From morning to night, six days per week, Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez spent his days reducing engineered stone, a man-made product that has grow to be a preferred alternative for kitchen and toilet counter tops.
The shiny slabs resist stains, are extremely sturdy and are available many colours. They’re additionally rife with crystalline silica: tiny particles that may irreparably scar the lungs when inhaled.
By the point Reyes Gonzalez had reached his thirty third birthday, his lungs had been ravaged by silicosis, an incurable illness. He was pressured to depend on an oxygen tank and grew skinny and weak. At one level, he mentioned, he requested God to take his life in order that his struggling would finish.
His physician says the 34-year-old is barely alive right now as a result of each his lungs had been changed in a transplant — and that painstaking surgical procedure might solely purchase him one other six years.
“We don’t know the way lengthy he has with that lung,” his spouse Wendy Torres Hernandez mentioned in a Los Angeles courtroom. Within the wake of his transplant, he should take a barrage of medicines, limit his weight loss program and maintain a detailed eye on his blood stress and sugar ranges.
All of these measures, she mentioned, are “going to proceed till he passes away.”
In Los Angeles County, a jury will weigh a query that might reverberate by the stone business: Are firms that manufacture or distribute engineered stone at fault?
Well being researchers have tied the surge in silicosis instances amongst countertop cutters to the booming reputation of engineered or synthetic stone, which is often a lot increased in silica than pure marble or granite. In California, dozens of employees with silicosis have lodged lawsuits in opposition to corporations like Cambria and Caesarstone.
Reyes Gonzalez is the primary of them to go to trial, in accordance with his attorneys. The L.A. County civil case poses a check of whether or not corporations that make engineered stone may very well be held accountable amid the devastating eruption of silicosis, which has killed greater than a dozen countertop cutters throughout California in recent times.
Dr. Robert Harrison, a professor of occupational medication at UC San Francisco who has completed analysis on silicosis amongst countertop cutters, mentioned a choice for the plaintiff would “ship a message to producers that they’re accountable for producing a poisonous product like engineered stone.”
Whatever the end result, Harrison mentioned the court docket case “shines a highlight on the employees behind the merchandise that we purchase.” That would bolster public consciousness that “there are employees who make our merchandise who get sick and die,” he mentioned — and hopefully encourage new efforts to cease it.
Marissa Bankert, government director of the Worldwide Floor Fabricators Assn., which represents companies that minimize slabs, mentioned that “no matter the result of this case, it’s important that each one corporations engaged in floor fabrication and their staff are educated on, and cling to, security practices.”
In a trial that has stretched for weeks, legal professionals for Reyes Gonzalez have argued that engineered stone producers failed to provide correct warnings concerning the risks of their product. Legal professional Gilbert Purcell referred to as it “terribly poisonous and harmful” and “faulty in design,” arguing that its dangers far outweigh its advantages.
The query is, “why not remove this product altogether? Society doesn’t want this product,” Purcell instructed jurors. “It definitely doesn’t want the carnage it causes.”
Attorneys for engineered stone producers countered that the blame lay with the operators of the Orange County workshops the place Reyes Gonzalez labored. Such “fabrication retailers” minimize the slabs made by producers.
“We all know that this product is secure,” Cambria‘s lawyer, Lindsay Weiss, mentioned, “when dealt with safely.”
Reyes Gonzalez testified that he labored in a string of Orange County retailers reducing slabs of engineered stone. At instances, he mentioned, the air was so dusty that it appeared like fog. His masks grew “very filthy,” he testified. Even when he used water whereas reducing, Reyes Gonzalez mentioned that after it dried, “a number of mud would come off.”
Caesarstone argued in court docket that the corporate had given the retailers all the data they wanted to guard employees, together with steering on air flow and moist reducing to tamp down mud. Its lawyer, Peter Strotz, mentioned what occurred to the employee was a tragedy, however a preventable one.
It might have been prevented if these “who owned and operated the fabrication store the place he labored had completed what Caesarstone requested them to do,” Strotz argued.
He and different attorneys representing engineered stone producers sought to show the main target to members of the Silverio household, who had paid Reyes Gonzalez for his work on the Orange County retailers.
Legal professionals for the employee argued the Silverios weren’t his employers and that Reyes Gonzalez was an unbiased contractor. Fernando Silverio Soto, who arrange Silverio Stone Works, testified that each one he knew concerning the risks was what he was instructed: To reduce threat by carrying masks and utilizing water whereas reducing.
Strotz confirmed the courtroom a Caesarstone kind that Silverio had signed, which said he had acquired security info and an tutorial film. In court docket, Silverio denied having seen such supplies.
Jon Grzeskowiak, Cambria’s government vice chairman of analysis and growth and course of operations, mentioned the corporate gives free coaching to stonecutters and that security info for its merchandise was obtainable on its web site. Fernando Silverio Soto mentioned throughout his testimony that he hadn’t seen that web site, nor had he gone to the Caesarstone web site for such info.
“I used to be by no means instructed that I wanted to do this,” he mentioned of the Caesarstone web site.
Protection attorneys additionally introduced ahead skilled witnesses who testified that engineered stone may very well be minimize and polished safely with the efficient use of office safeguards. Attorneys for Reyes Gonzalez, in flip, turned to consultants who disputed that measures resembling masks or utilizing water whereas reducing had been ample.
Amongst them was industrial hygienist Stephen Petty, who testified that an N95 masks was inadequate to guard a employee from the mud generated by grinding synthetic stone.
Petty mentioned even the perfect type of respirator obtainable, which provides a employee with clear air from a tank, wouldn’t work nicely in the long run as a result of it’s so uncomfortable that employees have a tendency to regulate it, breaking the seal.
Harrison of UCSF, who didn’t testify within the case, mentioned it is vitally troublesome to guard employees reducing engineered stone. “It takes some huge cash and a fairly subtle, educated employer with a number of costly machines and air flow programs to guard employees from publicity to synthetic stone mud.”
Security regulators throughout the globe have grappled with the dangers of engineered stone as its reputation has soared. In Australia, the federal government finally banned the synthetic slabs amid a public uproar over stonecutters falling unwell and dying. Office security regulators there referred to as it “the one manner to make sure that one other era of Australian employees don’t contract silicosis from such work.”
In California, authorities regulators have stopped wanting a ban, as a substitute enacting tighter guidelines on silica publicity within the office. One other proposal that may have clamped down on which companies might carry out stonecutting was held this summer season by its creator, Assemblymember Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood), who mentioned state regulators had been “not receptive” to making a monitoring system for licensed retailers.
Cal/OSHA officers have warned up to now that if tightening the principles doesn’t present outcomes, they might press ahead with a ban on engineered stone. In a latest report, nevertheless, the company mentioned it had up to now rejected the concept as a result of a ban might gas “the creation of unlawful fabrication retailers which are hidden from regulators.”
