Document KRLVYrXBg8YDVo7Ka2bNr6be6

"J'J'U-L Ll MAY 17 1974 23320001 Tbo high a price for safety on the job? THE PROPOSED new rules on exposure Compromise standards, of course, involve of chemical workers to vinyl chloride gas bring into sharp incus one of the most perplexing questions lacing America: How much risk to risks. Human risk is an inescapable factor in most industrial processes, yet it is a factor that must be minimized. Underground coal human life and health are we willing to take for the jobs and consumer conveniences pro vided bv industry? The key word is "risk." mining, for example, is an occupation which almost certainly will always be more hazard ous, unless it can one day be totally auto The evidence to date suggests overwhelm ingly that the old federal safety rules limit ing exposure to 500 parts of vinyl chloride in one million parts of air were too loose. Nineteen known cases of what had been con sidered a rare form of liver cancer have now been reported among vinyl chloride workers in this country (seven of them in Louisville) and elsewhere. Emergency rules limiting exposure to 50 parts per million were hastily put into effect when the liver cancer hazard became appar ent. Now the federal Occupational Safety and mated, than working on an automobile assem bly line. It is also, however, an industry which is essential to the American economy and the present American lifestyle, both of which con sume enormous energy. The essential nature of the industry, how ever, means that the added cost of making underground mining reasonably safe can be passed on to the consuming public--unless the country is willing to pay the environmental cost of depending entirely on strip-mining for its coal. One can argue, of course, that plastics made Health Administration (OSHA) proposes to from vinyl chloride, unlike the energy require that no detectable levels of vinyl provided by coal, are a frivolous and essen chloride gas be permitted in areas where tially "phony" part of the American economy workers may be exposed. Meanwhile, the fed eral Environmental Protection Agency has become concerned about the possible hazards of the gas in the atmosphere of areas around vinyl chloride plants. The new OSHA standards, if they were successfully implemented by the industry, doubtless would end the threat to workers' safety. But three factors must be considered: (1) Chemical industry spokesmen claim that t will be prohibitively costly and/or tech nologically impossible to meet the new stand ards, especially if they become effective in July, as is now proposed. (2) Vinyl chloride is a basic material in the production of plas tics used in a wide range of consumer goods and in packaging. And (3), although laboratory tests with rats suggest that exposure to 50 A Goodrich plant worker emerges from a vinyl polymerization vat pressure, and the industry just as clearly must show a good faith effort to eliminate the hazards. OSHA, the industry and the public must face the fact that the proposed rules could force the industry to close some plants and might increase production costs so sharply that the use o plastics made from vinyl chloride would be discouraged. This, in turn, leads to the second point--the use of vinyl chloride end-products by many other indus tries. If the new OSHA rules force a sharp decline in vinyl chloride production, this im and culture--something, in other words, we could do without and perhaps be better off for the deprivation. This again, however, involves broad public preferences--the same kind of choices we face in balancing clean air against automo bile production, or insect-free crops against the long-term harm of DDT and some other pesticides to our environment. It also in volves jobs. No worker wants to be exposed to hazards on the job. But neither do most workers want their jobs eliminated along with the hazards. OSHA's biggest challenge The vinyl chloride case is only one of thousands in which OSHA, set up under a parts vinyl chloride per million of air, as per pact could spread like ripples in a pond to 1970 congressional act, has butted heads with mitted under the present emergency regula other segments of the country's closely inter industry. These clashes have been frequent tions, may be dangerous, there is no docu related and interdependent industrial econo and painful enough to prompt moves in Con mented research so far to suggest that ex my. Products ranging from plastic squeeze posure to lower levels--10 parts per million, bottles to home appliances could become more for example--is hazardous. expensive or simply unavailable, and. jobs gress--including' an unsuccessful effort last week--to clip OSHA's wings and to soften the alleged severity ot the agency's rulings. could be lost. Perhaps, as some supporters of OSHA Threat to older plants The vinyl chloride industry doubtless will argue, these moves were hatched in corporate The claims of the vinyl chloride industry, of course, can be considered self-serving. But that doesn't mean they are invalid. Meeting the proposed OSHA standard of "no detectable levels" in plant areas where workers may be exposed almost surely will add significantly make these points next month at a public hearing on the proposed OSHA rules. And in dustry spokesmen just as surely will argue that OSHA is overreacting to the admittedly serious liver cancer hazard, and that coopromise standards should be tried. board rooms. And perhaps most industrial ex ecutives, while grumbling about "arbitrary" rulings by OSHA, actually are finding that the agency's standards can be met at in creased but reasonable cost. .' But the vinyl chloride case appears to pre sent the biggest and most