Document KNjL6JYKv67qNg0q67O0bvz6

S11238 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE June 30, 1076 government In Puerto Rico this weekend, we would like you to have the following thoughts on our present economic situation and our objectives for the future. Coordination of economic policy among the major Industrial countries Is of the ut most importance in sustaining a healthy recovery of the world economy, nnd wo com mend you for initiating the upcoming con sultations. However, we are disturbed by the tone of some statements by Administration officials regarding tho problems to be dis cussed at this meeting. We arc also, dis turbed by Rome parts of the communique! Issued on June 22 at the conclusion of thej OECD ministerial meeting, / These statements leavo the impression thaq, tho world economy is on the brink of an ex cessively rapid expansion which would bring With It serious inflationary consequences and that policy must be directed toward slowing the progress of recovery. Tho OECD com munique suggests 5 percent "or somewhat more" as an appropriate target for the av erage annual growth of real output in the OECD area from 1976 through 1980. explicit ly recognizing that this implies a continua tion of high levels of unemployment throughout this period. Wo recognize that this target is not neccs6arily Intended to apply to the perform ance of Individual countries within the OECD. Nonetheless, the Impression may have arisen that this is regarded by Administra tion officials as an appropriate growth target for the United States. Hence, wo would like to call your attention projections by the Congressional Budget Office indicating that a 5 percent growth path In the United Slates from 197G through 1980 would imply an unemployment rate of about 0.3 percent in 1980. Certainly there is no political consensus in this country that such a performance would be satisfactory. Indeed, we believe the overwhelming ma jority of people in this country would agree with us that such a prospect is highly un satisfactory. We remind you that your own budget, submitted to the Congress last Jan uary, assumed for planning purposes an average real GNP growth rate of 0.2 percent through 1980- In contrast to most other countries, eco nomic policy-making in the United States is the Joint responsibility of the Congress and the Executive Branch. To date there has been no agreement between these separate branches of our government as to appropri ate growth targets through 1980. It would be most unfortunate if leaders of other countries were to obtain the impression that a consensus exists in this country to the effect that high -unemployment through 1980 is a necessary price for controlling in flation. Any such contention is highly con troversial, and we trust you will do your beet to make this clear to those with whom you will be meeting next week. We do not question the importance of further reducing Inflation. Nor do we ques tion that this urgent problem must be attacked in coordination with other major countries. We do dispute the apparent conVlotlou that prolonged acceptance of high levels of unemployment is ihc only available method of dealing with inflation. In fact, we question whether It is even likely to be nn clfectivc method. Wo respectfully suggest that one of the most useful topics that could bo discussed at your upcoming meeting would be alternative approaches to dealing with inflation--approaches which do not in-' voive loss of Jobs and output. We have In mind such things as incomes policies, pol icies to overcome frictions and inefficiencies in labor markets, and policies designed to Insure steady and adequate supplies of food stuffs, raw materials, and finished goods. Surely such policies offer better hope for the futuro than docs a passive acceptance of continued high unemployment. Again, wc commend you for the efforts you ore undertaking to achieve meaningful in ternational discussion of these crucial eco nomic issues. You have our hopes and best wishes for a highly successful meeting. Sincerely, Huowrr H. Humphrey* Chairman; Richard Bolling, Vice Chairman; John Sparkman; Henry S. Reuss; William PjtoXMinE; William S. Moor head; Abraham Ribicoff; Lee H. Hamilton; Edward .. M. Kennedy; Gilus W. Long; Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr.: and Otis G. Puce. =5k^------------ TOXIC SUBSTANCES CONTROL. ACT Mr. TUNNEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an outstanding series of ar ticles done by the Los Angeles Times on occupational health hazards. The articles are the result of an intensive 3-month examination by the Los Angeles Times Washington staff of the Nation's occu pational health crisis. I commend the Los Angeles Times for devoting such a significant amount of space to such an important but little dis cussed subject. As the author of the Toxic Substances Control Act which passed the Senate in March of this year, I am pleased to see the attention given to the daily dangers faced by workers on the job. These ar ticles all too clearly illustrate the need for rapid passage of the Toxic Substances Control Act by the House so we can be gin to protect workers and the public from a major health hazard--toxic sub stances. There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows; {From the Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1976] Occupational Health Hazards--A National Crisis (By Richard T. Cooper and Paul E. Steiger) Washington.--In bygone days, coal miners took caged canaries underground with them because the tiny birds were far more sensitive than men to the deadly, invisible "white damp," carbon monoxide gas. By col lapsing--and sometimes dying--the canaries warned of a danger that would otherwise have crept up undetected. Today, in factories and mills, and even In beauty parlors, dentists' offices and auto re pair shops, hundreds of thousands of Ameri can workers have themselves become canar ies--for their fellow-workers and for society as a whole. By falling sick and often dying, they are signaling the fact that a major crisis has struck the nation as stealthily as poison gas in a coal mine. The source of the danger is a little under stood but rapidly growing array of occupa tional health hazards, many of them toxic chemicals routinely used by industry, that kill an estimated 100.000 workers every year, cause at least 390.000 new cases of Job-reinted disease annually and pose an Increasing threat to the entire spectrum of U.S. society and the environment. As documented In a tbicc-month inves tigation by a team of Times reporters, the occupational health crisis and its implica tions for the larger society are only dimly perceived by the public, yet specialists regard them as perhaps the most serious medical challenge facing the United States in the remainder of tills century. And the