Document 4Np4r3XGbmYaZEQr4x71g7pp

T i' i C^ffwes:5a&'y/Social Issues Moving toward control of toxic chemicals After three decades of unprecedented and virtually unregu into OSHA standards, but mostly due to the agency's lack of lated proliferation of new chemical products, American in information on the thousands of chemicals flooding into the dustry now confronts a frightening fact and a formidable workplace. With a budget of $25.5-million and a staff of fill, question. The fact: Long-term exposure to an unknown NIOSH must start from scratch in analyzing each. number of chemicals can produce irreparable damage to the "We have this Toxic Substances List of 15,000 chemicals, organs of employees who work with them-and chemicals which will double by next year at the present rate of chem are used in every nook and cranny of U. S. industry, not ical development," says niosh Deputy Director Edward .1. just the $70-bi!lion, 1-million-worker chemical industry. The Baier. "But when it comes to knowing just how dangerous multifaceted question: How can the dangerous chemicals be each chemical is--let alone how carcinogenic-we just don't identified from among the 10,000 chemicals now in produc have the data. If these products were tested prior to their tion and the eight new chemicals considered for production introduction at the worksite, we might not be surprised by each week? And what will it all cost? any more vinyl chloride incidents." Some political answers are already taking shape. Tempo The Toxic Substances Control bill would provide for just rarily stalled behind emergency energy legislation, a Toxic such preproduction testing under rules that could have Substances Control bill that would require company testing mild-to-massive impact on the chemical industry. While of new chemicals under Environmental Protection Agency both the House and Senate versions direct the EPa to spec rules awaits action by a Senate-House conference com ify companies' testing methods and to forbid production of mittee. Backed by labor, Representative David Obey (D- new and existing chemicals found to be dangerous, tney Wis.) plans to press a House Appropriations subcommittee differ sharply on two crucial points: for more money, both for the National Institute for Occupa The House bill would require testing of only those new tional Safety & Health (NIOSH) and for the National Insti chemicals listed as potentially dangerous, with results to be tute for Environmental Health Sciences (niehS), to be used reported to the epa 90 days before production. The Senate specifically for research in petrochemical health hazards. version would require, additionally, that companies notify Whatever the immediate fate of both measures, recalcula the epa of all new chemicals considered for production so tion of the acceptable trade-off hetween worker health and that it could order testing of suspect chemicals not on the industry growth seems clearly in the cards. The likely result list. EPA says it cannot predict what industry will develop willbe higher costs and slower growth. tomorrow and put it on a list today. Industry objects to an ong recognized as a grave risk by occupational health approach that-says John A. Georges, director of environ experts, the problem of "chemical health collapse-' moved mental affairs for E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.-"as abruptly from the scientific journals to the daily news sumes every product is dangerous until proven otherwise." papers with the discovery of seven deaths from angiosar The House version would enable the EPA to ban produc coma, a rare liver cancer, among long-time workers on the tion of a chemical only if health hazards could not be cor vinyl chloride operations of three chemical companies, and rected under other federal legislation, such as the Water the diagnosis of noneancerous liver damage in hundreds of Pollution Control Act. The Senate version would leave the workers exposed to the chemical. The Occupational Safety choice of weapons to the epa on the ground that different & Health Administration (03HA) hastily issued a temporary laws work better for different conditions-for instance, that exposure standard of 50 parts per million (ppm) for the banning a product may be wiser than trying to clean up its 700,000 workers exposed to vinyl chloride, with a permanent toxic sewage, if substitute products are available and clean ' zero standard due to be proposed this week. The link be up methods are uncertain. Industry argues that this provi tween vinyl chloride and liver damage sion puts too much power into the thus took its place with the links be hands of the epa administrator. tween benzene and leukemia, cadmium and nerve disorders, and a growing list Testing costs run high fit other chemical occupational hazards. Chemical companies say that their |An information gap testing costs would rise moderately un der the House bill, but so astronom Theoretically, Congress dealt with ically under the Senate bill that esti this problem back in 1971, when it mates fail them. Union Carbide Corp.'s created osha. Among other tasks. OSHA chemical and plastics group spent was charged with issuing freshly re $900,000 on testing during fiscal 1973 searched health standards to replace (on sales of $1.67-billion and pretax outdated consensus standards. A 500* profits of $212-miilion) and is spending ppm vinyi chloride exposure level, for $1,1-million this year. It projects a test example, was still in effect long after ing cost of $1.5-mil!ion for 1975, "given most companies