Document MGn7kMOv8xYRn9E8p29azw73x

\D- rf$harp Drop in Vinyl Chloride Exposure Is Ordered by Labor Agency for Workers By a Wall STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter ent 50 parts per million. Also, it gave its en WASHINGTON--The Labor Department forcement staff discretion to determine how ordered a sharp reduction in workers' expo the companies must meet the standard. sure to vinyl chloride, a widely used indus While the goal is to reach the new levels trial gas that has been linked to liver can through "engineering and work practice cer. controls," such controls must be deemed The ruling, which comes after nine "feasible,", and companies can deal with months of controversy, brought a lawsuit any exposures produced by inadequate con from the plastics industry, which contends trols by giving workers respirators. the standard can't be met, and criticism A date wasn't set in the ruling for im from organized labor, which contends the proving plant engineering and practices to rule contains too many loopholes. Vinyl the point where respirators won't be needed. chloride is a basic ingredient in making What's more, until January 1976 workers many everyday plastic products. may refuse to wear the respirators when ex The new standard, issued by the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, requires that, start ing Jan. 1, vinyl chloride levels in the air that workers breathe be held to one part vinyl chloride per million parts of air, aver aged over an eight-hour period. Actual levels may exceed one part per million for short periods, but they must average out to no more than five parts per million for any 15-minute period within the eight-hour time span. Since last April, companies handling vinyl chloride have been under an emer gency restriction of 90. parts per million, without any time period. The emergency standard was issued after the discovery, beginning last January, of cases of a rare and fatal liver cancer, an giosarcoma, among workers exposed to vinyl chloride. Nineteen deaths among such workers in the U.S. and other countries have been attributed to liver cancer caused by long exposure to the chemical. Vinyl chloride is a gas that is processed posures don't exceed 25 parts per million, even if they exceed the one part per million over eight hours specified in the regulation. Despite this attempt at compromise, however, the Society of the Plastics Indus try and some producers sued the Labor De partment to overturn the ruling only mo ments after it was issued yesterday. And Firestone Plastic Co., a unit of Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., said it will ask a court to stay enforcement of the standard while the suits are being tried. Ralph Harding, president of the industry group, said the standard is "unrealistic, probably will be impossible for most, if not all, of the Industry to meet and appears to have been developed on some basis inconsis tent with recorded facts." The job-safety agency "may believe that it has adopted a compromise position," but the result Is un acceptable-to the Industry, he added. Todd C. Walker, president of the Fire stone unit, asserted that the standard "puts the vinyl plastic industry on a Collision course with economic disaster." He said it "is comparable to a law aimed at stopping to form a powdery substance known as poly automobile deaths by lowering the speed vinyl chloride. Polyvinyl chloride, in resin limits to one mile per hour." or pellet form, is then fabricated into a wide variety of finished plastic products. Though only about 6,500 workers are em ployed in plants that make vinyl chloride and polyvinyl chloride, about 350,000 others, who work in facilities that create finished products from the' polyvinyl chloride, will also be covered by the new ruling. Workers who handle only finished products, and don't have any chance of contact with "raw" vinyl chloride or polyvinyl chloride, are the only ones exempted. The Labor Department initially proposed that exposure be limited to "no detectable level," without any averageing over time. This proposal pleased organized labor and some key researchers in the field of occupa tional health. But the Society of the Plastics Industry, a trade group, and many compa nies using the chemicals, denounced it as technologically impossible and warned it would drive the industry out of business. In selecting as its final standard one part per million over eight hours and five parts per million over 15-minutes, the department apparently was trying to reach a compro mise between its original idea and the toughest proposal offered by the industry, which would have left exposures as high as 10 parts per million in some plants and 25 In Midland, Mich., Dow Chemical Co. said the standards were "unnecessarily stringent" and unsupported by the data on Dow workers that was presented at public hearings. Organized labor expressed some immedi ate reservations of its own. In Akron, Ohio, Peter Bommarito, presi dent of the United Rubber Workers union, which represents many vinyl chloride work ers, said "it would appear this thing has a number of loopholes in it." Mr. Bommarito reserved final judgment until he has seen a full text of the regulations, but he was quick to take issue with the decision to let workers decline the use of a respirator until 1976. "We can't make a guy put on a respirator, and while he's not wearing one, he may be endangering himself.." What is more, he added. "The respirator situation is going to be even worse in nonunion plants." Union safety experts have been heavily involved in the rule-making process, and one of their major contentions has been that protection from the gas should be derived primarily from controlling exposure through engineering and work-rule changes rather than from respirators, which workers often balk at wearing because they can be bulky and unreliable. parts per million in others. The unions are expected to study the rul The department sought to smooth further ing in depth, and they, too, could file a law the adjustment for industry by delaying suit if they conclude the final standards are until ne.t January the drop from the pres Adequate. UCC 093830