Public Health Watch Executive Director Jim Morris appeared Monday on “AirTalk,” an interview program produced by LAist, the NPR affiliate in Los Angeles, to discuss a potential ban on artificial stone countertops in California.
Morris discussed Public Health Watch’s award-winning reporting on an epidemic of the incurable lung disease silicosis in Southern California caused by the fabrication of these countertops, which are made of silica-rich quartz, adhesives and pigments. When the countertop slabs are cut or ground, clouds of pulverized silica go into the air and, eventually, workers’ lungs. The result is slow suffocation.
When Public Health Watch, LAist and Univision first reported on the silicosis cluster in Southern California in December 2022, there were about 30 cases in the region. As of last week, there were 406 in Los Angeles and Orange counties alone…