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BARRON'S Explosive Controversy Paga 3 The Dispute Over PVC Sends Shock Waves Throughout Industry : By Dana L. Thomas sure, claims that even this huge in December, Dr. John Creech, a com DISCLOSURE last January of the vestment will not enable it to meet death from angiosarcoma, a OSHA's stringent requirements with rare cancer of the liver, of throouet resorting to respiratory equip workers at B. F. Goodrich's poly- ment. The latter, it points out, not ` vinyl chloride resin plant iri Louis only could reduco worker pro ville prompted the U.S. Occupntion- ductivity, but even more important, al Safety & Health Administration also pose a health hazard. . (OSFTA) to take stiff measures to re- j duce tho health hazard. After impos jug temporary lower exposure levels for the chemical, OSHA ruled in Oc- Severe Resin Shortages Industry observers warn that it OSHA persists in its ruling, many ! tober that, beginning next January - 1, producers and fabricators must : equip their plants to cut the level to near-zero -- one-part per million -- .more firms will be forced to shut down wholly or partially, creating a severe shortage of the resin and sky rocketing prices. On the other hand, compared with the 50 parts per mil government agencies, labor unions lion previously in effect. Arguing and lobbyists for industrial health that it ia technologically and eco nomically unfeasible to meet such n rigid standard, representatives of . the industry have filed n suit soeking.modificnlion of the OSHA ruling; controls argue that corporations must bo held socially accountable and forced to put considerations of human life and safety above profits --whatever the cost. So the battle . oral hearings will be held by the has been joined; the outcome, as ' U.S. Court of Appeals this Friday, noted, will have far-reaching effects. pany doctor, learned that Earl Parks, who had begun working at the facility in 1913 and had been forced to retire in the late 'Sixties, owing to poor health, had died the previous August of a liver disease. Concerned about tho suspiciously, high number of Goodrich workers suffering liver diseases, Dr. Creech asked to see an autopsy on Parks. When he learned that Parks had died of angiosarcoma of the liver, the doctor recalled that two years before another Goodrich worker had succumbed to the samo disease. Since angiosarcoma is exceedingly rare, the incidence of two such deaths in the plant's small work force struck Dr. Creech as highly ominous. He contacted Goodrich's occupa tional health director, who hired Tobershaw-Cooper Associates, an epidemiological research firm, to Meanwhile, the Societ5f oF the Plas Vinyl chloride, the basic raw ma conduct an investigation of the mor tics Industry has asked the court terial for polyvinyl resin production, tality files of Goodrich workers. for an extension of its January dead is a gas at room temperature; it is This had barely begun when a third line. synthesized from chlorine and ethy worker, who had been at the Good . Needless to say, tho polyvinyl lene in plants which resemble oil re rich polyvinyl plant for 23 years, case has sent shock waves through fineries. It was launched commer- died of angiosarcoma. Greatly dis out the industry. PVC resin is n basic material employed in n host of indus c'sr&z i &?..v trial and household products. Major uses include the packaging of food, the upholstery, wiring and compo nent parts of autos, in building and Arguing that they are being asked to adhere to standards that are technically impossible and construction, phonograph records, piping, luggage and sporting goods. While producers employ G.CKV) work economically unfeasible, the PVC producers r.re taking their case to court. , ers to turn out and fabricate the res in, two millir `obs depend on its use. The val f products depen dent on PVC runs over $60 billion a year. In short, the OSHA ruling could have an adverse impact on a big slice of the U.S. economy. dally In the `Thirties and, thanks to its tire resistance and ability to be molded into a wide range of forms, was dubbed a "wonder plastic," turned, Goodrich management re ported the deaths to officials of the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH). After in- "Blew V le on Itself'* which wont into hundreds of indus trial and household products. Last Ironically, prior to the public an year, nine fii'ms produced vinyl nouncement of the death of the chloride gas in 14 plants. Their out Goodrich workers, the PVC industry put was used by 21 companies to itself did nil the medical research turn out over five billion pounds of which established the link between polyvinyl resin, in 37 plants. The vinyl chloride and cancer. Ralph L. leading producer is B. F. Goodrich, Harding Jr., president of the Society followed by Firestone, Conoco, Union of the Plastics Industry, declares: Carbide, Borden, Diamond Sham "This is a unique situation. Industry rock, Robintech, Tenncco, Air Prod ' financed the studies and blew the ucts, Goodyear and Hooker (division whistle on itself." of Occidental Petroleum). However, government agencies rushed in quickly thereafter, mak ing up for lost time by imposing what industry spokesmen claim are unrealistic safety standards. The PVC issue is a test case and perhaps only the first in a long line of con troversies ahead. For OSHA is just one of several new government agencies which have been estab lished since 1970, as a result of