To physicians, researchers, universities, medical centers, biotech and pharmaceutical innovators, public health agencies, and funders around the world:

Silicosis has been recognized and written into workplace law for more than a hundred years. In that time, we have learned a great deal about how to prevent it. We have made far less progress on treating it. Today there is no approved therapy that stops or reverses silicosis. For a young fabricator with accelerated disease, the options are too often supportive care, oxygen, and — for some — a lung transplant.

Prevention must come first, and ISFA will keep fighting for it in every shop. But the fight for the worker must come in more forms than prevention alone. Workers who are already sick, and workers exposed years ago, deserve the full force of modern medicine: new imaging, new biomarkers, new drugs, new cell and gene approaches, and new technology.

We are calling on the medical and research community to make silicosis a priority for innovation:

• Reversal and regression: therapies that halt, slow, or reverse fibrosis, including antifibrotic, anti-inflammatory, and regenerative approaches now in early research.
• Early detection: biomarkers, low-dose imaging, and AI-assisted reading that find disease before symptoms.
• Clearance: evaluation of interventions such as whole-lung lavage to remove retained particles.
• Related disease: autoimmune disease, tuberculosis, kidney disease, and lung cancer linked to silica exposure.
• Transplant access and outcomes for silicosis patients.
• Exposure technology: real-time silica sensors, better respiratory protection, and wearable monitoring.
• Access: care models that reach workers regardless of language, insurance, or immigration concerns.

ISFA cannot fund this research alone, and we are not medical experts. What we can offer is a connection to the fabrication community: help reaching shops and workers who choose to take part in research, a platform at our annual conference, and a commitment to put new findings into the hands of the people who need them.

If you are working on this — or want to — we want to hear from you.

Signature, 

Laurie Weber, CAE
Chief Executive Officer, ISFA