battle to don! with the problem is in Jeopardy because of bureaucratic red tape, public apathy, po litical sniping and claims that reform would be too costly. At the Occupational Safety and Health Ad ministration and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the two fed eral agencies most directly responsible for dealing with the problem, officials are strug gling with inadequate budgets, scattered and 111-oqulppcd stairs and lack of expertise, Labor leaders have lobbied for a larger com mitment, and there has been significant re sponse among some business executives. But overall the problem Ls growing faster than are thb efforts to contain It. Occupational health hazards have existed from earliest times, of course. One of tho cruel Ironies of the present situation is that toxic substances identified more than 100 years ago tU inflict widespread disability and death. What has caused the problem to mushroom In the last three decades, however, is the technological explosion of new chemi cals. new industrial processes and new products. This flowering of technology, responsible lor much that is good and desirable in mod ern 11/e. unfortunately has sent a deluge of carcinogens, systemic poisons, lung-destroy ing dusts, brain-damaging metals and other hazardous substances cascading down upon the nation's workers in unprecedented vol ume ond variety. Clearly, one reason for the apparent public indifference to Job-related health problems ls that many of the worst ones, lung cancer and heart disease, for example, normally take 15 to 20 years to develop and often have not been associated with the work place. More Immediate problems tend to be per ceived as isolated incidents--50 or so workers afflicted by Kepone pesticide poisoning in Hopewell, Va., a dozen or so poisoned by lead at a Visalia auto battery plant. The problem is pervasive, not scattered, however. And, if workers, like the miners' canaries, are the first to exhibit Its symp toms because they are exposed to the haz ards first and most intensively, the toxic sub stances originating in the nation's mills and factories are showing Insidious capacity- to seep out Into the community at large. Says Joseph K. Wagoner, director of field studies and clinical investigations for the in stitute, "Tho tendency to separate health hazards found In the work place from gen eral environmental problems is a deadly di vision. This Is a continuum, not isolated events." And, Wagoner says of the govern ment's effort to cope, "Tho problem is so vast that we have been reacting in a crisis environment for the past two or three years." For a glimpse of the problem's scope, con sider the following: As many as 9071- of all cancer cases arc believed to be environmentally induced, ac cording to an analysis by tho National Cancer Institute. Of these, scientists estimate, at least 10% resulted 111 about 30,000 deaths n year, stemming chiefly from occupational carcinogens. In fully half of all cancer deaths, occupational factors arc believed to have con tributed to the disease. Heart disease is the greatest single killer of Americans. It ls conservatively estimated that 6% of such deaths, or 37.000 a year, result from occupational causes. In a general health study of 008 persons performed by tho University of Washington. 31'.; of all the diseases and other "medical conditions" found were Judged to he occu pational hi origin. In an additional 10'; of the problems. Job-related factors ap peared to have played some role. Significantly, however, only 21"; or 3'. /-I all the medical conditions had been reported by employers, a fact suggesting that avail able data vastly understate the extent of Job* related health problems. Evidence from tv number of fields indicates that white-collar, professional and service workers are often In as much danger as em ployes in steel mills, chemical pants and other forms of heavy industry. Dentists' chronic exposure to X rays, mcr- 223575004. , me . J, 197G CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE S11239 ary and Anesthetics contributes to their normally hlh rates of leukemia, Hodgkin's iscoae anti suicide. Female operating room or6" ''el, with similar exposures, have mi st large numbers of miscarriages and ab. .vith congenital birth defects. Bcautlians aro extraordinarily susceptible to car- loc problems, lung cancer and respiratory iseoses generally. Chemicals and other substances and equip ment used In the work place are not the only angers. Tho unique stresses, life-styles and atterns associated with particular occtipa- ions also can be /actors. For instance, statis- lcs reveal that office administrators are more kely to auner coronary heart disease than .iany other types of white-collar workers, uch as scientists and engineers. As with ther hazards, the causes and cures for these ccupatioual health problems ate lmpcrfccly understood. --An estimated 500,000 living workers have >een significantly exposed to asbestos. Of hese, 100,000 are expected to die from lung anccr, 35,000 more from a rare cancer of the mlng of the lungs and stomach called me* othelioma, and another 35,000 will die from sbestosis, also an afillctlon cf the lungs. Recently, evidence has been found in a tudy. for tho Environmental Protection igency that employes in office buildings con tracted before the 1973 bau.on use of q-jbes- os as a jslni',tura1 fire n,i .>m, m i,,-rrtg mineral. Apparently liic abrso.Vcnatin-: on :;u< i t'iccwvs in such buildings .as begun-io ihu.c away, and microscopic tbers aro being carried to unsuspecting ./orkers through the ventilation systems. It s hot yet known how serious this threat may oe. liealtli hazards are particularly actue In ome Industries and Job classifications. Rub ber workers are 1.7 times as likely to die of tomach cancer as members of the general Dopulation, l.G times as likely to succumb to iy NaUc malignancies, according to a Joint s by tho rubber workers' union and lnd\i_ .y. Workers in steel mill coke ovens aro 7.5 times as likely to die of kidney cancer as workers assigned elsewhere in the same mills end 30 times as likely to die of lung cancer. In three Ohio towns \ylvu;e_the cnrcinoirrn vlnvl -J. ?ii.- PiTTo o r -J nVillv ln- n j.