Document 4aenbYEjwo8bzNjaYvdL8NpY1

INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION The struggle to meet PVC safety standards I Many producers claim that they cannot comply with dustry's battle to overturn the regu lations. So companies that work with the material are struggling to meet the tors in which the polymerization takes J place are opened for cleaning. What is J 5more, a pvc plant is a veritable spa- OSHA's 1-ppm requirement standards in case spi loses. ghetti bowl of pipes and pumps, and vi The 22 polyvinyl chloride manufac nyl chloride "excursions" can occur at turers are facing the biggest challenge. any one of the hundreds of flanges and The vinyl plastics industry is not ready They polymerize vinyl chloride, be valves. Many PVC producers say they to show the white flag in its fight to get lieved to cause cancer in humans, into cannot possibly comply with the Occu stringent worker-exposure standards pvc resin, which is then fabricated into pational Safety & Health Adminis reduced. But the Supreme Court's re a wide variety of industrial and con tration ruling that by April, 1976, fusal this week to extend the Apr. 1 sumer goods. Workers in pvc plants workers may be exposed to an average compliance deadline does not augur are exposed to high levels of vinyl chlo of no more than one part per million of well for the Society of the Plastics In ride gas whenever the tank-like reac the gas during an eight-hour shift, and to no more than 15-minute peaks of 5 ppm. To meet these standards, workers may have to wear respirators, a fact that does not sit well with them. As ; Edwin W. Harrington, director of plas tics manufacturing at B. F. Goodrich Co., flatly states, "2 ppm or 3 ppm is the lowest we could ever hope to get." Goodrich effort. Goodrich, the nation's largest pvc manufacturer, is already spending some $42-million on improved cleaning methods and the like. It has managed to lower exposure level at its five pvc plants from 50 ppm to an aver- * age of 6 ppm, but the mandated 1-ppm level remains out of reach. Other com- panies-particularly those with old re- ' actors like Goodrich's that must be manually cleaned every other day, and indoor plants where ventilation is , poor-have had similar failures. "The flanges are under 35 lb. of pressure per sq. in., and VC molecules still get through," says one plant manager who says he has spent $25,000 on the devel opment of better gaskets and seals. ( Such frustrations are not unique. De- $ spite the recession-caused slump in de- { mand, vc and pvc producers are al ready spending $200-million to comply ` with the osha standards, estimates; John R. Lawrence, SPi's technical direc-' tor. Success remains elusive for most. Because the leaks are so difficult to eliminate, several companies are turn-, ing to better cleaning methods to re duce worker exposure. Japan, with only . a 25-ppm voluntary standard for the vinyl industry, is ahead of the U. S. in this area. According to the. Japanese pvc Assn., all Japanese plants use mechanized high-pressure water jets to clean facilities in order to minimize workers' contact with gases. U. S. producers are starting to follow I suit. Most have installed powerful vac- ^ uum hoses to purge reactors of vc . t fumes before they are opened for ! cleaning. And many are using high- , pressure spray cleaning devices to re- __ duce the frequency of manual scraping , and cleaning operations. After each 34 O BUSINESS WEEK April 14, 1975 INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION UCC 093737 SPl's Lawrence. Fabricators may face exposure levels above 1 ppm in pvc resin storage areas, but "the over-all concern for reducing exposure is with the PVC producers," Lawrence says. The monitoring requirements are a problem for pvc makers. The equip ment is not cheap-Diamond Shamrock, for one, has already spent $350,000 to monitor its Deer Park plant. And much of the monitoring technology is still embryonic. Only recently have vapor detectors and analyzers been able to work with levels as low as 0.5 ppm. Bandix system. Most PVC producers are pursuing combination systems that in clude continuous area monitoring, por table monitoring, and personal moni tors. Bendix Corp. pioneered most of the vinyl chloride monitoring equip ment when the original pvc cancer scare broke a little more than a year ago, and the company's monitoring systems are still among the most widely used. At Goodrich's plants, the Bendix system includes funnel-like air samplers scattered throughout the work area. The samplers suck up air and feed it back into a gas chromato graph in a continuous stream. The chromatograph can detect vc monomer concentrations down to 1 ppm. In most plants, the chromatograph is hooked into an alarm system that is quickly triggered when concentrations go above 25 ppm. If area sampling indicates an up surge in vc monomer, portable organic vapor analyzers are dispatched to the spot to pinpoint the valve causing the vc leak. These monitors are rarely ac curate below a 5-ppm concentration, but that is good enough for the pur pose. "They don't actually distinguish The vinyl plastics industry says $200-miliion still hasn't produced success vinyl chloride, but tell us if there is alien vapor in the air so we know which trouble spots to check further," says a Goodrich spokesman. Personal monitoring comes closest to detecting actual worker exposure. This is the method used by osha inspectors themselves. Workers wear a batterypowered device about the size of a transistor radio. It houses a charcoal tube, which absorbs vc vapors. The tube is inserted in a gas chromato graph, which can determine the amount of vc the worker was exposed to. Such personal monitoring may prove the crucial area for OSHA com pliance. Says Robert N. Rylands, man ager of Goodrich's Avon Lake (Ohio) plant, "As far as the osha standard is concerned, the real story is told with the personal monitoring." Even if the vinyl companies manage to meet osha's exposure and monitor ing rules, they may face additional problems from the Environmental Pro tection Agency. The epa is in the pre liminary stages of developing an emis sion standard for vinyl chloride. Unlike the osha standard, the epa rule is un likely to pinpoint parts-per-million lim its. Most industry sources expect that the agency will stress add-on pollution control devices, such as carbon adsorp tion and solvent absorption scrubbers, and incineration of captured vc gas. But the spi's Lawrence and several epa officials are optimistic that many of the measures that will satisfy osha will also satisfy the epa. Better seals and ventilation in plants, improved maintenance procedures for flanges and seals, and advanced stripping tech nology can all help. "If they can re move the monomer in the stripping process, they won't need so much con trol equipment downstream," admits Susan R. Wyatt, departmental engi neer at the Epa's Office of Air Quality Planning & Standards. Lawrence agrees, saying: "Many things the in dustry is doing to meet the OSHA stan dards will go a long way in meeting epa requirements." bottom Tine bargain 34 t. BUSINESSWEEK April 14 1975 Bodine puts more into its fhp motor and drive system design to give you greater bottom line profit in the long run. We call it ADE (After Delivery Economies). You get fewer rejects from the start and less profit robbing service headaches when your product is in use. Motor to motor, lot to lot, Bodine's con sistent quality pays-big performance dividends. If you're concerned about costs, profit ability and tomorrow's repeat sales, take a close look at Bodine. You won't find a better fhp buy--1/2000 thru % Hp. Bodine Electric Company, 2500 W. Bradley Place, Chicago, IL 60618. Phone; (312) 478-3515, Telex: 25-3646. QqplN.E (After Delivery Economies] make Bodine a better fhp buy BODINE MOTORS GEARMOTORS SPEED CONTROLS INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTlC -- "`-I UCC 093738