Florenza Marble & Granite Corp., a Chicago countertop manufacturer, faces over $1 million in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fines after the agency learned an employee needed a double lung transplant after suffering accelerated silicosis, OSHA announced August 26.
OSHA cited Florenza Marble & Granite with eight egregious willful, four willful, and 20 serious safety and health violations.
Agency investigators arrived at Florenza Marble & Granite in February 2024 to conduct air sampling and found workers laboring in a haze of dust throughout the workspace and workers using required respirators improperly. They also determined the company had few controls to reduce silica exposure as employees cut engineered and natural stone countertops for residential and commercial projects.
Investigators also found that the company and owner Brad Karp didn’t develop a safety program to protect or monitor the health of its six employees, even though two workers’ compensation insurance carriers refused to insure the company in 2022 and 2024 for not providing air sampling or proving it protected its workers.
“Our compliance officers found silica dust levels nearly six times higher than permissible levels, and the owner made little or no effort to protect his employees from exposure,” Bill Donovan, OSHA’s Chicago regional administrator, said in an agency statement. “To make matters worse, 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.”
During its investigation, OSHA learned that in addition to the 31-year-old in need of a double lung transplant, his 59-year-old father and coworker also is awaiting a silicosis-related lung transplant, and a 47-year-old employee has been treated for unresolved work-related lung disease for more than 3 years.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimates that the life expectancy for people diagnosed with silicosis is reduced by about 11 years, and the chances of surviving 15 years after a lung transplant are less than 11%.
The two workers suffering from silicosis have limited English proficiency, according to the agency, and received no information from their employer about the dangers of silica exposure or training in the use of personal protective equipment or precautions to protect their safety and health.
Willful violations cited by the agency include the following:
- Failing to establish a baseline of employees’ health to monitor silica exposure,
- Not performing medical surveillance to monitor exposure,
- Lacking engineering and administrative controls to reduce silica dust to safe levels,
- Exposing workers to unsafe levels of silica dust, and
- Failing to have a respiratory protection program in place.
OSHA also identified 20 serious violations related to housekeeping, respirator deficiencies, not having a silica exposure control plan or hazard communication program, not training employees in the use of compressed air, and allowing its improper use.
OSHA has an ongoing National Emphasis Program (NEP) for respirable crystalline silica exposure. The agency has also issued a hazard alert letter on “Worker Exposure to Silica during Countertop Manufacturing, Finishing and Installation.”