I’m the lawyer who handled Mr. Horton’s case. I don’t think there is any such thing as a “synthetic sand.” I don’t know where the paper came up with such a term. There is what’s called a silica sand. Most sand contains a high percentage of silica, which is what can can lung disease. The sand in your grandchild’s sand box should not be harmful because the particle size of the sand is too big to enter the smallest portions of the lung. Sandblaster get silicosis because they blast sand at high pressures against very hard surfaces, which causes the sand to fracture into microscopic particles that are sometimes not even visible to the human eye. It’s these particles that get trapped in the lungs.

Jason Gibson