“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.
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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 kinds of natural stone, has driven a new epidemic of an accelerated form of the suffocating illness. As the dangerous dust builds up and scars the lungs, the disease can leave workers short of breath, weakened and ultimately suffering from lung failure.
“You can get a transplant,” Cabrera told the man in Spanish, “but it won’t last.”
In California, it has begun to debilitate young workers, largely Latino immigrants who cut and polish slabs of engineered stone. Instead of cropping up in people in their 60s or 70s after decades of exposure, it is now afflicting men in their 20s, 30s or 40s, said Dr. Jane Fazio, a pulmonary critical care physician who became alarmed by cases she saw at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. Some California patients have died in their 30s.
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Well, in this case I’d say split the difference and make it each incident escalates where an incident #1 = “we caught you, we told you”, incident #2 = “we told you yesterday to fix your shit / don’t do it again, 2x fine” rinse repeat. Otherwise you run the risk of bankrupting a small business that had all 10 of their workers in violation, and maybe even not making a dent in a large business that only had 1 out of 1000 workers caught in violation
In addition to per-incident escalation, what I could get on board with are scaled fines based on contract / business size. The first incident is still “survivable” for small businesses but will actually have teeth for those larger ones. And then of course if they keep violating, say bye-bye economic viability.