InvestigateTV+ Weekend: Dealing with deadly silicosis disease

(InvestigateTV) — Countertops made from engineered stone are found in kitchens and bathrooms across the country. Made of crushed quartz mixed with resins and polymers, they’re marketed as being better than marble or granite.

But some workers who cut and shape these stone slabs in small local fabrication shops are becoming deathly ill from a disease called silicosis.

Tyler Jordan, 31, lives in Missouri with his wife and three children. He used to work in his family’s stone fabrication shop in Colorado alongside his father, Jimmy.

“Trying to take a deep breath, there’s just a point where there’s no more,” Jordan said. “I feel like I should be able to breathe deeper, but I can’t, I can’t. It’s tight.”

Rodolfo Figueroa, 70, returned home from the hospital Nov. 20 after receiving a lung transplant, a procedure doctors said was necessary to save his life after decades of cutting stone countertops left him unable to breathe.

Two weeks before his discharge, his daughter Jennifer rushed him to the emergency room after his oxygen levels dropped critically low.

“I can’t picture our family gathering without him,” Jennifer Figueroa said. “I don’t think we’d ever be whole again.”

Figueroa described his experience with the illness in simple terms. “I live something very terrible,” he said. “I mean, very bad.”