​César Manuel González, 37, used to work with stone that was engineered to endure: dense, polished slabs designed to outlast the kitchens in which they were installed.

Engineered quartz countertops have surged in popularity in the home renovation market, with industry analysts estimating the global engineered stone market at around $30 billion. It’s continuing to expand as quartz surfaces replace natural stone in kitchens in the United States and worldwide.

When González was working, the dust that rose from his saw didn’t look extraordinary. It settled on his clothes, in his hair, across the shop floor. In a small countertop fabrication shop, he cut marble and granite before shifting to engineered stone after the 2008-09 recession, when demand for cheaper quartz countertops surged.

But the crystalline silica released while the engineered stone was cut and polished also settled into his lungs, scarring them beyond repair. What began as breathlessness hardened into silicosis, an irreversible disease that stiffens the lungs until even ordinary movement becomes effort.

A lung transplant was his path forward. The procedure can extend survival, but it redraws the boundaries of a life: anti-rejection drugs every day, constant monitoring, vulnerability to infection, the knowledge that breathing depends on the fragile acceptance of another person’s donated organ.

González, who was diagnosed with silicosis in 2023, is not alone in dealing with a disease that once was associated with miners at the end of long careers. It’s now prevalent among the much younger, often Hispanic men who work in this industry, physicians and public health officials say.

In the United States, cases are appearing in countertop fabrication shops from California to Texas, Florida, and the Northeast. Because silicosis is not a nationally reportable disease and surveillance varies by state, no comprehensive national count exists. But clinicians who treat occupational lung disease say the number of workers — often men in their 30s and 40s — diagnosed after cutting engineered stone has risen sharply over the past decade.

As of early March, California had identified 519 confirmed cases of engineered-stone-associated silicosis and 29 deaths since 2019. The median age at diagnosis is 46; at death, 49.

Doctors don’t debate whether working with engineered stone can scar lungs.

Manufacturers argue, though, that proper ventilation, wet cutting, and respirators can make fabrication safe. Workers, physicians, and plaintiffs’ attorneys counter that a material composed almost entirely of crystalline silica may be impossible to handle safely at scale.

“This is comparable to the tobacco industry saying cigarettes are safe,” said epidemiologist David Michaels, an assistant labor secretary under President Barack Obama who led the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

More than 370 lawsuits have been filed by workers who say  

​Jonah, de 8 años, se despertó una mañana de mayo con la cara hinchada y dolor de muelas. Se negó a tomar el medicamento para el dolor que su mamá, Geneva Reynolds, trató de darle. No dormía ni comía y lloraba sin parar.

En pocos días, Reynolds estaba tan desesperada que ella y su esposo tuvieron que sujetar físicamente a Jonah para obligarlo a tomar el remedio, echándoselo en la garganta mientras él gritaba de dolor.

“Nos rompió el corazón”, contó Reynolds, que en ese momento vivía en Georgetown, Kentucky. “Y recuerdo que pensé que no debería tener que llegar a eso”.

Reynolds no pudo encontrar un dentista con una cita disponible que pudiera atender a Jonah, que es autista y a menudo se resiste a los exámenes dentales por hipersensibilidad y ansiedad. Durante cinco días, Reynolds llevó a Jonah dos veces a una sala de emergencias cercana, mientras el niño lidiaba con un dolor persistente y fiebre por lo que probablemente fuera un diente infectado con un nervio expuesto.

En la sala de emergencias no había dentistas; las dos veces la familia regresó a casa solo con analgésicos y una bolsa de hielo.

En todo el país, cada vez más niños llegan a las salas de emergencias por problemas dentales prevenibles. Dentistas, higienistas e investigadores atribuyen esa tendencia a la falta de profesionales de odontología pediátrica en zonas rurales y a un deterioro de la higiene bucal desde la pandemia de covid-19.