-^idencLM of binn drfocis. uartunilnilv nn>rtpy/ the central nomun >V5tem. among new bom h.ibn-s. and an unexpectedly lnghlevel or minors of the central nervous system in adult men. Studies of two Montana towns, Butte and Anaconda, where copper is mined and smelted, found unusually high rates of lung cancer in both men and women. Experts agree that no accurate measure ments of the overall problem exist. The US. Public Health Service uses indirect statisti cal techniques to form its estimates of the annual toll of Job-rcintcd deaths and dis eases. Owing to insufficient knowledge of the biochemistry Involved, inadequate monitor ing of workers, and the often years-long delay between exposure to a carcinogen and the onset of the disease, these numbers may be Just the tip of the iceberg. The catalogue of hazardous substances, with their sometimes equally dangerous per mutations, combinations and Interactions, seems endless: benzenes, phenols, cadmium, nickel, gold, lend,' asbestos, vlnvl chloride, coke oven gases, creosote, textile lint, A-ray.s, silica, carbon tetrachloride, tar, beryllium, bfschloromethyl ether, rhloromethyl methyl ether, polychlorinated binhonols, pesticides, paraffin, beta nnpthylamlue. . . . Tho government has thus far established Units between about 12.000 substances and Ucularly .serious health problems--a huge er but probably Jm:t a small fraction .no hazards still undetected among the scores of natural elements amt the ooo.ooo chemical compounds now in use by American Industry, which synthesizes about 3,000 new chemicals each year. With virtually no out.sulo control mid scant knowledge of what tho full con.scqucncos may ultimately be, this cornucopta of materials is mixed, modified, boiled, baked, burned, sprayed and vaporized in a rush of technical Ingenuity that never stands still. On an April morning this year, nt an hour when the sun was bright but the air retained a sharp edge, half a dozen employes of a small plastics plant near Slatcrsvilic. R.L, crowded Into an aging Pontiac and drove to the sea- coast town of Groton, Conn. A team of occu pational health specialists from New York was to examine almost 1,000 workers there, and the Rhode Islanders were to be tested as well. Somehow, they arrived several hours be fore the special clinic, set up In the gymna sium of Groton's trim new civic center, was to open. As they waited, the six grumbled about the delay, Joked sardonically about the general malevolence of things and discussed their Jobs. It seemed clear there had been ample reason to invite them. fiorvire Color, ine where they worked, is a small plant that takes raw nineties com pounds. cooks them up with pigments, flame retardants, and fillers, then prr"VfiElg the re sulting material to relicts that are pr>ld_ to. fabrir--. t ors nf r.a--rcrt ul.aP_Hc Dvodm-is. 't urning out about 1 million pounds a lnontTT. Service Color's 18 employes han dled compounds of lend oxide, lead chro mate, mercury-cadmium, lead-cadmium, and toxic, organic dyes. Median! problems had rronno-i un. and several had been hospitalized. There was apprehension mixed with the bravado and dark humor in the six who had come to Gro ton. "Everything ... we handle kills you." one of them laughed. "It says so right on the cartons." As they were unloaded and mixed, the powdery chemicals would fill the air, silting over everything and sometimes turning their skin bright colors, the men said. A photo graph taken about that time by a safety ad ministration inspector showed a worker who had Just crawled out of an enormous vat he had cleaned with an air hose. An Occupa tional Safety nnd Health Administration In spector pointed out that a face mask issued by the company was so oversized that Its bottom hung several inches below the work er's chin, nullifying its effectiveness even If it had not been the wrong type. The man's hair showed white, but his face and arms were a violent orange. "Ventilation?" one of the workers at Gro ton said. "One place we got ventilation-- four window's. And If you breath real hard, you can blow the dust out." During their examinations, the workers were checked for lead poisoning by a ma chine called a licmatofluorometer. which subjects a tiny sample of blood to a powerful quartz light nnd Instantly flashes a lead exposure value on a display screen. Readings up to 50 are considered acccntable. but at GO nnd 70 there is concern. The Service Color workers registered such valu?s as 101, 107 nnd 370, according to technicians. Depending on extent of exposure, lead pohonlng can produce brain damage, res piratory failure, anemia, tremors, paralysis. Kidney problems, loss of teeth, depression, feelings of hostility and chronic unhappi ness. The dangers and conditions In the plant led workers and their union the United Rubber Workers, to protest. A team of safely administration inspectors swooped down. Today, according to plant manager John IJusco, some new duct work, dvi.it collectors, nnd other ventilating cquipmout arc being installed at Service Color. Abo. workers arc being instructed to wash themselves before rating or smoking ami to take other pre cautions of that sort. "Not much 1involved/* Xiusco said. What has the safety administration done? BiUjco lias heard nothing, he says. Some cita tions are said to bo wandering somewhere in tho clogged arteries of this administration bureaucracy, but two months after the in spection nothing has been done. "The Joke is," one Service Color employe had said in Groton, "They give you a good pension but you don't live to collect it." There is a quandary workers often face, nnd Morton Corn, the industrial hygienist who now heads the occupational safety agency, sees it clearly: where health Is con cerned, what seems a fjro.ss hazard may be harmless, and what looks lovely may be lethal. Ho recalls a clean, oir-concllUoncd factory In the South; "people thought it was Uko working in a hotel," yet a chemical unde tectable by human senses poisoned 73 of the 300 employes At the same time, in certain kinds of dehydrating plants, Corn says, "l'vo walked through dust that I left footprints In, but It won't harm anyone. "When the worker takes a Job he thinks. 4Gee, somebody must have thought about this thing. It must be safe. I'm being asked to work here.' He's seen a lot of dust in his life. How is he to know whether this Is the dust that will kill him?" When people are sick, most turn without question to their family doctors, yet the typical family physician knows little about a worker--as employes of Life Science Prod ucts Co. in Hopewell, Va., discovered last year. After only a few( weeks of working in the plant, set up two years ago hi a converted gas station, many began to suffer dizzy spclis. poor vision, tremors. One man later recalled that when he stopped off for a beer after work, friends had to help him hold the glass. Inevitably, workers went to their doctors. Could it be something at the plant, some asked? Probably not, the physicians said. More likely It was overwork or nervousness. Or perhaps too many of those beers on the way home. So, worrying about mortgage pay ments and child support payments and Just getting by, they returned to work. One nmn who could not stop trembling eventually went to see a young specialist in cardiology' and Internal medicine, a recent emigre from Tawian named Yl-nan Chou. Chou asked what it was they made In that converted gas station. "Kepone," the man said. Kcpoue. Chou