California moves to ban artificial quartz as worker deaths mount

WBUR

Published October 15, 2026 at 12:03 PM EDT

California regulators meet on Thursday to consider a ban on the installation and cutting of man-made stone countertops. Many workers who cut the big slabs into pieces have fallen ill with a deadly lung disease, silicosis.

We speak with Jeff Rose, a stone-cutter and fabricator based in Nicholasville, Kentucky, who was diagnosed with silicosis

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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