Document QX8Bd3z0qBmkRkGQXEMdpdqv8

vented lube from oath engine V. at very high pressure and forces g^Fcl away from the cnpine intake. Other oi*cratinp problems include temperatures that are fiOF to 60F he* low zero, fifl-mph winds, and total dark* ness in December arid January in the High A retie. Engines on airstrip cquifn mrnt surh as trucks and snowplows arc nol I timed nlT from Ihr. 1 to Mar. IS. Though the regional*, too, fare fuel problems, all are predicting revenue inrreasi's ibis year. They see their hippest pmwih inential in scheduled pas senger service, altbnnph no one is seoil'mp ai the hip bucks to he made in bauliup dnllinp eipiipmenl-and lieer- to ui! teams in the Arctic or to the olTapnin. on-apain $6-hillion James Bay livdroolectric project in northwestern PWA ships cattle to the Orient and oil-drilling equipment to the Arctic Quebec. Nordair flies there from Mon treal. and Qucbccnir operates cargo- only service. Cattle plan*. In the eyes of many indus* Iry observers. Pacific Western is the best rim oT the repionals. Its fleet con sists of seven Bocinp 737s, with three more on order, plus two 727s, two long- ranpe 707s. five Convair 640s, four Her cules jet-pmp freighters, and a few fly- inp l>onts. I'wa's operations range from its scheduled passenger services to shipping cattle to the Orient and ex tensive relief work in such places as Ni geria and Bangladesh. Scheduled pas senger services account for roughly (wW of pwa's revenues, charters for almut 10%, and cargo services for the remaining 25%. Its cattle plane is typical of pwa's willingness to provide specialized ser vices to meet special needs. A conven tional Boeing 707-320C, the plane can be equipped with either 13 stalls hold ing about 85 1,000-lb. cattle or double tiers of pens that will accommodate a great many more smaller animals. Donald N. Watson, Pwa president, says that the plane has carried as many as 700 cattle from Toronto to Athens. The real keys to profits for pwa and the other regionals, however, have been jets and charters. The jets boosted available seat-miles on routes with good load factors, and the char ters gave the carriers the capability to use their aircraft more economically. Keith Miller, executive vice-presi dent of Eastern Provincial Airways, estimates the seat-mile cost on a 109- passenger 737 at 2.2e a mi., compared with 5.5e for each mile on the 41-seat Handley Page Heralds the 737s are re placing. The hrcak-cvcn load factor on the jets is 42%, vs. about 80% on the prop planes. "The stimulation of ^737 is very substantial," Miller says. TTEECCHNOLOGY ------ Industry's latest cancer scare The deaths of five workers In ten years seem linked to working on the plastic Federal officials met Iasi week with plastics industry executives in Cleve land and Washington to try to deter mine whether the industry has un knowingly Itecn exposing some of its 6,500 blue-collar workers to fumes that can lead to a rare form of liver cancer known as angiosarcoma. The focus was on 28 of the 42 plants in the U. S. that make vinyl chloride or use it to produce polyvinyl chloride resin (pvc), one of the most common plastics. The hearings grew out of the deaths of four workers over the last six years at a plant in louLMViiie, Ky. They emiltTuTlimntely bring costly new rules for the pvc in dustry, whose resins are used in such items as pipe, floor tile, phonograph records, and latex wall paints. "Im provements in work practices will prolwhly require a 100% increase in the work force," says Walter B. Connolly, Jr., labor counsel for Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., which opeEJTc?W^P!fTO? in Pottstown, Pa., and Perryville, Md. In any case, the current pvc hulla baloo is certain to spark new demands by organized lalx>r for closer exam ination of the possible long-range ef fects on workers of other industrial chemicals. "The cancer look 15 to 20 years to develop,'* says one federal epi demiologist. Other chemicals could have similar "laleney" fK>nwls, he says, so there could be more eruptions in the years ahead. "1 Hojm? we're not seeing the beginning of a health rnlbipse." The vinyl chloride ease is not the chemical industry's first encounter with osha over carcinogenic*. Last May the agency invoked emergency standards for 14 chemicals (rw- May 19, 1973). Final rules for these mate rials went into effect last week, though both industry