Document 3X1d4KmpyYqLboM0NOozwYnJ

I 40RTII CAROLINA 2 IALIFAX COUNTY. IN THE GENERAL COURT 012 JUSTICE SUPERIOR COURT DIVISION Files Mos. 79-Cr-919 and 79-Cr~-920 8 4 STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA r> -Vs (> ROBERT EARL "BUCK" WARD, JR. ) ) ) ) ) 7 STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA 8 - Vs 9 IOBERT EARL "BOB" WARD, III ) ) ) ) ) TRANSCRIPT OF TESTIMONY OF RENATE KIMBROUGH DEBORAH BARSOTTI LEONARD J. GOI.DWATEK 10 11 12 Hon, Donald L. Smith Judge Presiding 12 And a Jury 14 Halifax, North Carolina 15 Hi APPEARANCES: 17 For the State: 18 19 20 21 22 For the Defendants: 28 24 25 June 6 and 8, 1979 W. U. S. Burgwyn, Jr., Esq. District Attorney Sixth District Woodland, North Carolina 27097, and Donald Stephens and James L. Stuart, Esqs., Assistant Attorneys General and J. Michael Carpenter, Esq. Associeite Attorney General Departmen t of Just:i( e Raleigh, North Carolina 27602 Tharrington, Smith & Hargrove Attorneys at Law P. O. Box 1151 Raleigh, North Carolina 27602 Wade M. Smith and Roger W. Smith, Esqs., appearing, and Mark Fogel, Esq., Attorney at Law Raleigh, North Carolina WATER PCB-SD0000063661 2 I I NDEX 2 WITNESSES: DIRECT CROSS REDIRECT RE CROSS .2 Renate Kimbrough 3 16 55 57 4 Deborah Barsotti (Voir dire 61 to 63) 5 Leonard L. Goldwater 6 R. Emmit Kelly 7 5 8 74 79 80 110 100 115 121 79 8 9 EXHIBITS: 10 Defendant's Exhibit Five, envelope IDENTIFIED I NT POD' 88 92 11 and contents, A through E 92 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 REPORTED AND TRANSCRIBED BY: 21 Mildred C. Howell, RPR 22 Court Reporter Route 1, Box 73A 23 Halifax, North Carolina 27839 826-3763 24 25 WATER PCB-SD0000063662 .109 ] term that no one will suffer cancer or any ill health effects 2 from what happened here, and you are absolutely sure about that. 3 A. As I said, nobody can be absolutely sure about anything. I 4 say that the probability is so remote that one should really for 5 get about it. I think that the harm done by frightening people 6 is much more devastating than the actual chemical threat from thjit 7 particular situation. 8 Q. And that is your opinion as a scientist? 9 A. That is my opinion as a scientist, yes. 10 MR. STEPHENS: Just a moment. 11 THE COURT: Anything further? 12 MR. STEPHENS: That's all I have. 13 14 R. EMMIT KELLY, being first duly sworn, testified as follows dur 15 ing DIRECT EXAMINATIN BY MR. ROGER SMITH: 16 Q. What is your name, please? 17 A. R. Emmit Kelly, M.D. 18 Q. Dr. Kelly, where do you live? 19 A. Defiance, Missouri . My home is in Defiance, Missouri; my 20 office is in St. Louis, Missouri. 21 0. And, Dr. Kelly, what is your field? 22 A. I am a physician specializing in occupational disease and 23 internal medicine. 21 MR. STEPHENS: No problem. We'11 stipulate. 25 THE COURT: All right, based on the stipulation the WATER PCB-SD0000063663 110 1 Court finds that he is an expert in the field of occupational 2 disease and-- 3 MR. ROGER SMITH: Occupational medicine and internal 4 medicine. Your HOnor. 5 THE COURT: Okay. --in those fields. The Court so 6 finds,, 7 MR. ROGER SMITH: Thank you, your Honor. 8 Q. Dr. Kelly, what position or positions do you hold at the 9 present time? 10 k I'm a consultant in occupational medicine -- private con 11 sultant in occupational medicine. I'm an associate physician at 12 the Industrial (Unintelligible), St. Louis, Missouri. 13 0. Dr. Kelly, have you ever been employed by the Monsanto Chemi 14 cal Company? 15 k Yes, I have. 16 Q. Anc during what period in your career were you employed by 17 Monsanto? 18 k I started with Monsanto in 1936, stayed as a part-time plant 19 physician for about two years, then I became Medical Director on 20 a part-time basis until 1942 when I went into the service and 21 stayed with the Chemical Warfare Service as a Medical Officer. I 22 returned to Monsanto in 1946, became head of their Medical Depart 2.3 ment and stayed there until I retired because of age at 65 in '75. Q. Retired in 197 5. 2-1 . 25 k Right. WATER PCB-SD0000063664 111 1 Q. Where were you located? 2 A. My headquarters were in St. Louis but I was responsible for 3 the medical affairs throughout all their manufacturing installa 4 tions throughout the world. 5 Q. All right, sir. Speak up, if you would, please, Dr. Kelly. 6 What does Monsanto do? 7 THE WITNESS: Now or up to 1975? 8 Q. What did Monsanto do during the period of time in which you 9 were involved? 10 A. They manufactured a great variety of chemicals, plastics anc 11 fibers. 12 Q. Did they make PCB compounds? 