looked it up in a hand book of poisons. A chlorinated hydrocarbon related to DDT, combining hexachlorocyclopentadiene and sulfur trioxide, potent in controlling ants; roaches and banana pests. Chou took sam ples of the man's blood and urine and sent them to tho federal Center for Disease Con trol In Atlanta for analysis. Some days later Virginia health authorities arrived in Hopewell and began unraveling a major industrial scandal. The result: Life Science Co. was shut down, 13 workers were hospitalized nnd about 40 others were found to have high levels of the pesticide in their blood. Federal Indictments were returned against the company, its own ers and Allied Chemical Co., which had been Involved in the creation of Life Science, but no way found to cleanse workers' blood of the Kepone, which has been linked to blood cancer In laboratory animals. "Ti?C guys wlio have ho voices," Sheldon Samuels of the AFL-CIO calls them, ami there U a special horror to their anonymous plight. In isolated shops ami business too j-.inull for company doctors and union hygien ist*, seldom visited even by safely adminis tration Inspectors, they are .sometimes vic tims only of Ignorance, but sometimes they are also undone by the tricks oT their as sorted trades. Commercial fishermen mending their tar- aonked nets sometinn's hold the darning needle momentarily in their mouths to free 2357002 r., K' ( . i I i li I I Si! :|! ;>i i. \ I; \ 1i S11240 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD --SENATE June 30, 1970 both hands; (.hoy contract Up cancer in ex traordinary numbers. Auto mechanics often dean off brake drums with a deft blast fTom on air hose, thereby sending asbestos fibers winging toward their own lungs. House painters and shoe repairmen work with ben zene solvents, unaware of the bladder and bone marrow malignancies those chemicals inflict on their trades. "Who is telling them?" Samuels asks. "Who is doing something for them?" Even safely behind his desk in his office, there Is something gingerly about the way Robert L. Harris sits in a chair, an appre hensive stiffness as if the last egg of a rare and dying bird has been entrusted to his lap. Harris1 unease is understandable. An in dustrial hygienist at the University of North Carolina In Chapel HIM, he is the director of an unusual occupational health research program sponsored Jointly by the United Rubber Workers and the seven giants of the U.S. rubber industry. Established during ne gotiations on the industry's 1970 master labor contract. Harris' group and a similar unit at Harvard together receive more than $1 million ft year in corporate funds to probe the Industry's operations and study the health of its workers. The North Carolina group Is a promising model of what could be done in other basic industries. Like simitar units in government and other private institutions, it is working to protect workers now and also to over come the critical shortage of basic research data. The problem is that almost all these units are extremely fragile, locking perma nent foundations. In Harris* case, the unit is precariously balanced between two sponsors whose in terests often conflict. The researchers cannct function without cooperation from the companies, yet their findings often support the union's conten tion that more needs to be done to protect workers. The situation is especially touchy now: health hazards have become an issue in the rubber industry's long and bitter strike. Thus far, Harris and his associates say, there has been no lack of cooperation, no re stricting of their plans, no attempts to alter or suppress research findings. Still, an ad ministrator is understandably nervous. As a long-range goal with enormous po tential, the unit is trying to devise a com prehensive, computer-based system for con tinual recording and analysis of the mate rials and processes used in each rubber plant, as well as the work, and health histories of all employes. Since chemicals, processes, and employe work assignments change con stantly, a system such as this would vastly simplify the needle-in-a-haystack task of pinpointing occupational health problems and their specific cruises. The system might even detect incipient problems, raising warning flngs long before workers begin to sicken and die. Such a capability and its fruits are years away. Meanwhile, the team has proved Its worth in more immediate ways: it has done pioneering work in Identifying job classifica tions whero death and serious disense are high. And in one case, It quietly headea off what might years later have become ft wcll- publiclzcd disaster. A major rubber company had begun usLng a manufacturing process previously aban doned by another company because of pul monary damage to workers involved; the .company believed it had eliminated the prob lem. Tests by the North Carolina group showed "reversible" pulmonary changes in workers after initial exposure to the new process, with the likelihood that the dam age would prove permanent with continued exposure. The process was abandoned for tho second time. What is to bo don? Experts argue over details. but there Is A large, cheerful man with white hair, widespread agreement that progress must in Scllkoff turned to watch tho men again. volve thc.se elements: "Look at them," he said. "They are the solid More money for scientific and technical citizens of our country. Electricians, carpen research to pinpoint problems and devise ters--trained, capablo pcopio of the sort who sol utlons. built our country. We have to help them, Development of government health and and others like them." .-- safety regulations that place tho burden of protecting workers squarely, and equally, on How One Bio Firm Fought Health Perils all employers. (By Richard T. Cooper and Paul E. Steiger) Designing an enforcement strategy that increases voluntary compliance and gives the sarety agency's limited Inspection force a deterrent impact comparable to that of the Internal Revenue Service. The budding alliance between labor and environmentalists should be nurtured to as sure Integrated government policies: unions must maintain, or in some cases Increase, their Insistence that workers' health is not to be traded off for additional pennies an hour, corporations that are trying to improve should be encouraged while those that now profit by avoiding health-related expendi Midland. Mich.