Silicosis claims: who qualifies and how to file

Cutting, sawing, grinding, drilling, or crushing stone, rock, concrete, brick, block, or mortar releases the dust. Silica particles can be more than 100 times finer than a grain of sand, meaning the dust you're breathing may be completely invisible. About 2.3 million U.S. workers are exposed to it on the job.

Where does it come from? Countertop stone shops, sandblasting, foundries, fracking with industrial sand, and any work that cuts, sands, or drills brick and concrete. Countertop work is a growing concern for health agencies. Engineered stone, the man-made slab sold as quartz, typically contains more than 90% silica. California documented the country's first 2 silicosis deaths among countertop workers in 2019.

Too much silica in the lungs is also tied to cancer, COPD, kidney failure, and certain autoimmune conditions in which the body's defenses turn on themselves. Silicosis also raises your chance of getting tuberculosis.

Watch for a cough, fatigue, trouble breathing, and chest pain. Timing depends on how heavy the dust was and how long you breathed it.

Chronic silicosis usually develops after 10 or more years of exposure to lower levels of silica dust, so work you did years ago matters too. Before your review, list each employer you've had and the years you worked for each one.

Workers' comp is insurance your employer carries for illness caused by work. A lawsuit is a separate case, and it can ask for more kinds of money than workers' comp pays. Plenty of workers take both routes at the same time. The rules differ from state to state, so the free review looks at yours.

Who can a lawsuit name? Your employer, the company that made the stone, a distributor, or any other party that didn't warn or protect you. Apart from narrow exceptions, workers' comp rules in most states stop you from suing your own employer. Most claims argue that a company failed to warn about the dust, designed a defective product, or hid the hazard. Since August 2019, official records show 44 employers in 15 states cited over silica dust, 25 of them stone or countertop shops, so it is worth checking whether a past employer is on the list.

Workers' comp benefits follow set rules. In California, for example, it replaces wages while you can't work, pays permanent disability when a doctor says your limits are lifelong, and pays death benefits to your family. While your employer decides on the claim, you can also get up to $10,000 in medical care.

Lawsuits can bring in much larger amounts. One law firm's summary of past cases reports average settlement amounts ranging from $25,000 to more than $1,000,000, but those figures don't tell you what your claim is worth. In August 2024, a jury in Los Angeles awarded a stone worker $52.4 million and found a group of countertop manufacturers and one distributor responsible. No two cases are alike, so valuing yours takes a close look at your own facts.