13 A. Yes, they did. 14 Q. Were you in close proximity or did you have occasion to go 15 into the plants in which they were manufacturing PCB compounds? 16 A. Yes, I did. 17 Q. Was your office located in or near a plant where PCB com 18 pounds were manufactured? 19 A. It was across the river from a plant in Sauget, Illinois, 20 which is almost east of St. Louis. There was also another plant 21 at Anniston, Alabama, which I visited. Also one in the United 99 Kingdom which I visited. 23 Q. Did you have occasion to go into these plants? 34 A. Yes . 25 Q. Did you have occastion to go into the plant you described WATER PCB-SD0000063665 112 1 which was near your office? 2 A. Yes. 3 Q. How frequently would you go into the plant or plants? 4 A. At least yearly until the early seventies, then when invest^ 5 gabions of PCB became much more popular, I went in oftener, some 6 times three times a year, sometimes oftener. 7 Q. Did you after, in connection with these trips, become fami 8 liar with the process and equipment--- 9 A. Yes. ' 10 Q. --which was used to manufacture PCB compounds? 11 A. Yes. 12 Q. What were your duties at Monsanto during those years? 13 A. Primarily, my duties were to prevent any occupational ill 14 ness in our employees. 15 Q. Did you have occasion during those years to observe the ex 16 posure of employees to the manufacturing processes for PCB com 17 pounds? A. Yes. 18 19 Q. Would you describe the nature of the exposures that were en countered in the plants? 20 A. Yes. To make PCBs, you start out with a compound called by 21 phenyl which is a solid. You put that in a big pot -- covered 22 pot, you heat it with a lead bath to raise it to a certain tem 23 perature . This becomes molten, becomes a liquid. It's pumped 21 25 into a reacter and chlorine gas is also fed into this reader in WATER PCB-SD0000063666 113 1 varying amounts, depending on which member of the PCB family you 2 want. Then it is distilled and then it is filled into fifty- 3 five gallon drums or sometimes into holding tanks and from there 4 to tank cars. 5 Q. In connection with that process, Dr. Kelly, did you have oc 6 casion to observe the exposure of employees to PCB compounds? 7 A. Yes, I did. 8 Q. What concentrations of PCB compound were these workers ex 9 posed to? ' 10 A. There were no analytical testing of air early in the manu 11 facture of PCB because, with the exception of the cases that were 12 related during World War II and with the exception of an occa 13 sional case of chloracne, which is a sort of a teenage acne which 14 occurs on different parts of the skin, there were no ill effects 15 in our manufacturing group. 16 Q. But, Doctor, my question was : What kinds of exposure were 17 these workers exposed to? 18 THE WITNESS: I thought you said-- 19 Q. What kinds of exposure were the workers-20 A. They were exposed to vapor, exposure in skin contact. 21 Q. With respect to the equipment itself, how did they have oc 22 casion to be exposed? 23 A. Wherever you are pumping around liquids, wherever you are 21 filling containers, one has leaks. One has leaks in the flanges 25 of the pipes. One has overflows of the fifty-five gallon drums WATER PCB-SD0000063667 114 1 on its breakdown in equipment. One has cleaning out the pots and 2 reacters and they were exposed in those times. 3 Q. And, Doctor, what concentration of PCB compounds were they 4 exposed to? 5 R. A hundred percent. It was all PCBs. 6 Q. Is that one million parts per million? 7 R. One million parts per million. 8 Q. How often did you examine the employees? 9 R. I saw the medical records on the employees in Alabama yearly . 10 I did not do hands-on examination of these people myself. I ex 11 amined the people in East St. Louis at least once or twice a year 12 for a matter of several years. These are men who had been work 13 ing in the PCB Department in our East St. Louis plant for various 14 durations from two years to twenty years. 15 Q, Dr. Kelly, how many people, total, did you do-- Well, how 16 many hands-on examinations of employees did you do? 17 A Sixty to a hundred. 18 Q. Sixty to a hundred employees? 19 R, That's right. 20 Q. During all those years, how many employees did you examine? 21 R. I can ' t answer that. I don ' t know. I would say not any more than two hundred, I don't think. That's a relatively stable 22 employment population so I cannot give you a factual answer in 23 that. 21 Q. Doctor, did you examine employees who had had one million 25 WATER PCB-SD0000063668 115 1 parts per million PCB compound on their skin? 2 A. Yes. 3 0. What was the health of the employees you examined? What did 4 you find when you examined these employees? 