the lobbying of environmentalists, tho rise of consumerism and the grow ing crusade for industrial health re forms. The OSHA* ruling on exposure lev els already has had repercussions in the PVC business--including pres sure on stock prices of major pro ducers. Goodyear has announced it is shutting down a facility at Niaga ra, slashing its output of PVC res in by 5(Ki, or 50 million pounds, and Vinyl chloride had not been con sidered a seriously hazardous chemical. However, in the process of conversion from gas to resin, there is substantial leakage and the chief worry has been of plant explo sions. The gas can induce narcosis (sleep). In fact, it was once tried \ out as an anesthetic but was dis carded, since it caused heart irrita tion. During the `Sixties, in cleaning out the vats during the conversion process, incidences of ocro-ostcolysis (bone and skin disease) cropped up among workers, and VCM proces sors introduced new techniques to reduce exposure. To further protect workers, OSHA, which was estab lished in 1970 under the industrial health safety act, set limits of 500 parts per million of the chemical, to which workers could be exposed elimmr>4'ng GO of the plant's 410 jobs. in gas and resin plants. Go' while programming a 542 Matters were thought to be under llay over the next three or control until the tragedies at the ten"'ve consultation, the news was rr public on January 22, 1974. ine announcement hit the indus try like a bombshell. William Lloyd, director of health surveillance for NIOSII, declared, "This has to be one of the most startling findings ever in industrial medicine." Govern ment health officials immediately launched a nationwide investigation. Staff members of NIOSH and OSHA went to polyvinyl chemical plants all over the country to study the situation. Charging that "workers are tired of being guinea pigs," offi cials of the United Rubber Workers and the Oil, Chemical & Atomic En ergy Workers, demanded that PVC producers eliminate tho exposure hazards or shut down. Health Crusader In addition, they asked Dr. Irving J, Selikoff, director of Mt. Sinai Hos pital's Environmental Sciences Lab oratory, to undertake medical inves tigations on their behalf. Over the years, Dr. Selikoff has built a repu tation ns a crusader for improved safety conditions in industry. A highly articulate spokesman, and a consultant to the AFL-CIO, the doc tor is known as the Ralph Nader of the industrial health field. He pitched in vigorously. Assisted by labor personnel, he began digging into the health records at producers' plants. to reduce worker expo aforementioned Goodrich plant. Last Then the Industry suffered an other blow. It was disclosed- that an Italian Professor of Medicine, Cesare Maltoni, hod discovered--two years before tho announcement of the Goodrich deaths--in laboratory ex periments that rats exposed to 230 parts per million of vinyl chloride developed angiosarcoma. The infor mation had been transmitted to the government and medical societies in the U.S., hut nothing had been done about it. Indeed, up until the Good rich fatalities, OSHA continued to insist that it was safe for production plants to operate at a 500-ppm ex posure level. Another disclosure was equally sobering. Even before Professor Maltoni's discovery, Solvay & Cie, a Belgian polyvinyl maker, which be came worried over the increasing in cidence of ncro-osleolysis among workers at its plants, hired Dr. P. L. Viola to do medical research on the subject. Dr. Viola was unable to de velop acro-osteloysis in his labora tory 'animals, but he produced something worse -- cancer of the liver. Requested Secrecy Tho results were reported In Tokyo In 1969, and in 1970, to the Tenth International Cancer Con gress, meeting in Houston. To check out Dr. Viola's studies, four Euro pean cher.iiqal companies hired Professor Maltoni to conduct the aWcmontioncd . experiments. As noted, in 1972 he produced malig nancies in animals which were ex posed to 250 ppm of vinyl cl de. In January 1973, thi9 infor. ion was passed on to the Manufacturing Chemists Association in the U.S., with the request it be kept confiden tial until Professor Maltoni had the chance to further analyze r ' in terpret his studies. The bf- vas lifted in July 1973 and the report on Dr, Maltoni's experiments was transmitted by the Manufacturing Chemists Association to NIOSH and other government agencies. Inexplicably, nothing was done about Professor Maltoni's findings, The Labor Department claims, in retrospect, that it didn't get the com plete report; the MCA insists that the government did receive the data, but failed to comprehend its signif icance. In any event, Washington agencies made no effort to change the standards of exposure that OSHA ` had decreed for the industry in 3971 --namely, 500 parts per million par ticles--double the level at which Dr. Maltoni produced liver cancer in his test animals. Meanwhile, Great Britain and Germany had lightened up their exposure levels. In the U.S., Dow Chemical had been raising its standards over the years, and Good rich, whose subsequent announce ment of fatalities was to touch oif the storm, by the middle of 1973 had upgraded its exposure goal consid erably above that of OSHA. The disclosure . that Washington and tho MCA had known about the cancer-producing danger of vinyl chloride months before the Good rich deaths sparked a public furor. A Nashville newspaper ran a series Continued on Page 12 LiuZ.'S9]7g I w a O -* 4^