--For tho 35,0oo citizens of this flat, faceless, mUcs-froio-anywhcrc town lost in a sea of scrub trees and plowed fields, life begins and ends with one master, a giant corporation with an alchemist's pas sion for turning base materials to gold. Earth, air. water, the dally bread on the table, all lie under the corporate hand. Winter and summer, clouds of steam rise from five square miles of pipes, tanks and kettles hi which Dov/ ChcnnrrU C'o. produces chlovine, caustic soda, carbolic acid, bug and weed killers, industrial solvents--a witch's brew of toxic substances that makes the tures must be brought to heel. Vlf you can't afford to provide a safe, healthy working place, then you shouldn't be in business. You don't have that right," a radioactive fuel in most nuclear plants .seem tamo as lemonade. Almost every paycheck comes directly or indirectly from Dow. Even the lawns ha\c veteran safety administration health special ist declared recently. "A businessman rents a worker's time, not his safety and health." * It Is important to remember, however, that- corporate roots: when herbicldal vapors got. loos a few years ago and killed much of the grass In Midland. Dow paid for reseeding. Voiceless and vulnerable as other com requiring companies to meet unnecessarily] stringent health standards will raise costs I and prices, possibly eliminating some Jobs.! silso, forcing employers to buy needlessly! elaborate control systems for one hazard will! mean less money available to deal with other! dangerous substances. | Can government, labor, and management ever have enough solid Information to make all the necessary decisions with perfect wis dom? No. Decisions cannot be avoided--Ig noring them amounts to a decision to let disease and premature death continue--but they will have to be made with imperfect knowledge, experts agree. pany towns, Midland enjoys a critical differ ence: while many companies scorned obli vious to the dangers inherent in their opera tions. Dow pioneered in occupational health research and reform here and elsewhere long before labor unions, government leaders or the public seemed to care much about such things. As a result, federal officials and even sonu competitors agree. Dow today points the wn\ that all corporations must follow if workerand the larger society are to live safely wiu. the golden goose of technology. In Us efforts to protect its workers and its environmental neighbors against both In The safety administration, for example, slant health hazards and the carcinogens established worker exposure limits for 14 time bombs that explode with increasing reg major carcinogens even though it docs not ularity across the nation. Dow has developed know precisely where the dangerous exposure level begins; to get that information would have required the rounding up of 3 million & large assortment of weapons: Proposed new products and manufactm lug processes must undergo progressive)' laboratory animals for testing--an Impossibly costly and protracted experiment that might more rigorous testing in Dow's sophisticated toxicological labs; workers are offered rev have been useless anyway because of the dif ular medical examinations; individual ex ficulties in assembling 'meganiouse" popula posures to chemicals ar monitored and re tion that arc genetically comparable enough corded; detailed files are kept to enable n to yield valid results. searchers to correlate health data and \vor The struggle against occupational disease, ers' exposure histories, and Dow trains hum those involved agree, will be controversial, to-get industrial hygienist in its plants. messy and long. At the same time, Dow researchers con It was afternoon now, and the sun had duct epidemiological and mortality stuiii< warmed the air. Irving J. Scitkoff, founder of of workers lo monitor the effectiveness < the pioneering occupational health research health programs and to search for ur center at New York's Mt. Sinai Hospital, suspected problems. Manufacturing opev. watched outside the entrance to Groton's lions are modified to meet health standard town hall as scores of shipyard workers filed And Dow, a major supplier of industri In to be tested by his mobile team of phy chemicals, has even begun intervening r< sicians and technicians for asbestos cancer tively in the way customers use its product and other damage. What aU this has meant, simply enough, .Scllkoff know in advance that some of lives saved and crippling Illnesses avoided. theso men, exposed for years to lead and In the early iu50s. for example. Dow m asbestos dust In the holds of submarines enlists spotted potential health hazard* they were working on, would exhibit the a compound called chloromethyl meih telltale signs of di.sca.se--abnormal blood, di ether, an important ingredient in the daw minished King capacity traced out by a sty ing age of plastics; they insisted that p lus ns they huffed and puffed into an auto ductlon laciliue'sw* designed to limit woi mated spirometer, grainy patches like wisps ers' exposure lo one part per million. of cloud on the chest X rays developed in a Somo other producers, first unaware trailer behind the building. and then apparently indifferent to the d; "We can help these people." he said gcr. let exposures lo chloromethyl moi quietly. "If they have asbestoses. we can't ether and related chemicals sour, Dozen.- change that, but If we know they have It we workers in those plants now are known can do tilings to allow them to live a nor mally full Jifo span. If they have lung can cers and wo find them early enough, some can be saved. Of course, if they have me sothelioma . . . There Is no treatment for mesothelioma now." have died from oxpotnirc-relalcd lung cam Similarly, Dow toxicologists vetoed p- to produce nn unusually effective *u barnacle coating for ships because arsenic-based compound, highly polsoiK could contaminate harbors. And Dow 22357003 / une 30, 1976 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE S 11211 - ently withheld causttc soda from a New -upland customer until huge shield* ana nor safety equipment had been installed would be rutilously expensive, force plant closings and cost thousands of Jobs. Occupa tional health speciahs-t* saw vinyl chloride istration imposed its 1-ppin limit lost year Dow met it without the expensive upheaval that Its competitors had to endure. Most protect the customer's workers. as tho tip of an iceberg. Finally, the Occu important, thus far no cases of angiosarcoma To be sure, other companies have made pational Safety and Health Administration have been reported among Dow's vinyl important occupational health efforts. And imposed a one part-per-mlllton exposure chloride workers. i.o one. Including Dow, suggests that the limit for workers. Just why Dow In particular developed the company has always done everything neces That standard, if strictly enforced, will system that so far has kept it out of the sary or desirable as soon os possible. Work- probably protect future workers, but as Dr. worst of the occupational health minefields rrs'at Dow plants have died and been in Irving J. Selikoff, a prominent environmental Is not fully clear. l*art of the answer may be ured in fires, accidents and explosions. Rc- health specialist at