Document 5kGjnRX2GRQ1MbRQmJkGQ74E8

/psz?# VilWi G40KldE. IIVIIi kL/ui m% j-JJI a gC OlON ONE We have only begun to learn about this cheap, colorless gas which has caused the deaths of 11 American workers. By Don A. Schanchc The "smoke shack" at the B.F, Good rich Chemical Company's plant in Louis ville, Kentucky used to be a regular so cial center. Because of the potentially explosive nature of vinyl chloride, the gas they work with, the men took their breaks in the shack, where they had a smoke and swapped stories about fishing and football and one another. There are times now when the old, carefree spirit is gone from the shack; it's been replaced by different talk and other news. This is understandable because five of their fellow workers arc gone . , . dead from angiosarcoma of ihc liver, a rare and almost inevitably fatal cancer. Moreover, the survivors now know that this "bad luck" that took the lives of their friends resulted from exposure to vinyl chloride, the innocuous chemical --or so they had believed--to which they all arc exposed every day. And since angiosarcoma is a cancer that takes y3Sfrs In develop, no longtimer in the smoke shack can be certain today that he is not carrying the disease--a veritable time bomb ticking away inside his body. Additionally, the dangers of vinylchloride exposure may extend far be yond the smoke shack and (he Luuisville plant. Since early this year, when the firs! disclosures were made, investiga tors have found at least 20 American and foreign vinyl-chloride workers who have died from angiosarcoma; and the threat docs not even end there. The medical in quiry is focusing now on persons living near the plants or those who might be ex posed in other ways. In short, people like you and mo. As a result of the new and melancholy discoveries, an international campaign is under way to learn everything possible about the hidden dangers of vinyl chlo ride and to draw up safe and strict con trols over this potentially lethal gas. ** * Until last January, not many Ameri cans had ever heard of vinyl chloride and even fewer knew that it was deadly. The cheap, colorless gas is one of thou sands uf little-known substances that go into the making of industrial and con sumer products. You probably have encountered the gas unknowingly if you have used spray paints and insecticide aerosols, or if you used certain hair sprays, in which vinyl chloride served as a propellant. (How ever, a marketing ban has been imposed against these products.) A far more com mon use of vinyl chloride (VC) is as a base for solid and flexible plastics. Some 6,500 United States workers are involved in producing the gas and its polymerized form, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is a hard, granular resin. PVC is used in making about half of all our plastics-- food wrappings, bottles, water pipes, blood storage bags and tubing, car up holstery, fabric coatings, wall and floor coverings, and thousands of other com mon objects. Unless you live in a plastics-frcc environment, you probably can reach out and touch a PVC-based product as you read this. But scientists have reassured the public that there ap pears to be no danger of toxic exposure from pqlyvinyl-chloridc-based con sumer products. However, some Americans are not completely reassured. For example, there is Thomas Finn, 72, a retired rail road inspector in Niagara Falls, New York. He first heard about vinyljghloride last January 22 when news repofia of its possible dangers were first broaast. At the time, Finn was too distraught with grief to pay much attention. His 12-yearold wife, Kathryn, a lively grandmother who had never been seriously ill. had died only six days before. Cause of death was angiosarcoma of the liver, a cancer considered so rare her doctor refused for a time to believe his own diagnosis. "We really didn't know the name ol the disease until she was dying," said Finn. "Even then, it was such a strange word (hat I couldn't remember it." Raymond G. Gettclfinger. 42. of Louis ville, has worked with vinyl chloride all his adult life. And, like Thomas Finn, lie knew nothing of that hard-to-remember word: angiosarcoma. Until last January 22. that is: for on that day. the Goodrich company issued a press release stating that three of its VC workers in Louisville had died of the cancer. John L. Creech. Jr,, M.D.. a local sur geon who helps oversee the health of Goodrich workers, had discovered the surprising "cluster" of rare cases in the polymerization plant where Ray Gcttelfinger had worked for 20 years. The company announced it was investigating to see if the deaths "were related to oc cupational causes." The victims all had been longtime em ployees at the plant. And all had been "pot cleaners" at one time in their ca- 16 TODAY'S HEALTH/SEPTEMBER 1974 BOR 007067 i reers. jhc same job that Gettclfinger held fler tracking down more than 4.000 for his first 10 years. As "pot cleaners." current and former VC and PVC work the men climbed into tanks measuring ers, investigators by fuly had raised the about 6 feet across and 10 feet high to proven number of deaths from VC- chip polymer residue off the inside sur induccd angiosarcoma to 20: 5 deaths at faces. Their only source of fresh air was the Goodrich Chemical plant in Louis a 2-foot opening at the veryof the ville; 3 at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Com deep tanks. The residue ofteircootaincd pany in Niagara Falls. New York; 2 at pockets of vinyl-chloride gas.'