By: Talia Soglin and Laura Rodríguez Presa, Chicago Tribune
For almost 24 years, Antonio Campos dedicated his life to cutting stone at Florenza Marble & Granite Co., a small countertop manufacturer on the city’s West Side. It was a job that gave him enough money to provide for his family in Mexico and care for his relatives in Chicago. Seven years ago, he recruited his son, José Gómez, to work alongside him.
Sitting on a brown couch at his daughter’s home in the Pilsen neighborhood, connected to an oxygen tank, Campos stared at a black marble table he once helped make at the company. Campos, 58, is awaiting a lung transplant. His 32-year-old son has already received one.
Both father and son were diagnosed with silicosis, an occupational lung disease caused by the inhalation of toxic crystalline silica dust, which is kicked up when workers cut and grind stone. Some people with silicosis will need lung transplants, and the disease can be fatal. Experts say the incurable disease is preventable when manufacturers take appropriate safety measures to protect their employees.
“It is a disease that Hippocrates wrote about. It is an ancient disease,” said Robert Cohen, Campos and Gómez’s pulmonologist at Northwestern Medicine. “If we engineer the dust out of the workplace, then it’s entirely preventable, which is so tragic.”
Last month, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Florenza, where Campos and Gómez worked, for dozens of safety violations, alleging the company failed to properly protect its workers from silica exposure and inform them of the risks of their work. The agency hit the company with more than $1 million in proposed penalties.
Florenza now has until the second week of September to either comply with the citations, request an informal conference with OSHA or contest the findings with the agency.
Florenza owner Brad Karp did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The citations issued against Florenza come as experts have grown particularly concerned over silicosis cases connected with the use of artificial stone made mostly of quartz, typically called “engineered” stone within the industry. Silica is found in natural stone like granite and marble, but it’s found in much higher and more dangerous concentrations in engineered stone, which is often used to make countertops. At Florenza, workers fabricated both engineered and natural stone, according to OSHA.
Australia prohibited the use of engineered stone entirely in a ban that took effect July 1. And last month, a jury in Los Angeles County found businesses that make or distribute engineered stone at fault in the case of a 34-year-old stonecutter with silicosis who needed a double lung transplant, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“There’s an epidemic of this worldwide,” Cohen said.
When inspectors arrived at Florenza in February, OSHA said in a news release, they found workers there “laboring in a haze of dust.” Workers at Florenza were exposed to silica at levels up to six times greater than the agency considers permissible, OSHA said, and the company had few safety controls in place to reduce workers’ exposure to silica.
Gómez said his illness started with a recurring cough that would not go away, then fatigue and trouble breathing. He received a lung transplant this spring, which became possible when he got health insurance through his wife’s work. “Many times, I didn’t think I would make it,” he said. But he held onto his faith.
Still, he spends most days in his home, which like his father’s is filled with oxygen tanks and countless religious images. There are times when he still has trouble breathing. He has rehab two times a week and doctor appointments almost three times a month.
His father is still awaiting a lung transplant. Joseph Brancky, an attorney representing both Gómez and Campos in workers’ compensation cases, said the same insurance company that eventually approved Gómez’s transplant has not yet approved a transplant for his father.
In Illinois, immigrant workers are entitled to workers’ compensation when injured on the job despite their status, just as people who are citizens. Gómez is receiving weekly workers’ compensation benefits but his father, whose case remains under investigation, is not, Brancky said.
Campos, who is uninsured, has been hospitalized at least four times over the last several months, unable to breathe.
His daughter Irma Gómez has been helping to care for him since he stopped working four months ago and could no longer take care of himself.
“This has been extremely difficult, we don’t know what else to do,” Irma said, sitting next to her father. “When I heard him cough we feared it was the same illness, but he refused to stop working because we needed the money.”
Over the last year, doctors told Campos his cough was related to pneumonia. It wasn’t until four months ago when he could no longer breathe that the family took Campos to see the same doctor that was treating Gómez at Northwestern.
When they got the news that he also had silicosis, he panicked, Campos recalled. It was then that he told his supervisor, who he’s known for over two decades, that he could no longer go to work. He also shared the news with some of his coworkers.
“I want them to know what can happen. I want them to take care of themselves because this is very difficult and painful. I don’t wish this upon anyone else,” Campos said in Spanish.
Campos said that he and other workers began to use the proper mask while performing their job a few weeks after his son was diagnosed with silicosis last year. For some time, he thought he would be safe.
“Tenía miedo. I was scared,” he said. “But I had to keep working.”
Citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, OSHA said the life expectancy for people diagnosed with silicosis is reduced by 11 years on average. The chances of surviving for more than 15 years after a lung transplant is less than 11%, the agency said.
When people breathe in silica dust, their lungs try to process the toxic particles but aren’t able to, which results in severe scarring.
“People can’t breathe. They can’t get oxygen into their blood. They can’t get rid of carbon dioxide,” said Cohen, who is also the director of occupational lung disease at Northwestern.
Those who do live with lung transplants often find themselves in and out of hospitals and clinics. They must take medications that suppress their immune system to prevent their body from rejecting the new organ. “You’re really exchanging one chronic disease for another,” Cohen said.
Last year, a study published on silicosis cases associated with engineered stone in California found that nearly all of those affected were Latino immigrant men. Their median age at diagnosis was 45, and the median age at death for those who died was 46.
Many of the men who work at Florenza are from the same town in Michoacán, Mexico, where Campos and Gómez emigrated from, Gómez said. OSHA said a third Florenza employee, 47, has also been treated for an unresolved, work-related lung disease for over three years.
In 2017, OSHA updated its safety standards related to silica dust exposure and last year, the agency launched an initiative to enhance enforcement of silica standards in the engineered stone industry.
OSHA inspectors found Florenza failed to comply with many aspects of its silica standards, including by exposing workers to levels of silica dust up to six times higher than the allowed limit, not using the proper controls to limit the concentration of silica dust in the air, not providing medical surveillance to workers exposed to silica and not ensuring that workers who fabricated engineered stone were informed of the dangers of silica dust.
The inspectors also cited Florenza for safety issues related to protective respirator use, finding, for example, that respirators were not stored properly to prevent contamination from silica dust particles.
Since 2022, two different insurance providers have refused to provide workers’ compensation coverage to Florenza because the company did not provide air sampling or proof it protected workers, the agency said. Some of the citations OSHA issued against Florenza were categorized as “willful,” which the agency issues when it finds a business owner either purposefully disregarded safety standards or “acted with plain indifference” to worker safety.
“Karp was indifferent to his employees’ suffering and refused to accept any responsibility for protecting them, even after two insurance carriers dropped the company for its egregious defiance of workplace safety standards,” OSHA regional administrator Bill Donovan said in a statement.
When Campos first noticed he had developed a cough similar to his son’s about a year ago, he hoped to return to his native Michoacán.
“I wanted to go back and at least die there,” he said. “But I couldn’t leave my son. I was also hopeful it was just something else.”
Now, as he awaits the lung transplant, his hope is to still return one day. His three other children and his wife live in Mexico.
The family is relying on friends and family to help cover medical costs for Campos. His daughter Irma Gómez, who has three children of her own and works in a factory, has given up some of her shifts to take care of her brother and now her father.
“Our world is falling apart,” Irma Gómez said.
The father and son said they decided to tell their story with the hope that more people can be aware of the dangers they face in a workplace that does not provide proper protection.
“My life has completely changed, but I have faith,” Gómez said.
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