frightening chal to production costs. And it may prove to be lenge OSHA has encountered in its brief his technologically impossible, especially at such tory. Ultimately, it is a challenge not just to older vinyl chloride plants as the B. F. Good a federal bureaucracy, but to the American rich Company facility in Louisville, to con people. form with the proposed regulations. After next month's public hearing, it should Tlie industry, nevertheless, cannot be al be clearer whether OSHA is meeting or ex lowed indefinitely to postpone steps which ceeding its congressional mandate. But only will protect both its workers and persons who if voters insist that occupational safety be live near its plants. A July deadline for reduc come an issue in this year's congression ing vinyl chloride to "no detectable levels" al elections will it become clear whether or within and around its plants may be unreason not the congressional mandate is also the able, but clearly OSHA must continue-to apply . people's. BFG24833 May 4,1974 bonds and mortgages, they will favor the United States in the future as much as they have in the past, leaving room no doubt for substantial military orders for France and the Soviet Union. Our bankers, industrial consultants, financial ad visers and salesmen are already "bumping into one another" in Beirut and Tehran eagerly offering their assistance, according to Business Week. Some prelimi nary transactions --huge stock sales, real estate deals in Oklahoma and Texas --have already been reported. Note that by the end of this year, financial experts say, a surplus of^from $40 to $50 billion will have accrued to the oil exporting states. The prospect, therefore, is for a stimulus to the American economy of unprece dented magnitude. A tax reduction at the present time, yielding its peak effects from six to nine months from now, would serve "to gild refined gold, to paint the lily/ to throw a perfume on the violet/ to smooth the ice, or add another hue/ unto the rainbow, or with taper light/ to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish" --or simply to intensify inflation. Bums willing, I look forward then to boomy times 19 ahead, like 1968 when the Vietnam war was at its peak, or more so. Inflation will be kept very much alive, profits will surpass last year's lush returns, the annual salaries of GM's fop executives will rise above a mil lion, the great corporations will bid wildly for promis ing engineers, the average wages of big-time basket ball players will top $100,000, the Dow Jones industrial average will be zooming back to well over 1000. At the other end, pensioners, welfare recipients and others on fixed incomes will be losing out in purchasing power. The unemployed, composed of the unskilled, semi-skilled, technologically displaced and other los ers, will be just about as numerous as they are now. And the fundamental problems of material shortages, environmental destruction, suburban sprawl, air and noise pollution, highway uglification, and auto con gestion will be submerged in the euphoria. .Also for gotten, temporarily, will be the Third World, with its population mushrooming faster than the earth's food supply can possibly be expanded, with hunger and disease spreading, eyeing balefully the techniques of violence and economic aggression used by the Arabs. Cancer in a Spray Can by Barbara Newman In late January, the B.F. Goodrich Company informed the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) that four of its employees engaged in the manufacture of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), one of the most common plastics, had died within the last six years of an extremely rare liver cancer, angiosarcoma. The workers had average exposures of 19 years to vinyl chloride, the gas that is used to produce the powdery chemical, PVC, which is the basis of the plastic indus try. Then three more cases were found at Goodrich. While angiosarcoma is so rare that a check of death certificates at the American Cancer Society revealed that only one of 78,000 deaths result from it, estimates are that one out of 20 deaths among vinyl chloride workers will be caused by this rare liver cancer. On the heels of the Goodrich news, several other Barbara Newman is a reporter for Plaiionul Public Radio. companies searched their death records, and after a superficial investigation found 13 angiosarcoma cases, including fatalities at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber fa cility in Niagara Falls, at Union Carbide in South Charleston, West Virginia and Firestone Tire and Rub ber in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The figures are mis leading because industry does not routinely study employees' deaths to determine if contact with indus trial chemicals may have been involved. Moreover, diseases like angiosarcoma are so rare that they are often misdiagnosed. As Dr. John Creech, the physician at B.F. Goodrich in Louisville, says, "Most doctors . . . attribute the cause of death as something else." Dr. Marcus Key, the director of NIOSH, admits that w-ithout Dr. Creech's voluntary disclosure, "it is entirely possible that the significance of the tumors would net have been realized for several years." Because 10,000 new and untested chemicals are each year put on the workplace, additional occupational a o N> OO u> N> 0> N 8 20 TheNis. cancers may yet be identified. Every year in the United for a carcinogen. But 50 is the level at which the Lai,. States, there are more than 665,000 new cases of can Department's Occupational Safety and Health Admin cer and about 385,000 cancer deaths. The World Health istration (OSHA) set an emergency standard for vinyl