California workers who cut countertops are dying of an incurable disease

Inside the row of workshops in an industrial stretch of Pacoima, men labored over hefty slabs of speckled stone, saws whining over the sounds of Spanish-language rock.

Pale dust rose around them as they worked. Many went without masks. Some had water spurting from their machines, but others had nothing to tamp down the powder rising in the air.

“Nobody uses water,” one man in a Dodgers cap said in Spanish when Maria Cabrera approached, holding flyers about silicosis, an incurable and suffocating disease that has devastated dozens of workers across the state and killed men who have barely reached middle age.

Cabrera, a community outreach worker with the nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful, urged him and others at the Branford Street site to try to protect themselves. Silicosis can ravage the lungs of workers after they inhale tiny particles of crystalline silica while they cut and grind stone that contains the mineral.

The disease dates back centuries, but researchers say the booming popularity of countertops made of engineered stone, which has much higher concentrations of silica than many