5 A. With the exception of chloracne at our Anniston, Alabama, 6 plant, I did not find any ill effects in any of our Monsanto em 7 ployees . 8 MR. ROGER SMITH: All right. That's all the questions 9 I have. 10 THE COURT: Your witness. 11 CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. STUART: 12 0. Dr. Kelly, how long did you say you did tese studies? I'm 13 sorry, I missed that. 14 A. I don't know what you mean by studies, sir. 15 0. How long were you working and observing or examining the em 16 ployees to see the effects of these things on them? 17 A. From 1946 until 1975. 18 0. Has medical science progressed any since 1945? 19 A. I hope so. 20 0. Would you say it's a fair statement to say that your later 21 studies might have had more scientific -- you might have had more 22 scientific tools to judge what the effects were in the later year s 23 than you did thirty years ago? 24 A. That is correct, but some of these tests were in the later 25 years, sir. WATER PCB-SD0000063669 116 1 Q. Right. I can understand that. Thank you. Did you say tha 2 chloracne is like teenage acne? Is it not a lot more serious 3 than teenage acne? 'I A. Oh, yes, it1 s more -- it may or may not. 5 0. Isn't it--- Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry. 6 A. You can have chloracne in an individual which just means 7 that he has three or four blackheads on one part of his fact. 8 That's all. That's chloracne. It can also be very severe in 9 which it could be over his face, over his arms, over a good part 10 of his body. There are all types of chloracne. 11 Q. Sure. But is it the same as you find in a teenager in that 12 you might just put a little ointment on the surface or might you 13 have to go further with your medical skills to clear it up or to 14 remove it from a person? 15 A. Well, first of all, I do not believe that the eteology, the 16 cause of acne, whether in teenagers or in people exposed to PBC, 17 has been demonstrated. Some cases clear up very well. Some teen| 18 agers carry their acne until they are forty-five. I would say 19 in a person who has generalized chloracne from an industrial com 20 pound--and that can occur from any number of chlorinated com 21 pounds in addition to PCB--it is harder to clear up than the aver 22 age case of teenage acne. 23 Q. Thank you. Were the employees that you studied working only 2 1 with PCB or transformer oil manufactured by Monsanto? 25 A, At the time I examined them, some had worked in the depart WATER PCB-SD0000063670 117 1 ment and were working in the plant at other occupations. There 2 is a great mobility in a chemical plant where you have a union 3 that can allow people to move from one department to another. 4 0. So there was more than one department. It wasn't just a 5 gigantic PCB oil department. 6 ft. I don't follow you. Yes, there were more -- 7 Q. Monsanto made other things besides PCB. 8 A, Yes, with the exception of at Anniston, Alabama, they probably 9 made only one or two other compounds. At East St. Louis, they 10 might have made fifty other compounds. 11 Q. Do you have any idea what relative proportions they were, 12 were they ninety percent PCB or fifty percent, of their total 13 product production every year? 14 THE WITNESS: Which now? Which plant? The whole com 15 pany? 16 MR. STUART: No. No, sir. At that one plant that you 17 made reference to. 18 ft. At East St. Louis the amount of PCBs manufactured probably 19 constituted under ten percent of the total tonnage of the plant. 20 At Anniston, Alabama, it probably fifty percent of the total tonnage 21 of the plant. 22 0. Did these workers wear any type of protective clothing when they worked with PCBs or the other chemicals they worked with? 23 ft. Not in the early days. 2I 0. They did not. 25 WATER PCB-SD0000063671 119 ] could not do it just to see what PCBs did to the individual. If 2 somebody had decided fifteen years ago that PCBs might cure multi 2 ple sclerosis, people could have done that with the cooperation, 4 obviously, of the individual. 5 Q. If they were diagnoses as having something that was either 6 terminal or incurable. 7 Q. No, not that. No. If there was a valid reason. There are 8 several industrial chemicals that are used in medicine. The 9 drug that's used in prevention of alcoholism started off as a rub 10 ber chemical and they found out that the people who worked with 11 this compound couldn't drink, they got headaches. So, they took 12 this compound and gave it to alcoholics, after testing, and it's 13 a clinical club. The wife puts it in the man's coffee every 14 morning and he isn't going to take a drink that day. So, that is 15 what is done -- the type of clinical work that is done with indus 16 trial chemicals. 