Organization in 1964 estimated that 75 percent or 85 chloride in early April. The OSHA action disregarded percent of all human cancers result from environmental the petition of the Industrial Union Department (IUD) causes. More recently, the director of the National In of the AFL-CIO and the recommendation of NIOSH stitutes of Health stated that there is no doubt that in that an emergency standard for VC be set at zero expo dustrial and agricultural technologies are the major sure. It also disregarded the advice of many cancer ex contributors to most known environmental carcino perts who in 1970 reported to the surgeon general that gens. The direct and indirect cost of cancer, including "no level of exposure to a chemical carcinogen should loss of earnings during illness and during the balance be considered toxologically insignificant for man. For of normal life expectancy, have been estimated at $15 carcinogenic agents a safe level for man cannot be es billion for 1971, yet serious attention has not been tablished by application of our present knowledge." given to identifying carcinogenic hazards in industry. Some of those who accept that advice view the Labor Department's action as a sellout to industry. One who 1--Jr. Irving Selikoff of New York's Mount Sinai Hos holds this view is Sheldon Samuels, the head of the pital has done much landmark research linking the in IUD: ". . . It's just cheaper to let workers die than to halation of asbestos fibers with cancer and now says spend millions of dollars to control toxicity. The worker that the vinyl chloride illnesses will proliferate because subsidized the cost of production with his life." The the cancer victims that we are now seeing began work cost to industry of complying with a zero standard 20 years ago. According to Selikoff, "It takes 20 years or would be in the millions of dollars, mostly for engi so for this cancer to become evident. There weren't neering costs, but also for new equipment such as that many people working with VC [two decades ago]. safety suits with respirators. Business Week recently Many new workers joined the industry in the 1950s quoted Walter B. Connolly, Jr., labor counsel of Fire and 1960s and the cases of cancer and other disease stone Tire and Rubber Company, which operates two that will be found among them will become evident in PVC plants, as saying, "Improvements in work prac the 1980s and 1990s unless, of course, we find ways by tices will probably require a 100 percent increase in the research to prevent the cancers that are being incu work force." Lower productivity erodes profits. bated now within these people. Unfortunately such The rationale the Labor Department uses to justify 1 research is not being done." its emergency VC standard of 50 ppm is that the only A month ago Selikoff took his staff up to the Good year facility at Niagara Falls and set up an improvised hospital in the local union hall. Working 12-15 hours a day, 401 workers participated in perhaps the most massive medical examination in the history of occu pational health. Selikoff is now studying his findings but has already concluded that there is evidence of other PVC related liver disease, lung disease, and dis eases of the skin, bones, hands and feet. PVC not only affects the liver to produce cancer but injures other tissues that it might touch. Government research of occupational health has conclusive experiments done correlating vinyl chloride and cancer (by Italian scientist Cesare Maltoni) showed tumors at 500 and 250 ppm but not at 50 ppm. Associ ate Assistant Secretary of Labor, Alexander Reis, who is in charge of standards for OSHA, says that the de partment could have been sued if it had promulgated a zero standard without conclusive scientific justifica tion. But according to Vernon Rose, the director of the Office of Standards of NIOSH, bio-statistical extrapola tions of Maltoni's experiments show that angiosar coma would be expected to develop at an exposure level of 50 ppm. In the letter of transmittal to OSHA in which NIOSH recommended zero exposure as a VC been very limited. The total budget for the National standard, the agency noted that while Maltoni found Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the federal no liver tumors at 50 ppm, "There is the possibility agency charged with research to protect worker safety, that tumors might have been produced if a larger num is under $30 million. The NIOSH staff has only a few ber of animals had been exposed at that concentration." epidemiologists. Late last week the Manufacturing Chemists Associa For years scientists and industry have known that tion (MCA), the trade group for the chemical industry, vinyl chloride was a potential health hazard. Despite announced preliminary results of tests of animal expo the warnings of liver damage from exposure to VC lev sures to VC. The MCA found angiosarcomas in mice els as high as 500 parts per million parts of air (ppm), exposed to 50 ppm. The Labor Department promises it the US government regulated VC at precisely this un will promulgate a permanent standard at zero ppm by safe limit, 10 times higher than that which many com June. Even if a pennanent standard is promulgated at panies voluntarily set for themselves, in 1961, for ex zero exposure, it could be as ineffective as the stand ample, Dow Chemical voluntarily lowered the average ards regulating 14 occupational carcinogens set earlier exposure to 50 ppm for its workers. Fifty ppm is too this year-- if, that is, its standards lack any monitoring high because there is no certain, safe exposure level provisions or allowance for medical surveillance of the 23320003 BFG24835 ^4 .workers. In addition