Document 3exL8QzbG5LJvyRyO35em7mDy

,ie r'Bi enemies and '"Rivals: ,er usea ,, to." Hoover backed lice conunisaicMiM vret,. , jrass bis down, Edwards who had suggest- 'smear his -- The FBI director also e<* chiefs should be engaged in bureaucratic i jdependent in their PA Finally Schedules Vina I Chloride Heari WASHINGTON - The worker, identified only as He is fairly accustomed! 'Environmental Protection Harry, one day the count by now to being asked why `"Agency has finally sched was over 100, the red light he changed sides in the fight uled public heatings on wasnoton. over the environment limiting the danger of vinyl "In other words," Klein bichloride emissions for those of us lucky enough not to work in vinyl chloride quotes Harry as. saying, "the supervisor had pulled "I-don't see the problem; as having sides," he said. plants. *Maybe some witness win pimply ask to read aloud an "We have to decide as a society how we can estab lish health standards and "article by Joe Klein in the ,Torrent issue of "Rolling ' Stone," a periodical not Sften cited at government gatherings. "The Plastic Coffin of Charlie Arthur" details the life and awful death of a worker at the B. ,, .F. Goodrich Development ./Center, a plastics plant in ^Avon Lake, Ohio. .Charlie Arthur died this 7.J5ear at 47 of a rare form 6f Ever cancer called angio- '"sbreoma, which is caused -% exposure to vinyl chlo- By MARY McGRORY the plug because they want ed everybody in that buildingtowork." The B. F. Goodrich company denied the charge through a spokesman. Charlie, who had wasted away in full sight of his fel low workers and bis family, with a minimum impact on the economy. I think both] sides should stop at each other. We assess the benefits and tbe\ cost -- the social cost, mean." The proposed EPA stand ards might safeguard the] approximately 4.6 million; people who live within a five - mile radius of ethylene dicholoride, vinyl chloride and polyvinyl plants. They|| would lower plant emissions by more than 90 per cent. Is 4 ride, a gas that is trans died on Nov. 2, 1975. His "There are no dose - re formed into a powder, wife Helen got the usual sponse data," says an EPA . which goes into the making benefits of a widow whose task force report, "and thus of seat covers, food wrap- husband died on the job. As there is no absolute poof of pings, records, credit cards a special favor, she also re adverse effects at the con shower curtains and ceived four weeks of centrations of vinyl chloride countless other objects most Charlie's pay. The company in the ambient air," says there is a "relation "However," the report Last year the plastics ship" between vinyl chlo goes on to say, "for carcino fftidustry, after a ferocious ride and angiosarcoma, but gens, there may be no {battle in the courts, bowed does not admit that one atmospheric concentration )to new vinyl chloride stand causes the other. which poses absolutely noi ards set by the Labor De- No Agitation public health risk." Lpartment's Occupational '--Safety and Health Adminis- XT^Aration. Plant closings, masj;sive unemployment, disas- Jimus ripple effects were predicted if certain safety measures for vinyl chloride '"yforkers were adopted. The -government stood firm, and "the plastics industry is still -in the very best of economic ..health. Charlie Arthur's fellow Affect Public? workers were saddened by That is precisely what bis wretched and untimely Rolling Stone is saying. But death, but not to the point of Rolling Stone goes on to say agitating through their that "we are seeing the union for stricter safety beginnings of a cancer standards. epidemic among chemical The counsel for the Soci workers that may spill over ety far the Plastics Indus and affect the general popu try, William D. Ruckel- lation. . shaus, former We don't know what vinyl environmental protection chloride emissions do to the Came Too Late administrator and briefly a surrounding population. We 4Hie new limits came too hero of conscience when he don't know what exposure -'late for Charlie Arthur. He refused Richard Nixon's to the shower curtains, had been wading in vinyl order to fire Archibald Cox records, credit cards and -'chloride vats as a young during the Saturday Night other objects made of the le Oman. He had worked 20 Massacre, understands thal convenience does to " : years at Goodrich, and their attitude. of us. i-angiosarcoma has a latent Ruckelshaus maintains, Instead of asking wba{ ..period of 20 years. and the Goodrich workers emission standards are1 In any case, according to bear him out, that a man daily acceptable" for pla Robing Stone, account, would rather risk cancer in tic plants, we ought to ' die company was cheating 20 years than not have a asking ourselves if we l 'An the rules. According to a job. plastics that badly. RSV0024800 : A MONSANTO OFFICIAL saia the firm's local plants will not be affected by the new, tighter federal regulations governing polyvinyl chloride, a chemical suspected of causing .cancer. The Monsanto spokesman said the 'Spring- field plant once had an operation involving PYC, a plastic, but that operation was closed here.