Document 8VQvXbB6okN95Ona3Kd1gnxvB

FILE NAME Newspaper & Magazine Articles NMA DATE 1974 Sept 22 DOC NMA089 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION Newspaper Article - The Viking Press Expendable Americans SYEW LIES Pg 35Z8 OPE Clare Clarensn fuse sep 24 1919 Quan Historical Newspapers to New York Jims 101 - 2972 A little bit of crud Expendable Americans By Paul Brodeur 274 pp New York The Viking Press 8.95 Muscle And Blood By Rachel Scott Illustrated 306 pp New York E. P. Dutton & Co. 8.95 : By ROBERT CONOT .. think we are all willing to have a ' little bit of crud in our lungs and a full stomach rather than a whole lot of clean air and nothing to eat the Texas legislator from Tyler says in a newspaper interview quoted in the epilogue of Expendable Americans And I don't want a bunch of environ- mentalists and communists telling me what's good for my life and family The little bit of crudis asbestos fl- ber a severely scarring and highly carcinogenous agent Of approximately 875 workers exposed at the Tyler asbestos plant of P.P.G. Industries 260 are statistically expected to devel^,p cancer during the next 20 or 30 years and many others will be incapac~-- tated by asbestiosis drastic - reduc- tion in lung capacity Once asbestos fibers are inhaled or ingested they remain in the body For decades it has been known that even secondary contact with asbestos over a period of years could cause cancer Relatives of workers have become | diseased simply by being exposed to the dust workers brought home on their clothes Years ago a New Jersey engineer who had developed an asbestos pipe covering died from mesothelloma a previously rare type of cancer now associated with asbestos His daughter also died from mesothelioma her only exposure had been to occasional samples of asbestos brought home by her father In Tyler the seeds of cancer have been strewn far beyond the pod of the plant Although P.P.G Industries dis- mantled the factory in 1972 other workers in the industrial park in which it was located had been exposed for years Waste material was trucked to huge open dumps A half million bur- tap bags impregnated with asbestos dust were sold to a nursery which used them for packaging plants Robert Conot is author of American Odyssey a history of Detroit and America Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner Further without The magnitude of the disaster result- ten times those of the general popula- Well then the manager went on your lungs ing from the little bit of crud won't tlon you've be fully established in Tyler until the In Idaho's Sunshine silver mine 91 year 2000. In the meantime workers died because the evacuation order also got calcium deposits on You must be drinking too Management abetted this attitude by physicians studstiudies estudsies and communities elsewhere in the was delayed a half hour after smoke tion continue to be subjected to the began billowing through the passage- are financed by industry and by take hazards of asbestos ways foreman was willing to washy Federal and state en- The Reserve Mining Company keeps responsibility for halting production in forcement of labor laws Thousands of dumping large amounts ofwaste case the fire could be extinguished At men have died while members of the and the medical industrial taining asbestos in Lake Superior Thiokol Chemical Corporation in re- Brodeur contaminating the water supply of Georgia slipshod safety regulations complex as calls it have pigeonholed and interpetaions on than 100,000 more people living in the sulted in a devastating explosion that placed slanted interpretations their Duluth area even while it is appealing killed 29 workers and maimed many simply not analyzed collected data they government the a desist order in courts In Ambler others In the California fields farm Many officials are Pa a block asbestos dump workers labor among hazardous pesti protective of industry Studies fl- snakes throught the heart of town and cides = nanced by public funds are tucked is used by kids as a playground Miss Scott spent more than three away and are difficult to obtain de- years Johns Manville Company years on the industrial combat spite the Freedom of InformatiAocnt At the current rate of funding a Feder- al health and safety inspector would visit each business on the average of about once ever5y0 years Neither author suggests what might be done to get industry to clean its own house except to have stricter and expanded implementation of current laws But the enormous expansion of the Federal bureaucracy this would entail is certainly not the answer Industry has been lackadaisical about safety and health because it has not been held responsible for its own shortcomings worker cannot su~ his employer The 15,000 workers who are killed on the job or the 100,000 who die from occupational diseases annually have no redress against their companies Neither do the estimated 390,000 men who are disabled each year and who must then support their families on the 3,000 to 4,000 a year they receive from workmen's compensation and welfare new laws were enacted giving exposure though even fifths caps Will UKAR OF workers killed or disabled on the job the areas in its factories already meet assembly lines Her journeys benefits equivalent to their lifetime wages it those standards The explanation the homes of disabled workers are industry would find essential is cording to a labor union official trips of depression and despair to take corrective measures Managers that other firms using raw asbestos Both authors are angry and their would of course claim not afford such cleanupthey coSuolcdiety in and asbestos products supplied by sympathies are clearly with the work undoubtedly however result today being prices Manville might have difficuletrysManagemewniltl criti so huge terms lost Society meeting the standards anbde forced to cize the books as unbalanced And switch to substitutes or go out of they are bill in of and deprived families a manpower business mines and construction so far as the safety of the public is Americans proFjaeccttosries of and While in Expendable are places hazard concerned it is clear that stringent moni- Brodeur concentrates on asbestos Ra certain number of accidents are inevi- measures are needed to test and for table chel Scott a year reporter But what is galling to any fair tor the tens of thousands of industrial The Baltimore Sun explores the whole minded person is the hypocrisy dis- chemicals that have come into use It coin- industry spectrum of industrial industrial hazards and played by industry in recognizing the seems too much to ascribe to coinindustry that occupational diseases diseases in " Muscle and dangers its dragging in in taking cidence the cancer rate has risen corrective measures and its ofttsimteesepstleeyply duringduring the samane decades in-in Blood Blood treatment of employes as drones which that there has beenbeen an immense in- In Hazleton a town in the depressed can be discarded after their crease usefulness in the discovery and application mining area of eastern Pennsylva- is over of these chemicals nia the Brodeur Scott broken im- portantground us hope broken books caused nia beryllium has the same When the rays of one the work- Let kind of havoc as asbestos in Tyler at the Tyler plant showed a spot on will stimulate Americans to demand In ers the steel mills the mostly black coke lung the manager called him in and that scientists and government offi- a The cials oven workers continually exposed to told him he'd better stop smoking go on and dig even deeper into ; coal tars have cancer rates three to worker replied that he'd never smoked hazards and abuses my Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner Further reproduction prohibited without permission