to the 6500 workers involved in VC or PVC production, there are also thousands of workers engaged in the fabrication of products with PVC resin. One of the Rubber Workers locals is conducting tests on levels in fabricating plants and has come up with extremely high readings; levels ranging between 200 and 1000 ppm. There is no evidence yet on the extent of danger vinyl chloride poses to millions of Americans who have come to use plastic products as a way of life --from phonograph records to auto seats, cosmetics and baby bottles and pacifiers. Dr. Selikoff believes consumers fhay be endangered as well as VC workers. Vinyl chloride has for years been used as a propellant in aerosol consumer products --paint, hairsprays, pes ticides. Ralph Nader's Health Research Group has petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban the use of all vinyl chloride in aerosol products. To date, the petitions have been met with no action. The Food and Drug Administration says it needs new authority to require manufacturers to list ingredi ents. FDA does not normally do any product testing. It has to depend on industry data and honesty. Honesty isn't always corporate policy: in response to the Health Research Group petition, the FDA stated that it infor mally polled cosmetic manufacturers to learn how much vinyl chloride was used in hairspray and the answer was none. The cosmetic company Clairol ad mitted that it manufactured "Miss Clairol" and "Sum mer Blonde" for four years with a propellant that was 25 percent vinyl chloride, but the company said it stopped the manufacture in mid-1973 and "reformu lated" the products. (According to Clairol, after one minute of spray from these products, the air level in the breathing zone of the user could reach 200 ppm.) But in a letter to the Health Research Group in late March, Clairol said it did not "consider there to be grounds for recalling the small amount of product that is now in the field." Then two weeks ago the FDA telegrammed Clairol asking for voluntary recall of these sprays from retail shelves, and Clairol readily agreed. All the cans of these products on store shelves contained vinyl chlor ide in the propellant because Clairol had not had a production run since last summer. While the company said it had reformulated the product since then and left the clear impression that only a small number of the cans left on retail shelves contained VC, the FDA was at first taken in. Furthermore, while Clairol originally maintained that only these two products still contained VC, the FDA announced that VC was also used in four additional Clairol products, all professional hair products. The FDA also announced that another company pro ducing aerosol hairspray, Bonat, was also voluntarily 21 withdrawing 13 products containing vinyl chloride from retail stores. That agency said that on information received from "industry" sources, an aerosol drug may contain vinyl chloride, but the FDA refused to release any information until the manufacturer "informs the FDA that this is so." It did turn out to be so and the FDA announced that Quick Aide medicated room va porizer was being recalled. All of a sudden the FDA "discovered" 30 other aerosol products manufactured by Shield Chemical Company, including deodorants and first aid sprays that contain vinyl chloride. Now the FDA says all the products it regulates that contain vinyl chloride are being recalled. The FDA has throughout assured the public that only a few products contain VC and at levels that are harmless. Dr. Joseph Wagoner, head of field studies for NIOSH, says that he doesn't buy the FDA statement that levels in hairspray at this time are free of any po tential of inducing cancer. Wagoner will shortly anJ nounce a sizable research contract to investigate the possible carcinogenic effect on cosmetologists from products they have been using that contain vinyl chloride. The action of the EPA, which regulates aerosol pes ticides, has been even more dismal. Three weeks ago, the EPA finally responded to the Health Research Group petition, but in an unsatisfactory manner. In stead of recalling the 41 pesticides produced by 23 companies that contain vinyl chloride, the EPA merely asked the manufacturers' permission to release the brand names. Among the 41 products using vinyl chloride that are currently registered are sprays for restaurants, for dogs and cats, and for the household. (Five more were produced until recently, but the man ufacturers voluntarily stopped using vinyl chloride.) Glenn E. Schweitzer, the director of the EPA's office of toxic substances and chairman of its study group on vinyl chloride, said that there currently is not suffi cient evidence to warrant recalling these products. Yet Schweitzer said that one EPA study of vinyl chloride exposure resulting from the use of a household disin fectant spray indicated that if sprayed for 30 seconds in a typical bathroom, levels of vinyl chloride in the air would reach 400 ppm. Schweitzer insists that the usual exposure of humans to pesticides is too small to consti tute an imminent health hazard. On April 17 the EPA released a list of brand names of 20 aerosol pesticide? that manufacturers or distributors had agreed to reveal. Despite this "sweeping regula tory action" the agency still refuses to force a recall. Manufacturers and distributors of 21 other products had various reasons for refusing to divulge brand names --including protection of "trade secrets." The EPA accepts such excuses because it says the agency currently finds no evidence of an imminent health hazard. So consumers continue to use aerosol products con taining this cancer-causing agent. BFG24836 23320004 T