17 Q. I understand now. You indicated that you just can' t do that , 18 I believe. Would you feel right about dosing people with PCBs 19 and then observing the health effects on them? 20 THE WITNESS: For what reason? 21 Q. For any medical reason you might have because isn't that the 22 best way to find out what effect PCBs have on human beings, to 23 put them in a controlled environment and give them a little bit 24 with their diet or inject a little bit into them every day and 25 then-- WATER PCB-SD0000063672 12 0 1 A. No-2 Q. --see if -- when they pass away see what effect it-- 3 A. ---I would not. 4 Q. --had on them? 5 A. No, I would not. 6 Q. Well, do you think that doing that to animals gives some in 7 dication of what might happen to humans if you did the same 8 thing? 9 A. I think there is some relationship between animal testing 10 and human testing. 11 Q, Well, at the time you worked at Monsanto, do you know what 12 the industrial standards, like, for the World Health Organization 13 or the American Conference of Industrial Ilygenists was for PCBs 14 in an occupational environment in terms of concentration? 15 A. I would say that-- Yes, I do. It was something in the 16 order-- It varied. It started with five milligrams per cubic 17 meter, depending on the chlorination of the compound, then it 18 went down to one milligram per cubic meter. It has not been drop 19 ped below that. I don't know what has happened since I left Mon 20 santo, but in 1976 it was one milligram per cubic meter. 21 0. Would it surprise you if it has gone down below that? 22 A. I wouldn' t be at all surprised because-- 23 0. Why did Monsanto quit making PCB oil? 21 A. First of all, they found out-- Well, PCBs were used in a great number of uses. Now, I am not the man who made the decision 25 WATER PCB-SD0000063673 121 1 for Monsanto to quit making PCBs, but it was used in a variety o 2 applications. It was used as a plasticizer and Dr. Goldwater 3 said in these wire coatings. It was used in paint. It was used 4 in carbonless carbon paper. It was recommended by the Department 5 of Agriculture to be used as a spreading agent for pesticides. 6 It was used as a heat transfer agency. It was also used as a 7 transformer dielectric. That means it was a coolant for trans 8 formers but did not conduct electricity. Monsanto voluntarily 9 stopped using PCBs -- selling PCBs for anything but a closed sys 10 tern because they found that they had no control over the end use 11 of an end deposition of the product. And there were any number 12 of studies that were started -- not started, but showed that 13 there was some deleterious effect on the ecology of some species. 14 Q. What do you mean by deleterious effect? 15 A. If you had a high enough concentration of PCBs in a particu 16 lar estuary or water or stream going into the ocean, if it were 17 taken up in the food chain by small fish, bigger fish would eat 18 it, and the falcons or bald eagles would come down and eat the 19 fish, you would get in these eagles a lack of the ability to put 20 an egg shell around the egg. There is a harmonal change in these 21 female eagles. 22 MR. STUART: No further questions. 23 MR. ROGER SMITH: May I ask one more question? 24 THE COURT: Yes. 25 REDIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. ROGER SMITH: WATER PCB-SD0000063674 122 1 Q. What is the longest period of exposure to PCB compounds for 2 any one of the patient employees that you examined? How long 3 had the person been working there who had worked there the long 4 est that you know? 5 A, With PCBs, probably over thirty years. At least thirty 6 years. 7 MR. ROGER SMITH: That's all I have. 8 THE COURT: Step down. 9 10 NORTH CAROLINA 11 HALIFAX COUNTY' 12 I, Mildred C. Howell, hereby certify that the foregoing 13 testimony of Dr. Renate Kimbrough, Miss Deborah Barsotti, Dr. 14 Leonard J. Goldwater and Dr. R. Emmit Kelly was taken by me. in 15 shorthand and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me, and that 16 this is a true and correct transcription of my said shorthand 17 notes. 18 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand, this 19 the 19th day of July, 1979. . 20 21 \! \V V v. i 1 l \pT\ Vi H V), Court Reporter 22 Route 1, Box 73A Halifax, North Carolina 27839 23 826-3763 21 25 WATER PCB-SD0000063675