^snl when Union Carbide Corporation in South it was chipped the gas was reteased-- Charleston. West Virginia: and 1 at Fire oftentimes in the workman's face. Today, stone Tire & Rubber Company in Potts- this cleaning practice is largely out town, Pennsylvania, In Europe, there moded: when workers must enter the were 9 reported deaths. Ali were men tanks, it is recommended they wear air- who had long-term exposure--from 12 to supplied respirators and special protec 27 years--to extremely high concentra tive clothing. tions of vinyl chloride. For Gettclfinger. the father of six chil Still, other cases were turning up and dren, including a son who also works at they were even more disquieting. One the plant, confirmation that the deaths of involved a machinist who for 30 years his co-workers had, indeed, resulted processed plastic insulation materials in from long occupational exposure to a General Electric Company plant. A vinyl-chloride gas came the hard way. company spokesman said the polymer Dr. Creech had screened ail 275 VC pro the man worked with was "quite prob duction workers, and then on the last day ably PVC." Although the death has not of February told Gettclfinger that he was been linked with absolute certainty to carrying the bomb.---------- "" VC, it raises the possibility that the sev The surgeon also found another work eral hundred thousand American men er in the early stages of angiosarcoma, and women who form plastic goods from the disease which, up to now, has proven PVC might be exposed to dangerous gas fatal. Ho further discovered two addi concentrations "leached" during heat tional and previously unreported deaths, processing of their products. The Bcndix and in all cases the men had been pot Corporation Launch Support Division of cleaners. Thai brought the total number Cocua Beach, Florida, currently is con of victims of the "rare" cancer in this ducting a government-financed survey lo single, lightly manned plant to seven. ascertain the danger, if any, in process After the first report of Dr. Creech's ing products containing PVC, Prelimi findings, one of the most urgent medical nary information will be available in inquiries in history began. Government four or five months. and private health investigators in the Another cluster of cases which proved United States and Europe started looking alarming centered in upstate New York. into the circumstances of VC and PVC These were three angiosarcoma deaths production. The investigating groups in apparently having no connection with oc this country include: cupational exposure to VC. All of the the Occupational Safety and victims were women who lived in the Health Administration (OSHA) of Buffalo-Niagara Falls area. Investigators the Department of Labor; may never be sure why these women the National Institute for Occupa died, but the extraordinary coincidence tional Safely and Health (NIOSH): of three such "rare cancer" deaths occur the Environmental ProMBtJon ring in the same small area strongly sug Agency (EPA); gests that they died simply from breath the Center for Disease C&Utrol - ing Ihe local air--air poisoned by VC (CDC); gas escaping from a Goodyear factory. the National Institutes of Health Kathryn Finn was one of the victims. (NIH); She lived virtually all her life in a small the American Cancer Society frame house four blocks from Ihu Good (ACS); year plant in Niagara Falls. the Environmental Science Labo "When Kathryn and I used lo sit on the ratory, Mount Sinai School of Medi screen porch in the evenings," her cine, Now York. widower remembers, "it was hard to tell The dangers Irom vinyl-chloride gas, as interpreted by artist Dob Haydock, are depicted graphically on pages 17 and 18 what we were breathing. We've got so many odors from so many factories around Niagara Falls." According to the Environmental Pro tection Agency, about 300 million pounds of vinyl-chloride gas--out of a total of 5-lo-C billion pounds produced each year--escape into our atmosphere. But the EPA is working to establish stricter air quality and emission stan dards for the industry. By October, the Department of Labor expects to set new plant exposure levels for those who work with the gas and its resin. Still, there arc those who say we have only begun to see the results of this chemical killer. "The industry is a rclatjyely young one and the effects of toxic exposures are only beginning to appear," says Ir ving Sclikoff, M.D.. director of the Mount Sinai Environmental Science Laboratory. "Most of our experience is ahead of us." Medical scientists, such as Dr. Scli koff. generally are reluctant to speculate on the future. Nonetheless. Dr. Sclikoff and others have urgently asked for strict controls governing