California moves to ban common kitchen items after incurable disease rates soar

California is seeking to ban the creation or installation of artificial quartz due to reports of deadly lung illnesses that are increasingly affecting workers who carve the material to make kitchen countertops.

California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board is expected to adopt emergency regulations for artificial quartz in October, indicating growing concern about the favored alternative to granite and marble.

The ban would affect manufactured stone containing more than 1 percent crystalline silica.

The state should review the regulations before they become law.

Crystalline silica, which is highly concentrated in artificial quartz, becomes airborne as dust when the quartz is cut.

This in turn can affect the lungs, which respond with an aggressive immune response. Scar tissue forms, leading to destruction of the lung.

Once patients begin to suffer from silicosis, they often need a single or double lung transplant.

The number of Californians suffering from the disease has increased in recent years, from 31 cases in 2019 to a staggering 631 as of mid-August, according to a study.

Nearly all of the victims were men, with about half in Los Angeles County, according to the report. Their median age is 52 years old.

One of those victims is Enrique Gonzalez, a San Fernando Valley stone worker who has been unable to work for two years after developing silicosis following years of working in granite and stone manufacturing.

Gonzalez’s family previously told the California Post that his illness made it impossible for them to cover medical costs and living expenses.

His daughter, Edith Gonzalez, 30, said her father’s health began to improve only after the lung transplant he received this summer.

“He recovered very well from the lung transplant. His body handled it very well. He’s showing signs of improvement, like right away,” Gonzalez said. “Before he received his lung transplant, his condition was really, really bad. Like his condition was really bad, he was intubated because he couldn’t breathe even a little bit.”

Fortunately, Gonzalez said, her father was already on the transplant list by the time his condition became critical. The family was initially warned that the search for donor lungs could take years.

“Luckily, when his condition really deteriorated, he had a lung transplant,” she said.

Before the procedure, even walking short distances had become extremely difficult. Gonzalez said her father used a cane and often needed a wheelchair to get from the car to medical appointments or the emergency room. Even using supplemental oxygen, he frequently became short of breath.

Today, his life seems radically different.

“Right after he received his lung transplant, obviously, yes, he had some help walking and some support, but now he doesn’t need a cane. He doesn’t need a wheelchair,” Gonzalez said. “He’s able to take his morning and evening walks. He’s like a new person.”

His daughter described him as a quiet, family-oriented man who spent much of his life working and was the family’s primary breadwinner.

“He was always home, went to work and came home,” she said.

The transplant marks a major turnaround for Gonzalez, but his recovery is far from over. His daughter said he remained under significant restrictions and spent much of his time attending medical appointments, undergoing physical therapy and shadowing doctors.

“He can’t really be outside. He can’t go a lot of places,” she said. “So right now it’s all about his recovery, just staying home and going to the doctor.”

With Gonzalez unable to work for the past two years, the family has relied in part on donations through GoFundMe to help cover expenses.

“It helped a lot because he obviously wasn’t able to work and it took a toll on us because he was always the breadwinner of the family,” Gonzalez said. “I’m very grateful that he got a second chance at life.”

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