricked by bad companies.”
SB 20 fails California fabrication workers for several reasons. First, unavoidable criminalization. SB 20 makes dry fabrication a crime. Most fabrication shops already use wet processing most of the time. However, in order to compete with each other on price, the foreign slab manufacturers sell thin 2 cm slabs, which are roughly 3/4 of 1 (one) inch in California, rather than the thicker 3 cm, roughly 1.25 inch slabs that they sell elsewhere.
These thin 2 cm slabs require dry lamination to make the edges thicker. So SB 20 makes it a crime for these workers to perform the very duties that the foreign slab manufacturers require them to do by only selling to them a product so thin that it must be dry laminated. That is an impossible Catch-22 for these California workers.
Secondly, this bill is flawed because it has no enforcement. Cal OSHA lacks the staff funding and trained specialists needed to enforce SB 20. The previous Cal OSHA standards already went largely unenforced due to resource shortages. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning than by getting a visit from Cal OSHA or Federal OSHA and SB 20 has done nothing to increase the funding for enforcement.
Thirdly, this law fails because it provides unrealistic burdens on small businesses. Most California fabricators are minority owned small shops, or independent contractors. Compliance with SB 20 would require several million dollars in equipment, which is several more zeros in the number than the shop's annual revenue. In other words, they cannot possibly afford the sophisticated safety equipment that SB 20 requires.
Fourth, this bill lacks input from the California Department of Public Health. SB 20 was heavily edited by foreign slab manufacturer lobbyists without inputs from the expert occupational health doctors at the CDPH. These specialist doctors will tell you that the only law that will stop this epidemic is a ban on crystalline silica artificial stone.
Under SB 20, the large foreign slab manufacturers that are actually responsible for this crisis, face no repercussions. Yet, there's a deeper flaw with SB 20. SB 20 incorrectly assumes that artificial stone slabs, which are non-essential building products, can actually be fabricated safely into countertops by human beings using wet methods.
However, Safe Work Australia, NIOSH, OSHA, Cal OSHA, Georgia OSHA, and many other regulatory agencies, along with numerous published peer-reviewed medical studies from around the globe have determined that even the most sophisticated safety equipment, which work just fine for natural stone and recycled glass stone, do not prevent fatal disease from crystalline silica artificial stone fabrication.
This is because artificial stone contains a four-part toxic soup that is like putting gasoline on a fire. First, it has extremely high crystalline silica content. Second, the silica in it is extremely small, nano-sized, and ultra fine. Third, it contains numerous toxic metals, and lastly, it contains numerous toxic, volatile organic compounds or VOCs.
None of these other toxic substances or the high level of crystalline silica is present in natural stone or recycled glass stone. This would be like flour companies replacing flour with fentanyl, and then just telling the bakeries that it's their fault for not having safer equipment when all the bakers start dying.
Countless global medical studies have demonstrated the deadly features of this artificial crystalline silica stone slough product. As a result of this toxic makeup, the prevalence rate for artificial stone silicosis in fabrication workers is around 75%. If you see four fabrication workers, three of them have the disease and often they don't know it yet.
Again, this is compared to the prevalence rate in silicosis among countertop fabrication workers with natural stone of zero. Zero compared to 75%. This is off the charts. The many hundreds of workers diagnosed in the U.S. via high resolution CT scans or lung pathology have worked at thousands of different fabrication shops.
Many of these shops use very sophisticated safety processes, yet the majority of these artificial stone fabrication workers still have silicosis and other diseases. Given that zero countertop fabrication workers had silicosis during the many decades when they only fabricated natural stone, and now with artificial stone, the majority of fabrication workers have it – it could not be any more clear that the problem is the artificial stone product itself, not the countertop fabrication process.
When Australia banned crystalline silica artificial stone, the industry did not collapse. The workers did not lose their jobs. The consumers did not lose their precious countertops.
Instead, they switched back to the already existing natural stone slab products and recycled glass slab products, which look the same as crystalline silica artificial stone products, but they don't kill the workers who fabricate them. The Australian experience proves that in the end, artificial stone countertops are a fashion product that can be easily replaced by safer products.
The consequences of this law is that SB 20 will not reduce the epidemic of artificial stone fatal silicosis cases in young fabrication workers. Instead, this law will drive small businesses into bankruptcy or underground into non-compliance. It will hamper Cal OSHA's work on much more effective regulations, such as a ban on crystalline silica artificial stone, and it will ensure that the current 431 California fabrication workers with fatal silicosis will grow into thousands.
This law will also provide political support for certain federal congressional efforts, most notably HR 5437, who are attempting to shield foreign artificial stone slab manufacturers from liability in the U.S. Indeed, their lobbyists have proudly proclaimed SB 20 as their first step – and their broader strategy to normalize these liability shields and ensure continued U.S. sales of a deadly product that experts and global health authorities have deemed unable to be fabricated safely by human beings.
If successful, this approach guarantees that the same slabs fueling California's crisis will keep entering the market unchecked, perpetuating preventable worker deaths across the country. Once Senator Menjivar sees that her current SB 20 law has failed to protect California's countertop fabrication workers, and instead has deepened the crisis, the path forward must change.
Rather than continue to work with the foreign slab manufacturer lobbyists, it is my hope that Senator Menjivar will engage directly with the experts who understand this epidemic best – the occupational health specialist doctors at the California Department of Public Health, UCLA and UCSF, as well as the Cal OSHA Standards Board.
These are the perspectives that can help Senator Menjivar to draft a new law grounded in actual science and actual worker safety, not foreign slab manufacturer industry spin. California can follow Australia's example by banning crystalline silica artificial stone, setting the national standard for protecting workers from a preventable deadly disease.
Thank you for tuning into this episode of From Dust to Verdict. I'm your host, James Nevin from the law firm of Brayton Purcell LLP. Please remember to share, like, and subscribe. And for anyone that speaks Spanish, I encourage you to check out the Spanish language version of this podcast hosted by my good friend Charley Velasco Ariza. Thank you.