the escape of the gas and the exposure levels in the industry. "We have learned from other indiitrial carcinogens [cancer-causing agent*] such as beryllium and asbestos that t& hazard might not stop at the factory gate, that it might invade the workers' homes and the neighborhoods near the plants," explains Dr. Sclikoff. There are unfortunate parallels be tween the responses to the vinyl-chloride threat and a previous disclosure that as bestos was a carcinogen. For instance, several years ago when the asbestos dan ger was revealed, environmental health experts urged immediate steps to reduce exposure to asbestos fibers to as close to zero as possible. The labor unions also sounded Ihe alarm, worrying over the health of their members. Meanwhile, in dustries that depended upon asbestos production argued against the imposition of stricter standards: and Ihe federal gov ernment waited more than a year--until June 7. 1972-- to set even an emergency exposure limit of five fibers per milli liter (fibers longer than five microns), which labor complained was more than twice as high as it should have been. A permanent standard of two fibers per milliliter is scheduled lo take effect in 1970. Last April, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Co lumbia ordered the secretary of labor to review the standard, recommending lhal whore feasible the two fibers per milli liter limit be implemented before 1976. [Continued on page 70] TODAY'S HEALTH/SEPTEMBER 1974 19 -~ BOR 007070 Vinyl Chloride [Continued trow page 19] Following the vinyl-chloride pro nouncement, a similar pattern began to emerge; however, the government did set an emergency exposure level of 50 parts per million (ppm) for VC and PVC work ers three months after Dr. Creech's re port. Within weeks of Dr. Creech's an nouncement. however, an Italian re searcher, Cesarc Maltoni, M.D., made it public in the United States that VC caused cancer in rats at levels of 50 ppm. Previously, Dr. Maltoni had demonstrat ed rats and mice contracted angiosar coma after exposure to VC at concentra tions of 250 ppm. The reaction of Joseph Wagoner, Sc.D., director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Di vision of Field Studies and Clinical In vestigations. in Cincinnati, Ohio, was typical of the medical investigators inter viewed by Today's Health. Dr. Wag oner. who headed the agency's search for victims of VC-induced cancer and other diseases, and his colleagap at NIOSH already had urged the laMF department to reduce its VC cmerjfcey standard permanently to "no detectable level." "People who are knowledgeable about carcinogens can make no other recom mendation," he said. Although the labor department moved with more speed than it had concerning safe levels of asbestos, it wasn't enthusi astic about this NIOSH recommenda tion. Instead, it called public hearings in Washington last summer. Scheduled for one week, these hearings ran longer than three weeks, as (12 organizations sunt 150 business, labor, government, and medi cal spokesmen to the stand. Speaking for most of the industry, An ton Vittonc, president of B.F. Goodrich Chemical Company (the division of Goodrich that makes PVC) said: "The proposed permanent standard [of no de tectable level of VC) is not technologi cally feasible and. if adopted, would shut down the industry." He was not referring merely to the VC-PVC industry, but to the entire spectrum of the plastics busi ness. raising the threat of a shutdown that would touch many of the world's nonplastic products. Speaking for organized labor. Peter Bommarito. president of the United Rub ber. Cork, Linoleum and Plastic Workers of America, threatened an industry shut down if the proposed permanent stan dard of no detectable level is not adopt ed: "This country survived for nearly 200 years without polyvinyl chloride, and we can survive in the future without it." Both government and private medical experts who testified at the public hear ings generally supported organized labor's stand in favor of no detectable level of vinyl chloride. It seems likely, however, that the Department of Labor will decide upon a standard that is some where in-between the emergency 50 ppm and the no detectable levels and de lay its enforcement for several years, al lowing industry time to install equipment that will bring exposures down to around 10 ppm. That is the level which Vittonc says is the best the VC-PVC industry can accomplish with current technology. One leading company in the industry, however, already has bettered that level. V. K. Rowe. M.D.. chief medical officer of Dow Chemical Company, told a New York Academy of Sciences meeting last May that his company has brought expo sure levels down to as low as l-to-5 ppm. With few exceptions, the 27 compa nies producing VC and/or PVC in the United States have been slow to respond to the threat that their manufacturing processes pose for their workers. "To call them sluggish would be about the most charitable thing 1 could say," says Poler ]. Nord, Ph D., an industrial hygienist with the Amalgamated Cloth ing Workers of America, Perhaps the most vexing question raised by Dr. Nord and others is why in dustry and government waited until Dr. Creech's discovery before acting to con trol worker exposure to vinyl chloride. Testifying in Washington, Herman F. Kraybill. Ph.D., a biochemist and toxicol ogist from the National Cancer Institute, said both scientists and manufacturers of vinyl chloride have long known that the gas is a hazardous chemical. Moreover, the gas has been making workers sick ever since it went into commercial pro duction, in 1938. Tom Gcttelfinger. 