had set their own lev a reasonable bill," says Thomas W. els'at 200 ppm and Dow Chemical Co. Carmody, vice-president of the chem had brought down its standard to 10- ical and plastics group. Dow, which t.o-50 ppm. But nothing much actually spends $8-million annually for testing changed. Only 15 of 550 projected osilA (on U. S. sales of $l,7-billion and post health standards were issued in three tax profits of $215.5-million), expects years. This was duo partly m cautious "only a modest additional cost" under leadership and cumbersome methods of Dr. Frederick de Serres: "I feel that the House bill, says Chester E. Otis, converting NIOSH criteria documents 1974 may be the year everything explodes." (continued on page 114) USiNESSWEEK May II, GGC 002912 onriAi wi i * * market, you've lost the money game. As inflation, devaluation and taxation con tinue the onslaught against your dollar, the question is no longer whether to in vest, but what to invest in. There is a creditable alternative to the stock mar ket. Rare coin investment has consis tently outgained every major form of investment m the last 30 years. 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Many chemicals would require no testing at all under the Senate bill, says epa leg islative director Gary Baise. Most oth ers would require only the standard 30day toxicity protocol, which measures general effects on two species of ani mals, he says. But tests for suspected carcinogens are something else again, and these are the tests that industry fears the epa may demand for many chemicals. Lifetime animal tests take two years and cost up to $300,000 per chemical, according to the National Cancer Institute. Nobody yet has come up with a quick, cheap, reliable substi tute. The likeliest candidate, in some views, is mutagenesis testing--measur ing the ability to change cells rather than the specific ability to cause cancer (one type of unnatural cell change). Conceivably this could save millions of dollars by weeding out chemicals that might otherwise go the two-year, $300,000 route, Dow and Pfizer, Inc., are studying the technique, and Dr. Frederick de Serres of the mehs, a leading authority in the field, predicts good tests for chemicals within a year. An even tougher bill? But passage of the Toxic Substances Control bill may not wait for the devel opment of quicker, cheaper tests. On the other hand. Congressional failure to pass the bill this session, either be cause time runs out or the conferees re main deadlocked, may produce a bill even less attractive to industry. Senate majority conferees indicate that, rather than compromise further, they will let the current bill die and start again in the next Congress-a postWatergate Congress likely to be friendlier to a tough bill than the present session. The message seems to be that industry must expect a fairly expensive solution to the problem of identifying potential vinyl chlorides, if not this year, then next-and that this, in turn, means that it will be producing fewer products. "The bill will have a hidden cost in new products that will never be devel oped and new uses for old products that will never be explored," says George Hanks, environmental affairs manager for Union Carbide. "Small companies especially will think twice before un dertaking anything that may require extensive testing. They can't afford it." Environmentalists such as Barry Commoner argue that this is good, that the ever-accelerating tiood of the past 30 years should be slowed while indus try catches up on its health homework for those chemicals already developed and society decides how many more it can absorb. Taking another tack, labor argues for a tough bill as a means of protecting worker health with minimal economic disruption. Spotting dangers through preproduction testing makes more sense than waiting till after wards, when jobs and investments are at stake, says Sheldon Samuels, direc tor of health, safety, and environmen tal affairs for the AFL-cio's Industrial Union Dept. Potential time bombs Extensive testing may increase costs to consumers as well as producers, la bor spokesmen concede freely, "Safety and health costs are part of the cost of doing business," says IUD SecretaryTreasurer Jacob dayman, "In some cases they will be passed on to the consumer." Although chemical companies take no such placid view of the increased cost of doing business under a Toxic Substances Control bill, their present prospects suggest considerable ability to pay more for health research with out endangering their own economic health. "Resource shortages guarantee an era of incredible growth for chem icals," says Union Carbide's Carmody. "Look at detergents. There's just no way back to soaps based on fats. We need the fat for food now. The same is true for most natural resources." As a result, Carmody says, "I can't imagine a really important product being priced out of the market." Carmody's premise may be tested sooner rather than later. Another vinyl chloride incident would almost certainly propel a tough Toxic Substances Control bill out of committee and onto the statute books, and occupational health experts rank the likelihood of such an incident as somewhere between possible and probable. Since chemically caused diseases often have latency periods of 10 to 20 years and many chemicals went into production 10 to 20 years ago, time bombs may be ticking away on countless production lines. "I feel," says the niehs' Dr. de Serres, "that 1974 may be the year ev erything explodes." j ' i GGC 00291 3 SOCIAL ISSUES