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David Michaels and Robert Harrison | The Conversation
If you walk into a Costco, Home Depot or Lowe’s and order a countertop for your kitchen renovation, the store will likely contract with a local fabrication shop, instructing them to make one from a material called engineered stone.
Often marketed as “quartz,” engineered stone is a synthetic product that contains up to 95% finely ground quartz mixed with polyester resins and pigments. The ease with which consumers can order it obscures the fact that workers who cut, grind and polish these kitchen countertops risk developing a terrible disease that destroys their lungs.
In California alone, more than 550 workers have been diagnosed with silicosis caused by this engineered stone – a deadly disease that is totally preventable and for which there is no cure.
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