New York's Mt. Sinai that Dow began ns a family firm concentrated . ently a group of workers was exposed to the Medical School, said a few mouths after the in Midland so that top executives had a rarclnogen vinyl chloride when 2,000 gallons Goodrich announcement: "For vinyl chlo strong sense of personal identification with the substance were accidentally spilled. Mirther, some of Dow's operating executives r.re more resistant than others to recom ride. in a large sense, we are already too late." Thus far, 49 workers around the world are Dow's activities and were not isolated from lower-level subordinates or production work ers. mendations for steps that would Increase employe protection. Also, Dow has been among the most out spoken opponents of the proposed Toxic Sub- known to .have died from angiosarcoma. Given the average 20-ycar time lag between first exposure and death in this type of can cer, the toll among workers already exposed Regardless of precisely why It developed, one thing seems clear about Dow's system: instead of being spawned in crisis and im posed on reluctant production managers by .-.-ances Act, which would require premarket .esting of chemicals. The company denounces me bill as costly, wasteful and unnecessary --iterference with business. Nonetheless, there is widespread agree ment--even among some who still cannot lorglve Dow for its role In napalm production miring the Vietnam war--that the company done more than others to promote its workers' occupational health and done it ^ooner than other major industrial corpora:ion*. and thus has avoided many of the problems afflicting U.S. workers generally. Equally important to the growing debate : ver the economic feasibility of occupational wealth reform, Dow's record indicates that .urge firms, at least, should be able to make -uostantlal Improvements without reducing profits or lessefting tueir competitive posi,.on. as long as top management insists that : oncerh be built into operations from the ,,round up. Consider vinyl chloride, perhaps the best .mown of recent occupational health night- ares. For many producers, it is a costly and palling monument to heedlessness. For _v>w, it illustrates the economic and social enefits of what the company has tried to do. Discovered in Germany In the 1930s and neveloped by U.S. firms in the 1950s, vinyl -nioride today is the world's second most . ommon plastic compound, produced In the _ nited States alone at the rate of 5 billion : ounds a year. The ubiquitous substance is .Diind In phonograph records, meat-wrapping _:m. auto interiors, water pipe, floor tile, =.-ctrical insulation and hundreds of other roducts. Vinyl chloride, a gas until It is converted . _r a solid through a process known as polymnzatlon, has also been used as an aerosol : ropellant for cosmetics, paints and pesti- is expected to keep rising for years to come, remote corporate officials, it has been woven no matter what is done now. gradually into the fabric of the company's op As had others. Dow steadily increased Its erations over many years--and the evolu involvement with vinyl chloride In the 1940s" tionary process has contributed substantially and 1950s, becoming a manufacturer of to the system's present effectiveness. polymers and also a leading supplier of vinyl By including the occupational and environ chloride gns to other processors. mental health experts in decisions on design, But in keeping with general company marketing and production at early stagew, policy of minimizing employe exposure to all Dow officials say they minimize friction, avoid chemicals, Dow's operations seem to have errors, reduce the need for costly retrofitting been tighter than most. More important, of equipment and raise efficiency--all con Dow's toxicological lab began a series of In crete business benefits that increase the en halation studies with rats, rabbits and thusiasm of operating executives for coop guinea pigs in the late 1950s. erating with the occupational health special By today's standards, the tests were rela ists. tively unsophisticated, but they were soon Most company officials trace the beginnings to make a critical difference. of this system, and of Dow's exceptional con Groups of animals were exposed to various cern for workers' health, to ft set of puzzling concentrations of vinyl chloride gas seven accidents in tho early 1930s. hours a day, five days a week for periods of Within a period of a few weeks, two men six months--a rough approximation of a were found dead at the Midland plant. The worker's potential exposure. Then the ani- first death was initially attributed to heart malswere kilted, along with unexposed con trol animals, so that pathologists could make tissue comparisons. What researchers found was evidence of liver cell changes in the vinyl chloride-exposed tissue that were so subtle they would have gone unnoticed except in direct com parison with cells from unexposed animals. Dow toxicologist Theodore R. Torkelson, who was in charge of the studies, said there were "reversible fatty changes, evidence of stress, about the lowest level of injury you can have." What Torkelson and his colleagues did not failure, but, when the second worker died, officials began looking for another explana tion. They found one. The second worker--and, It is now believed, the first man as wellhad cleaned his skin in a company locker room with a colorless liquid he mistook for alcohol. The liquid was phenol, a chemical used in making hospital antiseptics, explo sives, plastics and some dyes. "If you spill enough phenol on you to make a patch about like so," said top Dow scientist V. K. Rowe, describing a 12-inch circle on his thigh, "you can wash it right off', know then was that they were at the thresh and all you'll have is a little .skin burn. Or old of discovering the angiosarcoma link to vinyl chloride almost 15 years before the B. F. Goodrich announcement. If Dow scientists had kept some of the ex posed animals alive a little longer--now you can leave it ou there for 20 minutes and you'll be dead." Dow officials had known all along that phenol was dangerous, but they had not known how dangerous. Nor had they trained :des. standard practice in vsuch studies--instead workers to recognize the compound and deal in producing this bonanza, thousands of of sacrificing them immediately after expo with it effectively if they had contact with orkers were exposed to vinyl chloride gas, !ien in concentrations of hundreds or thou--.nds of parts per million and often for i eriods of several veal's. Some employes were egularly sent down into processing kettles .or maintenance work and occasionally In:.uled so much vinyl chloride that they ex sure stopped, Torkelson is convinced the tumors would have been found. "I've kicked myself many times that I did not take 20 of