Document BRQo60RnON6YMVOaKkoN4djym

FILE NAME Newspaper & Magazine Articles NMA DATE 1974 Sept 22 DOC NMA089 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION Newspaper Article - The Viking Press Expendable Americans ProQuest Historical The New York Lines Pg 358 Current uesep 12 1914 Newspapers The New York Times 1851 - 2002 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 crud is asbestos fi- 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 develop 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 mesothelioma 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 dismantled 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 burlap 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 prohibited 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 tion you've also got calcium deposits on be fully established in Tyler until the In Idaho's Sunshine silver mine 91 You must be drinking too . year 2000. In the meantime workers men died because the evacuation order this attitude by physicians whose studies and communities elsewhere in the was delayed a half hour after smoke the tion continue to be subjected to the began billowing through passage- financed by industry and by hazards of asbestos ways foreman was willing to take 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 that placedthselyanctoeldleincterpettaiones d interpetaions interpretations their data taining asbestos in Lake Superior and the Thiokol Chemical Corporation in medical industrial complex as contaminating the water supply of Georgia slipshod safety regulations re Brodeur calls it have pigeonholed and on more than 100,000 people living in the sulted in a devastating explosion Duluth area even while it is appealing killed 29 workers and maimed many simply not analyzed government a desist order in the 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 fi- snakes throught the heart of town is used by kids as a playground The Manville Company and cides ~- Miss Scott years years on the spent spent more than industrial combat nanced by public funds are tucked three away and are difficult to obtain despite the Freedom of InformatiAocnt At the current rate of funding a Feder- al health and safety inspector would 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 en- tail is certainly not the answer Indus- try 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 If new laws were enacted giving even exposure though ears with clangor.nl workers killed or disabled on the job the areas in its factories already meet assembly lines Her journeys benefits equivalent to their lifetime those standards The explanation ac- the homes of disabled workers are wages industry would find it 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 they could and asbestos products supplied by sympathies are clearly with the work afford such cleanup Society Society ers will in Manville might have difficulty Management undoubtedly criti however result hteirmgsher tendered a be forced cize would meeting the standards and the books as unbalanced And so huge bill in of switch to substitutes or go out of they are and deprived families prices lost manpower business Factories mines and construction So far as the safety of the public is Americans projects of and While in Expendable are places accidents moni- Brodeur concentrates on asbestos Ra certain number of hazard a concerned it is clear that stringent are inevi- measures are needed to test and any chel Scott a year reporter for table But what is galling to fair tor the tens of thousands of industrial The Baltimore Sun explores the minded person is the hypocrisy chemicals that have come into use It has spectrum of industrial hazards played by industry in recognizing the seems too much to ascribe coin- dangers occupational diseases in Muscle and its dragging in taking cidence that the cancer rate has risen corrective measures same decades " and its ofttimes during the in treatment of employes as drones that Blood a crease there discovery and applicatioanpplication In HaHzazleltoneton towntown inin thethe depdepreserd essed can be discarded after their usefulness and a mining area of eastern Pennsylva is over of these chemicals nia the Brodeur Scott work- portantground hope their books and have nia beryllium has caused the same When the rays of one the work- Let us kind of havoc as asbestos in Tyler In mills ers at the Tyler plant showed a spot on will stimulatestimulate Americans Americans broken im- to demand the steel mills the mostly black cokea lung the manager called him in and that scientists and government offi- The cials oven workers continually exposed 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 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner Further reproduction prohibited without permission