A year after Public Health Watch, LAist and Univision revealed a cluster of the deadly lung disease silicosis among fabricators of artificial-stone countertops in the Los Angeles area, workplace regulators in California on Thursday approved an emergency rule meant to help quell the epidemic.
After hearing public testimony, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted unanimously to adopt the emergency temporary standard, which will require employers of fabrication workers — mostly young, Latino men — to suppress toxic silica dust with water and take other protective measures.
The ultra-fine dust becomes airborne and enters workers’ lungs when the countertop slabs are cut or ground. The all-too-common results: lung scarring that continues even after exposure ends, and slow suffocation.
Among those who testified in support of the rule was Dr. Robert Harrison, chief of occupational health surveillance for the California Department of Public Health, who said the number of silicosis cases statewide had reached 100. As recently as July, the count was 77.
“This is not like anything I’ve seen in my 40-year career in occupational medicine,” said Harrison, a physician on the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco.
The emergency temporary standard, which will likely be replaced by a permanent one, allows California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, to immediately shut down a fabrication shop, without conducting air sampling, if an inspector observes the “dry-cutting” of silica-laden countertop slabs. Among other things, it will also require:
- The use of respiratory protection…
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