those rats and let them sit for six months," Torkelson said recently. Be that as it may. Dow published its re sults in I960, including data indicating liver It. The phenol incident struck a worrisome chord In the mind of Willard Dow, then tho company's president. His scientists were conjuring up new com pounds every day. How many more might turn out to be sudden killers? Dow, son of perienced euphoric highs or were anesthe- cell damage was detectable at 100 parts per the company's founder, did not much like .zed. Scattered hints and warnings of medical -.rouble cropped up, including evidence that :nyl chloride caused workers' bones to dis- milion exposure levels but not at 50 ppm. The company urged the entire plastics in dustry to adopt a 50-ppm exposure limit voluntarily. the Idea oi finding out only after his workers had died or been disabled. He put a young, freshly hired biochemist to work testing for potential hazards. oive inside their Augers, but most producers Other scientists dismissed the cell changes From that impromptu beginning the com -ushed ahead with little regard for ail that Dow had found as insignificant. Other com pany has developed a program that aspires mght be happening to their employes. Until panies rejected the proposal for cutting ex to protect'not only Dow workers and Dow >74. posures, some even criticizing Dow ns alarm customers but also the customers' workers In January of that year. D. F. Goodrich o. made the Jolting announcement that .nyl chloride had been linked to a rare and -4.tal form of cancer, angiosarcoma of the .ver. among exjMsed workers. Almost over- ^ht a classic battlo developed among ist. Dow, however, set In motion an Internal program tlmt cut exposures below 50 ppm for most of its own workers within a few months, then worked on the handful of dif ficult and more easily situations over a peri od of years. and the customers' customers irom the risks Inherent in the more than 8.000 sepanilo chemical combinations the company sells or uses. What started with one man at one lab bench now Involves hundreds of people and as much as $20 million a year. kiiufacturers, labor unions, health profos- The result: Dow's cleanup cast it less than With nil ltis attention to toxic substances ...onals and tho federal government. $3 million, company officials say, spread com and the health of Us workers, Dow Chemical Unions demanded total protection for fortably over an extended period. And when Co. has scarcely suffered ffnancmlly. Over tho workers. Producers argued tlmt such reforms the Occupational Safety and Health Admin last 20 years Us annua! sales have Increased 22357004 S 11242 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD --SENATE June 30, 1070 more than tenfold, to $4.0 billion, while conflicting requirements exist notwlthstand- profltB have Increased by nearly 10 times, to ini; the primary biological difference between $010 million. yj men and women, that difference known as -- the female's reproductive capacity. But also Woman's Work: Biology vs. Civil Ricrf^s not to be Ignored are the possible hazards (By Marlene Cimons) Washington.--Thirty-seven women In an Idaho lead smelter recently were told they could no longer work In lead operations be cause of the potential adverse effects of lead on their future offspring. The women, all of childbearing age, were transferred by the company to other, safer Jobs--at less pay. A mother of four, employed in a lead stor age battery plant, was told she would have to prove she was no longer fertile to continue working. She had herself sterilized to keep her Job. A woman at a California flberboard plant, two months pregnant, stopped working after her physician warned her that association with formaldehyde might harm the fetus. Sho applied for a transfer or for disability benefits. The company resisted. All she re ceived was unemployment pay, $85 a week less than her working salary. A female research technician In a thyroid laboratory of a health care facility learned sho was two months pregnant. Her work ex posed her to limits of radiation considered safe by the then-Atomlc Energy Commission and the Occupational Safety and Health Ad ministration. But her employer could not guarantee the exposure would not harm her unborn child. The employer told her to take maternity leave--without pay--or quit. She chose to resign, in order to collect unem ployment benefits, and on returning was treated as a "new hire." These stories, taken from the handbook, "Working for Your Life: A Woman's Guide to Job Health Hazards'* by Andrea Hrlcko, health coordinator of the Labor Occupational Health Program at UC Berkeley, Illustrate a particular dilemma faced by women as they gain equity in the Job market: how can they be protected without suffering economic loss? This problem, along with the occupational health and safety questions faced by all workers, became the focus of a three-day conference here recently on "Women in the Workplace," sponsored by the Society for Occupational and Environmental Health. Labor unions, health specialists and others have long argued that no worker, male or female, should be forced to choose between health and safety on one hand, good wages or a Job on the other. Such choices amount to economic blackmail, union leaders say, charging that the Occupational Health and Safety Administration should make a safe workplace a matter of legal right--not some thing to be bartered for with lower pay or other sacrifices by the employe. Where women are concerned, however, a troubling new aspect of this issue has emerged: some chemicals and other work place hazards appear to pose dangers unique to women or their unborn children. Federal regulations are designed to dictate what an employer must do to protect workers gen erally, but so far there is little provision for the special risks faced by women. Thus, business Arms may bo free to establish their own rules, sometimes forcing women to choose between greater safety and better pay. Tills, many women's leaders believe, Is a form of sex discrimination. Tho Occupational Safety and Health Act mandates that employers provide safe and healthful workplaces for employes, while the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and presented by industry to tho genetic systems of both men and women, IIow can industry effectively deal with this dilemma, while simultaneously complying with the man dates of both OSHA and the EEOC?" Andrea Hrlcko thinks the answer Is quite simple, although industry might not readily comply. 