* 7 The federal Environmental Protection Administration listed Monsanto as one of 58 companies nationwide tfiat will have to spend an estimated $198 million to cut down PVC mis* sions in their plants and another $83 million to reduce discharges of the chemical intowater, , Conventions NEWLY-ELECTED COUNCIL PRESIDENT ,* Daniel M. Walsh has called on the city to spend more money attracting convention business to Springfield. . Walsh said the convention business is highly competitive, and the city now faces keen rivalry from the Hartford1 Civic Center. Hartford spends about $100,000 promoting its civic center as a con- "ntion attraction, while Springfield spent only $10,- ''omotion. ! 'eher promotion budget would be Walsh said me aj uu6... Mot .SeT na By New Chloride Rules The U.S. Environmental to influence marketing. a rare form of liver cancer Protection Agency has pro The shutdown came a few known as angio sarcoma. posed regulations to reduce months after the U.S. Labor Ellsworth said earlier this cancer-causing vinyl chlo Department put into effect year that testing of em ride emissions from opera new standards to limit the ployes who had been ex-f tions similar to that which exposure of workers in vinyl posed to PVC would contin Monsanto Co. used to chloride plants, but Plant ue, although operations operate here. Manager Gerald Ellsworth- were ended. EPA listed Monsanto as said when the operations According , to EPA, one of the 58 companies were shut down that it had exposure to the gas can which would be affected by nothing to do with the link cause cancer 20 years or the regulations, but Robert between vinyl chloride and more later. Bogan of Monsanto said that the Springfield firm Store Breakin Chargedhas completely ended its polyvinyl chloride opera tions, and so will hot be Arraignment was sched-. nabbed in the basement of affected. uled today for two city men the building and the second The regulations, if ap charged with a break at a was apprehended on the proved, would require butcher store on Orange street. ' plants to cut emissions by 90 Street late Tuesday night. They were released oh per cent, using the best Police said John M. Belle- their own recognisance available technology. EPA feulle, 22, of 39 Lester St. pending the court appear said the reduction is neces and Andrew H. Appleby, 20 ance. ong- sary to protect the health of of 108 Athol St. were charg Student NamedAs- an estimated 4.6 million ed with breaking and enter ; its people who live in proximity ing in the nighttime. Magazine Editorsale to the vinyl chloride plants. Police said one man was trees The emission control pro een 8 gram is expected to cost Plant Expertrear $198 million, and companies Rory J. O'Connor of 57 Cherrelyn St., has been named editor - in - chief of Wiljotch s firein the state ig be"prose of .e sale rement larship will also have to spend Giving Viewsabout $83 million to reduce Newspeak, Worcester Poly technic Institute, student discharges of vinyl chloride newspaper which has re in water. EAST LONGMEADOW - cently undergone a staff Monsanto ended its PVC Larry Lirot of Larry's Plant rforganization. operations in July of- this Shed in East Longmeadow A member of the class of year. Company spokesmen will present program enti 1978, majoring in chemis said at the time the decision tled "Christinas at Louis- try, he previously was an to get out of the PVC field burg Square" Thursday. associate editor. was made for economic rea The meeting will be in the Newspeak was founded as sons, because the operation home of Mrs. Winifred Ho Tech News in 1909 and is was losing money and Mon bart of Ridge Road. Tea will published weekly during the santo's role in PVC produc be served at 12:30 p.m., academic year, except dur tion was too small to be able with the program following. ing college vacation. RSV0024802 Cancer-Death Surge.. . For 7 Month's$1975, Sparks Investigation - ; `1 * # Health Experts Are Puzzled By 5.2% Hate Bise Against 4> ' Usual 1% Yearly Increased Wall Street Journal November 10, 1975 By baeey Kramjh " -- .