Document 3VoK78wZQVry2Bb1GbgKzm0O

THE WASHINGTON-POST FridayJlarch 26.19T6 j ^ g DISTRIBUTED WAR 26 1976 P+ / < 7/?lc^k BY C .T.FA . t By Marian ] Pot a Mount Sfnat Medical Cen te r in New York has issued a statem ent "to correct cer tain contusions" about re ports oi research work con ducted at the hospital's De f partm ent of Environmental Medicine on the asbestos .content of some talcum pow ders, The Washington Post re. ' ported the f i n d i n g s on March & The statement made Wed nesday by the center's presi dent, Dr. Thomas C. Chal mers, said: The only baby powder tested that was reported to show asbestos represented less than one per cent of the market and. the sample was five years old. The talcum powders used In the study "had been purchased more than three years ago." Recent analyses by the Food and Drug Administra tion "have not revealed ap preciable amounts of asbes tos" in talcum powder. Chalmers also said, "The research work was of the highest technical quality and a significant contribulion to the field." Researchers in the De partm ent of Environmental Medicine have taken excep tion to some parts of Chal mers' statement Arthur Rohl, research as sistant in the department who worked on the talc study, said most of the pow ders had been purchased in 1973, but some were pur chased as recently a3 1975. Asbestos was found in some of the new er samples, he said, though "there was a decline in the amount," - Samples of 10 talcum pow ders were also purchased in a drug store in. the last 10 days and a re . being studied now, Bohl said. 'Fewer conthem contain asbestos and those that do have general ly lesser amounts." Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, chairman of the department and a leading authority on occupational diseases, said the apparent discrepancy between FDA's findings and ' Mount Sinai's is due to a difference in technique. FDA's methods are not sen- sitive enough to measure as bestos below a certain level, he said. FDA "uses Differen tial Thermal Analysis (DTA) and optical microscopy. These are.not as sensitive as electron microscopv," ihe method used at Ait, Sinai, Dr, Selikoff said. FDA's director of cosmet ics technology, Heinz J. Eicrmann, said the metho dology the FDA used to ex amine 7(5 cosmetic talcs in 1973 "has certain lim it* tlons. The level of sensitiv ' ity is greater with electron microscopy, DTA will not permit you to determine as ' bestos at less than half a per cent, posibly oen per cent, whereas ypu can deter mine it at lower concentra tions by using electron mi croscopy." ' - : Selikoff acknowledged that th e . cosmetics industry has "gone ahead quietly and improved the talc. But there is a huge chink in their ar mor. They were dusting peo ple with asbestos all these years. before, so what was put in the lungs before Is still there. - . "I certainly wouldn't want to be dusted with any asbes tos. There is no safe level of asbestos known,'* Selikoff said. The Occupational Safety and''Health Administration of the Department of Labor addressed the same Issue in a proposed amendment to regulations governing, the limits of asbestos exposure for asbestos workers. In printing the proposal in the Oct. 9, 1973, Federal llqgister, OSHA said it recognizes that there is no assurance of a safe exposure for a substnace with known carcinogenic properties, in this case asbestos, and thus there should he no detecta ble concentrations,'* PLAINTIFFS EXHIBIT W CD-389 Goodhue WCD 000147