Finding of Emergency Section 5204 , Occupational Exposures to Respirable Crystalline Silica Business Meeting : December 14 , 2023 Page 12 of 36
These findings are illustrated in Figure 4 .
FIGURE 4 . RCS personal air sampling measurements of workers at artificial stone fabrication workplaces inspected by Cal / OSHA , January 2019 – February 2020 . Dashed lines represent the RCS AL ( 25 μg / m 3 ) and PEL ( 50 μg / m 3 ). 42
12 ) Individual workers in this industry report high levels of employer non-compliance with title 8 requirements .
As part of the SEP , Cal / OSHA interviewed and administered a questionnaire in both English and Spanish to a subset of workers at each worksite . Cal / OSHA provided CDPH with completed questionnaires from 92 workers at 33 inspected shops ( 70 % of 47 shops inspected ). CDPH reported the following findings : 43
• 84 of 92 workers ( 91 %) reported performing tasks with artificial stone that generate RCS , including cutting , grinding , laminating and polishing .
• 22 workers ( 26 %) reported sometimes using dry methods to perform those tasks .
• 69 workers ( 75 %) reported wearing disposable , filtering facepiece respirators and / or half-face elastomeric respirators for more than 30 days within the past year .
• 63 workers ( 68 %) reported that their employer had not informed them of the results of silica air monitoring performed at their workplace .
42
Surasi K , et al ( 2022 ). Elevated exposures . ibid . https :// pubmed . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / 35899403 /.
43
Spiegel A , et al . Self‐reported silica exposures and workplace protections among engineered stone fabrication workers in California . Am J Ind Med . 2022 ; 65:1022-1024 . https :// pubmed . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / 36214615 /. Accessed May 8 , 2023 .