"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."

https://theconversation.com/quartz-countertops-are-driving-a-public-health-crisis-in-the-us-2-occupational-health-experts-explain-the-surge-of-lung-transplants-and-lawsuits-284888

#PublicHealth #quartz #silicosis #kitchens #LungDisease #OccHealth #OSHA

Workers who create kitchen countertops out of engineered stone containing crystalline silica risk developing silicosis or lung cancer.

https://theconversation.com/quartz-countertops-are-driving-a-public-health-crisis-in-the-us-2-occupational-health-experts-explain-the-surge-of-lung-transplants-and-lawsuits-284888

#Science #Health #Silicosis #LungCancer #Cancer #PublicHealth

"We have a lousy system that is dependent on employer reporting… We're missing at least half of the work-related amputations in the country that occur. We're probably missing 95% of the cases of #silicosis that occur in the country."

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/18/nx-s1-5691570/silicosis-beyond-california-quartz-countertop-cambria

#miners #Appalachia #coverups #WestVirginia #silicosis #history

"America’s Deadliest Industrial Disaster And the Cover-Up That Erased It from History

The men came to West Virginia wanting nothing more than honest work. Instead, they faced a silent killer.

(. . .)

According to Union Carbide’s own records, of the 1,500 men who worked exclusively inside the tunnel during its construction, 1,115 were Black, and almost none were from the local area.

Awaiting them in the tunnel’s path: thousands of feet of solid rock that, when blasted and drilled and chiseled and shoveled, transformed into tiny, glass-like particles that sliced a million little cuts into your lung tissue until slowly, slowly, slowly, over years even, you died.

(. . .)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) notes that respirable crystalline silica, created 'when cutting, sawing, grinding, drilling, and crushing stone [or] rock,' is made up of particles 100 times smaller than a grain of sand, and that anyone who inhales it is at a higher risk of developing a horrific, irreversible, and incurable disease called silicosis. OSHA wasn’t established until 1970, but these facts were well-known by the time the Hawk’s Nest project was underway, and engineers and executives at Union Carbide would have been aware of the risk.

(. . .)

He reconstructed all of it, and it is all chilling, and the most chilling parts of the book are the descriptions of life for the tunnel workers. The discrepancies between the living conditions of Black and white workers are particularly striking: Laborers lived in two-room shanties, with two bunk beds in each room. Black workers slept eight to 12 in a shanty; whites just four. Black shanties had no electricity, while those housing the white workers did.

Never did the company that Union Carbide had formed to oversee the project, the New Kanawha Power Company, measure dust levels in the tunnel, which would have been a common practice even then."

https://archive.ph/MgtxC

Today in Labor History March 30, 1930: Three thousand workers, mostly African-American, began construction on the Hawks Nest Tunnel in West Virginia. The employer cut costs by failing to provide safety equipment. Additionally, bosses forced the men to work 10-15-hour days, often at gunpoint, without breaks and without masks to protect themselves from the silicon dust. Consequently, hundreds of workers died of silicosis. Possibly over 1,000 people, one-third of the entire workforce, died from silicosis, in one of America’s worst cases of mass workplace mortality.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #workplaceinjury #WorkplaceDeaths #HawksNest #racism #silicosis #forcedlabor #slavery #BlackMastodon #PPE #africanamerican

·· azkenak airean - last broadcast ··

los trobadores de la lirica pe
silicosis
peter and the test tube babies
kaftsmall

Entzun / Listen (streaming):
https://punkirratia.net:8443/punk

#lostrobadoresdelaliricape #silicosis #peterandthetesttubebabies #kaftsmall #FediRadio #punk #streaming #NowPlaying #music #musica #musique #musika #MastoRadio

When corporations push risk downward and lobby immunity upward, that’s not growth — it’s control.

Corporations vs people. Same move. Different decade.

#WorkersRights #CorporatePower #Silicosis #OSHA #NPR #Democrats #Republicans #Accountability #AI

http://cherokeeschill.com/2026/01/16/they-didnt-grow-the-economy-they-shrunk-the-worker-inside-it/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social

https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-trump-administration-has-found-a-sneaky-way-to-keep-killing-coal-miners

#Appalachia #LabourMovement #mineworkers #Organize #Silicosis #Solidarity #Trumpocracy #unions
#UMWA