* stall Reporter of TS* Win. Stjieit Joubxai, - Health experts have begun an investiga tion of .statistics that show a startling in crease in the cancer death rate Oils year. They are at a losssofar to explain -fig baaed on previous years, one likely major ures released by the National Center tor cause of the large increase is lung cancer. Health Statistics that show that morn than While deaths from cancers of all types have 216,000 Americans died ot cancer inthe first been increasing at a 1% annual rate, lung- seven months of this year, or.a. rate ct 176.3 cancer deaths have increased by almost 4% deaths per 100,000 population. ' : ~ -- a year tor the past several years. Although .Although the cancer- death rate - has fewer women get lung cancer than men, the shown a gradual 1% increase in almost ev lung-cancer death rate among women has ery year-since the government began gath been increasing twice as fast as the increase ering the data in 1933, the death rate from among, men, apparently as more women January through July is a surprising 6.2% take np smoking. According to the American ahead of the similar period last year, when Cancer'Society, lung cancer Is the leading the rate was 167.6 per 100,000-or a total of cancer killer of American males and it pre .about 202,000. The jump in the rate this year dicts that the rate among women will equal; represents the'largest increase ever. . toe male rate within 10 years. * c- * ' ' " -v / - , r-l * Spokesmen tor the statistical center and Survival Bate Low " '. tor the National Cancer Institute, both of Because the disease often isn't detected which are units of the Department of until quite late, the survival rate is low, Health, Education-and-'Welfare, said they about 6% tor men and 12% for women five haven't any clue for the sudden increase. years after" treatment. - /'"t;.1 ' The statistics are derived from a 10% ran The ell-cancer death rate was, only 106 dom sampling of all death records, but re for each 100,000 population in 1933. By 1974, searchers .said the sire of toe increase it had reached 169.4, when 353,080 Ameri seems to rule out a statistical fluke. t 1 - cans died of toe disease. ' , .'' Surge in 1972 The rate for all 1974 has been exceeded in In 1972, the cancer death rate Increased] all but one month between January and-July suddenly by 3.4% but this was later ex-! of this year. In April, the rate reached 184.8, plained by a change -that year in the -way in or 34,480 deaths, toe highest cancer death which cancer deaths were coded and re rate for any single month in memory, offi ported. The change resulted in more accur cials said. ate reporting and thus a higher number of Part of the -continued rise can be attrib cancer deaths. The last previous major de uted to better diagnosis and reporting on viation in the rate, by 1,9% in 1952, is sHD death certificates, from which the statistics unexplained. -are derived, and to the fact that Americans Officials said -there hasn't been any arc living more often to ages when.caneer is change this year in the way that deaths due more frequent to cancer are reported that could help ex- cancer researchers in recent years plain the sudden increase. A' spokesman for have zeroed in on several factors that proba- ] the cancer institute said statistical - experts ^1' account for a larger part of the increase., from the institute planned to begin a de- .those include the smoking of tobacco prod-' tailed examination of death records in an ef- ucts, ic tort to determine a special cause, If any, tor expogeoin ins food, in his workplace .and the increase. ' elsewhere, and the types and quantities of But Robert J. Armstrong, statistician tor fod modern -society eats. Other potential the National Center for Health Statistics, causes include viruses and failures in the said it would probably be a full year before body's own natural immunity system, experts might be able to say exactly how large the cancer death rate increase is, what types of cancer had increased, and in what parts of the country 'the deaths were concentrated, if at all. He predicted that sta tistics tor toe full year would also show an increase, of perhaps 4%, in the rate. . Although he said there wasn't any data to back him up, Mr.' Armstrong said that. sopP,xT> . DP & 7t-r is7" Vv U-4 ?S /ZJ Rsvnrp.4803 -Advocate-: rn August 20,1975 '-`mzm / IgSSi* :-'"5^1^;; `-T}iT:V' -`*1* , .ai-aJvl"%' F.-^Cnn^ A ^Urm+i LO-yT-.