and labor are suing for judicial review. The prospect of new, petrochemical versions of such health time bombs as "htack lung" and mercury poisoning, makes plastic industry leaders shudder. And indeed, new data presented at the standing-room-only nsHA hearing by Italian researcher Cesare Malloni, of Bologna's Institute of Cancer, leave little doubt that vinyl chloride is car- cinogenic-at least to rats, He exposed 67 rats to air containing 250 parts j>er million of vinyl chloride oft and on for 52 weeks. By the end of 127 weeks. Maltoni reported, two had contracted angiosarcoma and nine contracted other forms of cancer. Many chemical industry executives had downgraded the importance of earlier animal lest results because the dosages were mas- A solvent that crippled chemical workers Last August, Thomas F. Meade. 22, was stricken with a nerve disease after two years of work at Columbus Coated Fabrics Co., a subsidiary of Borden, Inc, in Columbus, Ohio, that makes vi nyl-coated fabrics for luggage and wall coverings. The disease, diagnosed as peripheral neuropathy, left Meade crippled, and today he wears leg braces. He is the most severely af fected of some 130 workers at the plant who have suffered symptoms of the dis ease. The lesser symptoms include weakness and loss of coordination. When the symptoms became wide spread last summer, state health offi cials tested the nerve responses of the plant's 1,124 employees and told 200 of them to stay home for two months. Many others stayed home, too, out of fear. By December, most employees had returned, and many who had showed neuropathic symptoms ap peared well again. Meanwhile, Ohio health officials had zeroed in on an ink solvent, methyl butyl ketone, used in applying decora tive patterns, as the most likely culprit. While continuing to monitor the plant's air, they banned the use of mbk. The plant's managers have switched to a substitute, improved ventilation, is sued respirators to print shop workers, and moved lunch areas away from work areas. But Corwin Smith, president of Lo cal 487 of the Textile Workers Union of America, which represents the plant's workers, is not satisfied. He says that 26 members are still out with the dis ease. that eight of them are severely crippled, and that three workers whose condition improved are now sick again. On Feb. 9, the locaL struck the plant as negotiations collapsed on a new con tract; one of the union demands was a "proper work environment." Says Smith: "People here don't know whether they will be crippled in the fu ture or not." 1M BUSINESS Faeruary 23. RSV 0006708 TECHNOLOGY sive. on the onlrr In 6,000 to JO.Ih.,, ppm limit recommended since 15)72 by nnrs, Jr., general manager of the I'la*- pjmv the American Conference of Govern Ti>* bombshell. Tin* cancer crisis hit the ment Industrial Hygienists. In 1970, vinyl industry jusl a month ago. Not Kalian researcher Dr. I\ I*. Viola re ' there arc not enough fume* in the air ing an unusual nnmlv-r of liver nil* ported that rats exposed to heavy doses to smell." Where concentration* are mrnls iimmiK the Louisville plant of vinyl chloride develojted malignant higher, he say*, "wc have ordered our workers, It. K Goodrich physicians ran tumors. Several Kuropean chemical men to wear gas masks." blo**d t'sts lust full cm the 271 workers companies banded together to support Vinyl fumes arise partly from leaks in the plant's rvi' facility and found 55 research by Maltoni. and in the U. S.f in pipes and valves. But another likely with apparent liver abnormalities. The the Manufacturing Chemists Assn, be source is the polymerization vessels, company reviewed medical and insur gan to discuss an industry-wide re when they are opened for cleaning and ance records and by Jan. 16 had discov search program. A year ago, the mca maintenance, niosh officials are con ered three deaths since 1971 that were set up an animal test program that will centrating now on the polymerization attributable to angiosarcoma. Federal not be completed until late 1975. The process, hut they plan to extend their health officials estimate the annual association also contracted with Taber- studies eventually to monomer produc death loll in the U. S. from this rare shaw-Cooper Associates, of Berkeley, tion, as well as pvc fabrication and form of cancer at only even consumer use of pvc alioiit 20. On Jan. 29 fur products. ther review