Document G6Dr51K0K51QnVrx4kq2bexRm

LJ by Ralph L. Harding, Jr. This material has been reproducer! .viiu. rsrrn:c3ion of the copyright owner, further rcprodjciic-r .s prohibited. In early 1974 B. F, Goodrich an nounced publicly that it suspected vinyl chloride of having contributed to the deaths of three workers at its Louisville plant from angiosarcoma, a rare type of liver cancer, industrial health specialists around the world im mediately rushed to their libraries to scour the scientific literature for past articles on the health effects of vinyl chloride inhalation. They found little to indicate a problem. There was a 1949 study of 73 workers in a Russian plastics iabricat- L~.__ i 'jv ./ '1. \ .J - ---11 r -m ' Sttir i ~i*' 11 . Jiv' Would it svrorisii you to learn that all hie answers you thought you'd never find are already within your consciousness? 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Polyvinyl chloride was not pro duced there, but PVC was plasticized with, among other chemicals, poly chlorinated biphenyls. There were additional animal experiments per formed from the mid-fifties onward, notably at Dow Chemical in 1961. In retrospect it is agreed by govern ment, industry, and the medical pro fession that, knowing what we do to day about vinyl chloride, we should have paid more attention to the rela tively scanty and incomplete informa tion available 15 or so years ago. That we did not do so is indeed a tragedy, and the temptation to irrationally as sess blame for this failure has proven too strong for some critics of the in dustrial health system in this country. As would be expected, ihe vinyl chlo ride industry itself has been the prime target of this criticism, which has ex tended to speculation that the indus try had previous knowledge of the haz ards of VC and that it purposely with held this information from govern ment officials, its employees, and the general public. This is quite curious, in light of the fact that, as the record clearly demon strates, the majority of the medical re search on VC conducted to date {and essentially all of it conducted before 1974) was industry sponsored, that it was a member of the industry who made the first tenuous connection be tween VC exposure and angiosarcoma in humans, and that this information was announced publicly. In tact, were it not for the actions taken by industry from 1970 onward, we might still to day know next to nothing about the Ralph L. Harding, Jr. is president of the Society oj the Plastics Industry, Inc. health effects of VC inhalation. Let us take a brief look at the rec ord. In 1966 a reversible disease of the bones of the fingers called acroosteolysis was discovered among some heavily exposed PVC reactor cleaners. Prompt industrial hygiene efforts by the PVC industry quickly eliminated this problem. However, it was felt that ad ditional research into the cause of this disease was needed. Accordingly, Dr. P.L. Viola began a series of VC inhala tion experiments, employing exoosure levels as high as 30,000 ppm. Dr. Viola produced cancers of the skin. lung, and bones in the test animals. Hifindings were reported publicly at die Tenth international Cancer Congress in Houston in 1970 and were published in a leading medical journal in 197}. While some scientific critics questioned the purity of the vinyl chloride used in the experiments and the unrealisticaiiv high levels of exposure employed, -his was. nonetheless, the first time ihai VC exposure had been linked with cancer. Then what happened? The federal government did nothing. Or ganized labor did nothing. The socalled "independent" scientific com munity did nothing. The news media completely ignored the story. The only group that took action was the industry. Acting independently, both the European manufacturers o: VC and PVC resin and their American counterparts (acting through the Man ufacturing Chemists Association) be gan planning sophisticated animal in halation research projects and epi demiological studies of workers uio had been exposed. In the United States, both research projects--the animal work at Bio- Test Laboratories and the workers siudv ut Tabershaw-Cooper and Associates-- were announced publicly. A condition of the research was that the results. 34 New Enirnrur--November l9o 4. 'whatever they might show, would also *H- mad:- public. The press ignored the story. In April 1972 the MCA revised its Data Sheet on vinyl chloride to state: "Recent research studies reported from Italy indicate that repeated, long term, high-level exposures of rats to vinyl chloride monomer vapor can re sult in the development of malignant tumors." For an industry supposedly seeking to suppress such information, the American PVC industry was cer tainly acting in a strange fashion. In January 1973 a technical delega tion from the U.S. PVC industry learned that animal studies being con ducted in Europe by Dr. Cesare Maltoni had detected a variety of tu mors in test animals subjected to con centrations as low as 250 ppm. At that time, no American studies had yet been launched, and the information obtained from the Europeans helped the U.S. industry in the design of its research efforts. Dr. Maltoni, in a public meeting in April 1973 in Italy, revealed some of his preliminary results. Members of the U.S. government were present at the meeting. The American industry felt it im portant that what limited information existed should be called to the atten tion of the National Institute of Occu pational Safety and Health. Accord ingly, after obtaining the concurrence of the European sponsors of the work, a meeting with representatives of NIOSH was requested and held in July 1973. There are disagreements over the precise information relayed at this meeting; however, the fact remains that the industry asked for the meeting because it felt an obligation to keep the government informed. Angiosar coma of the liver was apparently not discussed specifically St the July meet ing. However, it was mentioned among other types of cancer by Dr. Maltoni in April, though it had not yet been dis covered in human VC workers. NIOSH showed interest in the studies going on and requested that the industry keep it informed as the research progressed. The rest of the story is well-known. Six months later an astute doctor at B.F. Goodrich identified three cases of angiosarcoma among PVC reactor cleaners. The public announcement of this finding brought a variety of gov ernment agencies immediately into the case. Dr. Maltoni's research now be came of prime importance, as did the industry-sponsored animal work at Bio-Test Laboratories, which eventu ally confirmed Dr. Maltoni's findings. If the media felt that the industry was trying to hide what was going on, it was only because the media itself ig nored, first. Dr. Viola's reports, and, second, the announcement of the American research efforts. It might also appear in hindsight that both the industry and government failed to ap preciate the significance of Viola's and Maltoni's preliminary findings, and that the research efforts were underta ken at a somewhat leisurely pace. It cannot be emphasized too strongly, however, that at the time there was no established link between exposure to VC and cancer in humans. The epi demiological research was undertaken to determine if such a link existed, but events proceeded faster than the re search. It is high time that the fallacious is sue of what the industry knew and when, and who it told, should be laid to rest forever. The essential question, and the only one worthy of the nation's attention, is whether any segment of the American public is currently in danger from exposufe to excessive amounts of VC. It is our firm convic tion. based on all the available evi dence, that the threat to the American people, whatever it might have been in the past, has been eliminated. We fur ther believe that additional research will prove conclusively that neither PVC-fabricating employees nor people living in the vicinity of VC processing plants are or have been in danger from vinyl chloride exposure. Over a period of less than 20 months, plant exposure levels have been reduced a hundredfold or more, and the same is largely true of emis sions into the environment. New and better PVC packaging resins have been developed, thus essentially elimi nating the possibility of monomer mi gration into food. This effort has or will eventually cost the industry--and indirectly the nation--hundreds of millions of dollars and the expenditure of many thousands of man-hours of work by trained professionals in a score of different fields. Never before in occupational health history has an industry labored so ar duously, rapidly, and successfully to eliminate a recognized hazard. This is the record on which we feel we deserve to be judged. t I ?