20. says the men at his plant often talked of fainting or vomiting after exposure to vi nyl chloride. And medical investigators have known for some time that fibrosis of the spleen, lungs, and liver, is charac teristic of problems found among VC workers. To the credit of the companies, they did try to hold exposure levels down to between 250 and 500 ppm in recent years. But at the Washington hearings, a spokesman for VC and PVC producers testified that men at the various VC plants were routinely exposed to concen trations as high as 4.000 ppm when they were cleaning the tanks or because of leaks. Equally damning to the indust ijr is the progression of clear warnings list pre ceded Dr. Creech's discovery, Louis ville. of the angiosarcoma victiitir The first serious health alert concerning vinyl chloride came in 194B, when Russian re searchers reported finding nonmalignant liver damage in 15 of 48 VC workers. The first suggestion that VC also might cause cancer came in 1970, almost four years before the discovery at the Good rich plant. Publio L. Viola, M.D.. of the University of Rome, produced tumors in the bones, skin, and lungs of rats by ex posing them for prolonged periods to 30,000 ppm of the gas. In 1971, Dr. Maltoni. from the Bologna Cancer Insti tute, confirmed Viola's findings and be gan to test animals at lower concentra tions of the gas. According to a respected senior medi cal investigator, who asked not to be identified, the European sponsors of Dr. Maltoni's research sent a confidential letter to the American Manufacturing Chemists Association (MCA) in August 1972. (At the time, MCA represented most VC and PVC producers in the United States.) The investigator says the letter disclosed for the first time that Dr. Maltoni had produced angiosarcoma in the livers of rats by exposure to vinyl chloride. A few months later, a delega tion of American industry experts visited Dr. Maltoni's laboratory. The authoritative trade journal, Chemical and Engineering News, has 70 .TODAYS HEALTH/SEPTEMBER 1974 BOR 007071 reported that on January 30.1973. the ex perts made a "brief oral progress report" on Maltoni's work to an MCAQnceling. The industry responded by tijlriing its own animal research program^conducted at Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories, Inc., in Northbrook, Illinois. Although the study, which lasted slightly more than a year, revealed that exposures of 50 ppm could cause angiosarcoma in mice, the industry apparently did nolh- ing to alert the agencies responsible for occupational and environmental health. "NIOSH learned only after the three deaths from angiosarcoma were reported in January 1974," says Marcus M. Key, M.D.. assistant U.S. surgeon general and director of the National Institute for Oc cupational Safety and Health. Thus, for more than a year, there was extremely strong evidence suggesting that vinyl chloride not only was more dangerous than previously believed, but was carcinogenic. Perhaps the industry leaders were-unconvinced. If so. then another industry move almost a year be fore Dr. Creech's discovery is inconsis tent with the reluctance to accept--and act upon--the Maltoni findings. "In March 1973. the industry suddenly stopped supplying cosmetic aerosol firms with vinyl chloride," says Dr. Wagoner, of NIOSH. "Why did they do that unless they suspected something wrong?" Looking for scapegoats and rehashing the past is a pointless excercisc, of course. "At this stage, it's hard to blame anyone for what happened to Kathryn." says Thomas Finn. "1 guess during all those years nobody know how dangerous the stuff was. But I'd like to sec them gel to the bottom of it now so things like this won't happen to other people." In Louisville. Raymond Gettelfinger was asked if he was bitter about his condition."A little bit," he said; "any man would be. But I don't hold it against Goodrich. It's nobody's fault." Gettelfinger and the other living vic tim in Louisville arc receiving chemo therapy in an attempt to arrest their can cers. Both have responded well to treat ment, according to a Goodrich spokes man, and because the disease was found early, there is hope they may become the first victims to survive angiosarcoma. "We have a lot of hope." says Gcltel- fingcr's son. but regardless of his father's fate, young Tom Geltolfinger has no in tention of changing jobs. "1 don't think* there is near the danger lhat there was when my Dad started in the 50s. IPs a good job with good benefits. But I'd feel better if they brought the exposure down--to zero, if possible." {3 f BOR 007072 r