“This is a new and emerging epidemic, and we must increase awareness of this disease process so we can avoid delays in diagnosis and treatment for our patients,” says University of California in Los Angeles radiology resident Sundus Lateef, M.D.

Epidemic? Again? No.

Americans are now so healthy that we have migrated from promoting nonsensical fear about virtual pollution (PM_2.5) and weedkillers and lumber all the way down to...kitchen countertops.

According to a presentation at the Radiological Society of North America, employees making stone countertops are developing silicosis due to inhaling silica dust and that is an emerging epidemic and go on to claim there is a "resurgence"...except cases have dropped 33% in the last 10 years. It's actually down to 0.000006. That's not an epidemic(1), not even an Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist would try to claim it is, it is instead a sign that workers got smarter about wearing masks as mandated by employers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since 1970, when correlation became strong enough that action was warranted. Two generations ago, it may have been a machismo thing to not wear a mask, much like soldiers didn't wear ear protection, but modern workers are a lot smarter.

That is why silicosis is down to levels that are statistical noise, not an epidemic or call to action to ban nice things in the kitchen.


Statistical noise or not, where protective gear the way the federal government and your company have required for over 50 years. This shows a persistent small left-sided pneumothorax/lung collapse (red arrow), asymmetric right upper lung thickening (yellow arrow), and findings consistent with progressive massive fibrosis (orange circle), indicating complicated and advanced silicosis. You don't want this. Credit: Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and Sundus Lateef, M.D.

And what really puts this in the EXPLORATORY pile rather than the health one is that it's only 21 people(2) from one hospital. Yet the goal may have been to pump up radiologists rather than inform public health because they highlight that radiologists caught nearly twice as many cases as primary physicians using imaging, yet even radiologists only caught it in 7 of the 21.

Wear protective gear around all dust. The authors say it is more prevalent in rural areas but that could be due to people who don't wear masks because they are working outside, not a problem with the entire industry they are criticizing. Your countertops are safe, we don't need celebrities and wealthy white progressives doing to stone countertops what they did to vaccines for 25 years.

NOTES:

(1) Prior to the pandemic, the clown car that we call the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rolled out a new epidemic claim - pre-diabetes, vaping, you name it - every time they wanted a budget increase, but they showed during COVID-19 they were completely unprepared to do anything except scaremongering harmless fluff issues. During the 2020 and 2024 elections, Democrats tried to claim their Republican opponent was to blame, except CDC are overwhelmingly career employees, not appointees, and 90% Democrats. They refused to send out testing kits for COVID-19 unless a hospital could prove a patient had COVID-19 (no, really) and when the White House finally forced them to act, they sent out testing kits with faulty reagents. Luckily, FDA was more sensible and granted emergency use authorization to private sector companies after CDC showed it was determined to be incompetent until the World Health Organisation finally stopped listening to China and declared it a human pandemic. Then CDC asked Congress for more funding.

(2) That's slightly more than 12 hand-picked kids the Wakefield paper that sent Democrats on their 'vaccines cause autism' war and the 13 people that created the 'grain brain' celiac fad, but not enough to be valid.