Decenas de miles de niños terminan en el hospital por emergencias dentales cada año, según Melissa Burroughs, directora sénior de políticas y defensa del paciente de la organización nacional sin fines de lucro CareQuest Institute for Oral Health.

Las visitas a salas de emergencias por problemas dentales no relacionados con lesiones físicas aumentaron casi un 60% a nivel nacional en niños menores de 15 años entre 2019 y 2022, según un informe publicado a finales del año pasado por CareQuest.

Los datos locales reflejan esa tendencia nacional.

En el Hospital de Niños de Colorado, en el área de Denver, los casos dentales no traumáticos —como caries o infecciones de encías— atendidos en la sala de emergencias aumentaron un 175% entre 2010 y 2025, según Sarah Bonar, vocera del hospital.

En Kentucky, donde vive Jonah, las visitas de niños a salas de emergencia por problemas dentales aumentaron un 72 % entre 2020 y 2024, según los registros del estado.

Los cambios de política ejecutados por el gobierno de Donald Trump podrían empeorar la tendencia.

La ley de reconciliación presupuestaria federal de 2025 impulsada por el presidente, conocida como One Big Beautiful Bill Act, pidió recortes de miles de millones de dólares a Medicaid, lo que podría obligar a los estados a limitar o eliminar la cobertura dental del programa de salud pública para personas con bajos ingresos o con discapacidades.

Nuevos requisitos de elegibilidad de Medicaid en a  

​Eight-year-old Jonah woke up one May morning with a swollen face and a toothache. He refused the pain medication that his mom, Geneva Reynolds, tried to give him. He didn’t sleep or eat and cried constantly.

Within a few days, Reynolds became so desperate that she and her husband had to physically restrain Jonah, dumping pain medication down his throat as he screamed in pain.

“It broke our hearts,” said Reynolds, who lived in Georgetown, Kentucky, at the time. “And I remember just thinking that it shouldn’t have to come to that.”

Reynolds couldn’t find a dentist with an opening who could treat Jonah, who is autistic and often resists dental exams due to hypersensitivity and anxiety. Over the course of five days, Reynolds took Jonah twice to a nearby emergency room as he struggled with persistent pain and a fever due to a likely infected tooth with an exposed nerve. The ER had no dentists; both times, the family was sent home with only pain medication and an ice pack.

Across the nation, more children are entering ERs for preventable tooth problems. Dentists, hygienists, and researchers attributed that trend to a shortage of pediatric dental care professionals in rural areas and worsening oral hygiene since the covid-19 pandemic. Tens of thousands of kids end up in the hospital for dental emergencies each year, according to Melissa Burroughs, senior director of policy and advocacy at the national health nonprofit CareQuest Institute for Oral Health.

ER visits for tooth problems unrelated to physical injuries rose almost 60% nationally for children under 15 years old from 2019 to 2022, according to a report released late last year by CareQuest. And local data reflects that national trend: At Children’s Hospital Colorado in the Denver area, nontraumatic dental cases, such as cavities or gum infections, in its ER increased 175% from 2010 to 2025, according to hospital spokesperson Sarah Bonar. In Kentucky, where Jonah lives, children’s visits to the ER for dental problems rose 72% from 2020 to 2024, according to the state.

Policy changes under the Trump administration are poised to worsen the trend. President Donald Trump’s 2025 federal budget reconciliation law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, called for billions in cuts from Medicaid, which may force states to limit or drop dental coverage from the public insurance program for those with low incomes or disabilities. New eligibility requirements for Medicaid in some states could affect kids’ access to dental care, even though children are guaranteed dental coverage under the program. Research shows that when parents lose Medicaid, even kids with coverage are more likely to have untreated cavities and less likely to go to a dentist.

The Trump administration has also promoted skepticism about fluoride. Decades of research show that fluoride in drinking water and topical fluoride treatments dramatically reduce tooth decay and prevent caviti  

​SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as a national public health leader by staking out science-backed policies in contrast with the Trump administration.

After Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez for refusing what her lawyers called “the dangerous politicization of science,” Newsom hired her to help modernize California’s public health system. He also gave a job to Debra Houry, the agency’s former chief science and medical officer, who had resigned in protest hours after Monarez’s firing.

Newsom also teamed up with fellow Democratic governors Tina Kotek of Oregon, Bob Ferguson of Washington, and Josh Green of Hawaii to form the West Coast Health Alliance, a regional public health agency, whose guidance the governors said would “uphold scientific integrity in public health as Trump destroys” the CDC’s credibility. Newsom argued establishing the independent alliance was vital as Kennedy leads the Trump administration’s rollback of national vaccine recommendations.

More recently, California became the first state to join a global outbreak response network coordinated by the World Health Organization, followed by Illinois and New York. Colorado and Wisconsin signaled they plan to join. They did so after President Donald Trump officially withdrew the United States from the agency on the grounds that it had “strayed from its core mission and has acted contrary to the U.S. interests in protecting the U.S. public on multiple occasions.” Newsom said joining the WHO-led consortium would enable California to respond faster to communicable disease outbreaks and other public health threats.

Although other Democratic governors and public health leaders have openly criticized the federal government, few have been as outspoken as Newsom, who is considering a run for president in 2028 and is in his second and final term as governor. Members of the scientific community have praised his effort to build a public health bulwark against the Trump administration’s slashing of funding and scaling back of vaccine recommendations.

What Newsom is doing “is a great idea,” said Paul Offit, an outspoken critic of Kennedy and a vaccine expert who formerly served on the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee but was removed under Trump in 2025.

“Public health has been turned on its head,” Offit said. “We have an anti-vaccine activist and science denialist as the head of U.S. Health and Human Services. It’s dangerous.”

The White House did not respond to questions about Newsom’s stance and HHS declined requests to interview Kennedy. Instead, federal health officials criticized Democrats broadly, arguing that blue states are participating in fraud and mismanagement of federal funds in public health programs.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said the adminis  

​The National Institutes of Health has lost thousands of workers since President Donald Trump began his second term. 

Among them: scientists who pioneered cancer treatments, researched tick-borne diseases, or worked to prevent tobacco use. 

We spoke to a half dozen scientists who said they left the agency because of the tumult of 2025 and talked about the work they left behind. They say the exodus from the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research will harm the nation’s ability to respond to illness. 

“People are going to get hurt,” said Sylvia Chou, a scientist who worked at the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland, for over 15 years before she left in January. “There’s going to be a lot more health challenges and even deaths, because we need science in order to help people get healthy.” 

The NIH consists of 27 institutes and centers, each with a different focus. Major research areas include cancer; infectious diseases; aging-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s; heart, lung, and blood diseases; and general medicine. 

Over decades, the value of the NIH may be the one thing everyone in Washington has agreed on. Lawmakers have routinely boosted its funding — even for this fiscal year, in defiance of the White House, which had proposed cutting the agency’s funding by 40%. 

Our reporting showed that, nonetheless, the Trump administration’s actions to curb certain research and push out scientists perceived as disloyal are having far-reaching repercussions. The NIH workforce stands at about 17,100 people — its lowest level in at least two decades. 

Scientists across specializations outlined challenges that made them decide to leave. They included delays in accessing research equipment and supplies, the termination of funds for topics the Trump administration deemed off-limits, and delayed or denied travel authorizations. 

Even research aligned with the Trump administration’s stated priorities has suffered, they said. They questioned whether the NIH could continue to fulfill its mission to “enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness.” 

“It’s clear when someone comes out with a drug and now you’ve just cured a disease. But you never know which ones could have been cured,” said Daniel Dulebohn, a researcher who spent nearly two decades at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. “We don’t know what we’ve lost.” 

Dulebohn left the NIH’s infectious disease and allergy institute in September and is considering leaving the scientific field altogether.

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