- ! Monsanto Leaves Neighbors To Potential Health Threat It was harmless enough to look at; just a thin white powder that spread over backyards and childrens' swings. on days the nearby Monsanto plant was working. , And for 27 years, children romped in it, sniffed it, maybe even swallowed it. Adults just breathed it--and kept the kids away. The powder, which it turns out may cause cancer, is gone now; but only at Monsanto's^ convenience. ' '- t No government agency nor citizen's : complaints going back six years could provoke Mrs: Pieniazek said angrily. "The told me it (PVC) wasn't harmful. I went so far as calling, their office in. St. Louis last summer;...A.Mr. Howe came over, and he told me that nothing we were breathing was any more harmful than the dust in our garage." Now that the PVC is gone, the effects on a generation of Springfield.- Ludlow and Chicopee residents apparently will never be _ known. No one is testing them; no research is planned, despite 1974 EPA suggestions that industry. support- medical -surveillance a change by this chemical giant. '1 programs in neighborhoods near . PVC - Not even the growing record of cancer- complexes.- ( - causing qualities attributed to the polyvinyl The people who breathed the stuff since chloride (PVd) that is the source of the 1949 are being left on their own to suffer the powder; not even the worker deaths around possible damage in years to come. the country btarqbd on PVC swayed Monsanto Mrs. TieniazeVs youngest son, she says, has from closing , its Indian Orchard PVC been suffering severe respiratory attacks since , operation before its target date;July 31,1975. the family moved to a home near the Mon Mrs. Thaddeus Pieniazek, a resident of Brittany Raod in the neighborhood of the Monsanto plant, described her repeated unsuccessful attempts to stimulate the company's corporate conscience: "One santo plant. "1 can't afford to sit back and have them tell me 20 years from now that they're sorry because they've done some terrible harm to one of my children. They should be doing something about it now." evening there was a white fog enveloping the This is a brief chronology of events . neighborhood. I called the plant and talked to preceeding the shutdown: -- the night supervisor. AO he would tell me was -- August, 1969: Chicopee Falls residents that the telephone 1 was holding in my hand collect 65 signatures complaining about was made of polyvinyl chloride. I told him, "obnoxious odors" and a mysterious dust `That's very well, but the telephone I'm coming from the plant. ^holding in my hand doesn't irritate my throat- -- September, 1970: Neighborhood residents --and-make my eyes bum." So he dropped that file telephone complaints with the state Air --comparison." Pollution Control Agency. - --'Monsanto, according to Mrs. Pieniarek, r --November, 1970: Following an accident never made any effort to deal responsiblywith that leaves the Chicopee River -coated with - citizen complaints like hers. Instead, company . PVC, Monsanto asserts: "It's harmless and one -officials -devoted their energies to stalling and can eat or drink it without suffering any side -covering up. "I've been lied to by Monsanto," .- effects." -, t --January 7, 1971: In response to a request -from the state, Monsanto reveals that the - powder -is 25 per cent polyvinyl chloride. ' However, the report was kept secret and neighborhood residentswere not told. ' -- April, 1972: An Italian chemist. Or. ' Create Maltoni, doing research for firms that package goods in containers of PVC finds cancer developing in: rats exposed to the substance. June. 1972: A Johns Hopkins research project^says a plastic iwd in PVC blood hags S Monsanto PageV Monsanto (Ctmrinwmf/raws i'sge 6) may .prompt "shock lung." frequently the cause of death among surgical patients receiving massive blood transfusions. . -- December, 1972: When a tank car of vinyl chloride rolls into the Westfield River, Monsanto, contradicting its earlier assertions, announces that VC is "comparable in toxicity and explosive qualities to gasoline.".... - --January, 1974: A number of chemical firms report to the federal government that several workers exposed to PVC have died of a rare cancer, angiosarcoma of the liver. (None of the deaths, however, was at Monsanto _ plants.) --June, 1975: "The state reveals the previously secret report analyzing the powder at one-fourth PVC. State pollution agents cite Monsanto on June 6 for violation of "state particulate limits." --July, 1975: A poll of local hrepitals ' reveals at least three angiosarcomas in this area in the past two years. RSV007.4R05