Document M4mKQ36GZL49xpNpn7a9xGErj

TUMORS OF THE SKIN 161 during recent years skin cancers have been found in men engaged in spreading V crude mineral oil over stagnant bodies of waters in the Indian tropics, as a means of combatting the mosquito plague. The first cases of paraffin cancer in the United States were reported by Schamberg in 1910, who studied 18 cases of this disease observed in paraffin plants in Chicago, 111. Four years later Davis published an additional case found in the paraffin department of an oil refinery of the same city. Upon inquiry at two paraffin plants, one located at Cleveland, Ohio, and the second at Franklin, Pennsylvania, Davis received the information that similar skin lesions had been observed among workers employed in these factories, but none of these manifestations had been of a malignant nature. In 1915, Hay- hurst established the fact that paraffin cancer existed in handlers of crude heavy products in oil refineries of Ohio. When Wood visited, in 1929, fifteen oil refineries located in Pennsylvania, ten of which manufactured paraffin i and employed a total of 1,500 men with 76 men handling this wax, he was- 4 i told by the plant physicians and managers that not a single case of paraffin cancer had been observed among workers employed in these operations. The j labor turnover in these plants was stated to have been low, and the majority V, of workers had been employed for 5 to 41 years. Wood concluded on the basis of these data that pure paraffin as well as Pennsylvania mineral oils were not productive of cancer. _ 5 3f While the reports of Schamberg, Davis, and Hayhurst had shown that this contention was not applicable to American oils in general, this observation was emphasized by reports concerning the occurrence of paraffin and oil cancers in American refineries published during the following years. Wise recorded the occurrence of a skin cancer in a paraffin worker, who had a typical paraffin keratosis, and noted that some of the men employed in the same branch of the factory were suffering from similar skin lesions. Heller found two cases of paraffin cancer in press men employed in a refinery located in the Middle West, in which Midcontinental oils having a mixed base were processed. Eight additional cases were reported, according to Heller, from a refinery employing 400 men and using crude oils from Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Five cases of paraffin cancer were notified to the Industrial Hygiene Division of the Ohio State Department of Health from 1928-1929. These neoplasms were seen in men engaged in plants using oils from the Lima fields (Ohio). Heller mentioned, moreover, three cases of paraffin cancer, which occurred from 1926 to 1928, among workers of a paraffin department employ ing on the average 30 men. Twelve additional cases of oil and paraffin cancer were collected by Heller from the records of the Memorial Hospital, New York, and the New York Skin and Cancer hospital. This made a total of 20 cases of paraffin and oil cancer observed in the United States, according to ' this investigator. Haagensen made in the1 following year an analysis of the occupational