by Goodrich Since safe limits for vi turned up a 1%8 death nyl chloride are unknown, (two more cases, includ niosh is emphasizing safe ing a 1964 death, were work, practices rather identified this week). than arbitrary concentra The company's top tion limits. Its recommen management had already dations for the Louisville decided on public disclo plant, for example, in sure. It reported the situ clude such things as over ation to (he National In head cleaning, daily show stitute for Omipational ers and clothing changes Safety & Health and to for workers, and ex I he Kentucky Lalinr Dept. panded air monitoring. It also Itegan notifying Pinning K down. Goodrich's employees in all of its vi Louisville plant uses nyl chloride and rvc oper about 50 different chem ations. and it sent a re icals, and there is no proof lease to the press. "We of a direct link between arc doing our utmost to vinyl chloride and the express our real and liver cancer cases. But serious concern." says NIOSH officials are certain John J. Bell, the com that the link exists, and pany's public affairs direc ABF Goodrich safety inspector uses a chemical "sniffer" to check the MCA's Johnson con tor, "and yet prevent any whether vinyl chloride fumes are leaking from a polymerizing reactor cedes that "vinyl chloride undue panic." is the material of primary niosh. which hnd immediately sent Calif., to cheek the available death suspicion." Only two other carcinogens, export* to liouisvillc. held a briefing records of workers at other vinyl arsenic and thorium-232, arc proven early last week in Cleveland to tell plants. "So far," says Kenneth John causes of angiosarcoma, and medical management and labor leaders in the son, MCA technical director, "the results records on the four Goodrich workers industry what it knew about the car haven't been subjected to statistical showed no exposure to either. cinogenic effects of vinyl chloride. And analysis." Both NIOSH and industry officials on Friday, many of the same execu To Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, the history hope, though, that the link is peculiar tives showed up in Washington for the shows that "our approach to the prob- to Goodrich's Louisville plant. Says OSHA hearing. The federal agency will determine whether the situation war NIOSH hopes that the cause rants either an emergency standard or is a combination NIOSH Director Marcus M. Key: "We still hold to the possibility that the cause could be a combination of two or at least a start on the regular rule- of factors at only one plant making process. three things acting together in the manufacturing process." The attitude of organized labor was lem was, shall I say, leisurely." Seli The Louisville plant is Goodrich's a major concern. Anthony Mazzocchi, koff, director of environmental medi oldest pvc plant and. unlike most legislative director of the Oil, Chemical cine at New York City's Mount Sinai newer plants, is enclosed. It also has a & Atomic Workers, who attended the School of Medicine, has been a frequent number of older workers on the line. niosh briefing, says: "It's apparent critic of industrial health practices, and Some workers may have been affected we're dealing with a carcinogen. We one chemical executive calls his re by an epidemic of hepatitis that swept want to reduce exposure to zero. But mark, made at the OSHA meeting, the city a few years ago. A number nf we have a wait-and-see attitude right "hindsight." other rubber and chemical plants, and now." Belatedly or not, some pvc producers their fumes, are located nearby. And While the fatalities at Louisville have been tightening up their oper came as a shock to the industry, vinyl ations. Goodrich, for example, says it chloride has boon suspect for a long had already done, or was doing, moat of time. Some 15 years ag< iM l the things wosh recommended after Co., Itascd on its own studies, iulu|IllOf visiting the Louisville plant, including an average exposure limit of 60 ppm slicking to a 60-ppm average exposure for its workora-well below the 200- limit. "At 50 ppm," says Harry Con- the plant is one of the few that uses jjjljjJen^WonjJp as a copolymerizfng TgenTntudoIpnJaeger, a physiologist U thr Harvard School of rn n~ n<\iitFu told the (KHA mooting "that lost <fata nmx'iir U muni io iiuil iinLimmi. foo. a* a carcinogen. RSY 0 0 0 6 7 0 9 tecHwoiooT BUSINESS WEEK feerui'V Z3 '97-