'Until occupational health standards are stringent enough to protect the developing fetus, tiie woman worker--at the very least--should be informed by her employer about the potential effects of hazardous chemicals on the fetus," she said. "And sho should be given the opportunity to transfer to another job during the pregnancy with out loss of pay, seniority or other benefits. If the worker must temporarily leave work, she should be able to return to her former Job after childbirth with seniority and all her other benefits." Anne Trebilcock, assistant general counsel with the United Auto Workers, agrees. "We havo come to a sad state in this country when a woman must choose between her child-bearing capacity and her Job," she said. How does one company respond? "If there is valid and conclusive scientific evidence that a hazard to pregnant women existed and that the employe barred from a Job in the hazardous area was. In fact, preg nant or had child-bearing capacity, the alleged discrimination would appear to be defensible," said Portia Hamlar, the Chrysler Corp. lawyer. "If such was established, two ancillary issues would surface. First, was the employe temporarily transferred to a nonhozardous Job location rather than tempo rarily suspended? Secondly, if a transfer was affected, did it involve loss of pay or se niority?" As for transfer versus suspension, she said, many court decisions have supported a preg nant employe's right continue to work as long as her physician considers it safe. "Therefore, a transfer to a non-hazardous Job seems to be the more proper alternative," she said. "Of course . . . (this) depends upon whether . , . tho employer has vacancies in any Jobs in non-hazardous areas. It is con ceivable that in certain types of businesses, Jobs nonhazardous to pregnant women or women of childbearing capacity simply do not exist." As to seniority and equal pay? "While retention of seniority is subject to union bargaining, equal pay pursuant to a temporary transfer presents a totally differ ent problem," she said. "Such an adjustment would raise the issue of wage discrimination against permanent employes In the location to which the temporary transfer was made, os well as nullify the employer's pre-estab lished Job-wngo classifications. Such a result docs not appear to be reasonable or legal." She compared it to employment of the handicapped. "Although the employer Is ex pected to make Job modifications in order to employ the handicapped, those modifications do not include pay for a job the employe is unable to perform due to a physical limita tion," she said. "For tho same reason, a pregnant employe should not receive pay which is higher than that allocated to the assigned job.** Just what arc some of these hazards that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibit women face, cither by virtue of their child discrimination against women In the work place. Sometimes, the two legislative areas appear to clash. How can they ba reconciled? No one yet has a dellnltlvo answer. "These anti-sex discrimination laws re bearing capacity, or simply by their large concentrations in certain Job classifications? Also, do some of these toxic substances pose a threat to malo workers as well? In some cases, the answer appears to be yes. quire that women aro to bo treated the same Tho toxicity of lead has been known for as men," said Portia Hamlar, nn attorney approximately 2,000 years; a Roman senator with the Chrysler Corp. In Detroit, "These warned against it in tho first century A.D. It Is capable of damaging tho central nervous system, tho kidneys and blood-forming ele ment*, with a high probability of perman ence. If exposure Is great, it can result In coma, convulsions and death. A common manifestation of lead poisoning in workers is severe abdominal pain, a condition known ns "lead colic." "Persons who arc exposed to lead on the Job are in double Jeopardy since the lead exposure while working most be added to the lend entering their bodies from general en vironmental exposure, which in certain in-, stances may already bo excessive." said Dr. Kenneth Brldbord, a medical officer with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. `"In this regard, women workers of child bearing age must be considered to be of triple risk," he 6ald. effects of lead Peter K. Infante, an epidemiologist with NIOSH and Joseph K. Wagoner, NIOII's chief of tho bureau of industry-wide studies, in a paper on the effects of lead on reproduction presented to conference participant*, wrote: "Observations among human populations indicate that lead is associated with sterility, spontaneous Rbortions, stillbirths, birth de fects, increased infant mortality, increased prematurity and an increase in chromosomal anomalies." The two also cited studies linking lead ex posure to reproductive problems in men, the most recent being a 1975 report examining 150 male workers exposed to lead in a stor age battery facility. The study showed a sig nificant decrease In fertility, including a toxic effect oil gonads and changes in sperm production, sperm strength and the likeli hood of transmitting potential birth defects. In addition, they wrote, animal tests have shown respiratory and kldrey cancers fol lowing exposure to lead. "Cancer mortality experience in Shoshone County, Idaho, where primary lead and zinc smelters are located is also of interest," they wrote. "During the period 1968-72, the respiratory cancer mor tality rate for Shoshone County was the highest recorded in the state." The dangers of mercury can affect an esti mated 125,000 employes, the majority of them women, who work as chairskle dental assistants. Mercury, a heavy silver metal used to fill teeth, is liquid at room temperature, but quickly vaporizes into the air--where It can easily be Inhaled. Signs of chronic mercury vapor poisoning include inflammation of the gums and mouth, excessive salivation, metallic taste, emotional instability and tremor. It can pro duce kidney damage and acute respiratory problems. A study sponsored by the California De partment of Health's occupational health section and the department of health science at California State University, Northridgc, examined 19 dental offices employing 303 dental workers, 177 of them women. It found mercury contamination in every office. Operating room personnel who are con tinually exposed to anesthetic gases face a potentially increased risk of cancer, miscar riages and birth defects. A study undertaken by tho American Society of Anesthesiologists and NIOSH examined 50.000 operating room professionals, with 24,000 unexposed medical and nursing professionals serving ns controls. Tho figures were presented by Dr. Thomas H. Corbett, associate professor of anesthesiology at tho University of Michigan Medical Center. HIGHEST RJSIC CASES Tho study found 1.3 to 2 times the Inci dence of spontaneous abortion in exposed women, compared with unexposed female personnel. Women physician-anesthetist* were at tho highest risk, followed by nurse anesthetists. Tho incidence of congenital ab normalities among live-born offspring of ex- 22357005 )