Document aDxeXkM10MQ7MLMm7p1km1V4M

FILE NAME: New York State & NY Times (NY) DATE: 1974 Sept 22 DOC#: NY066 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: NYT Article - Expendable Americans-Muscle and Blood n e w t o r n an ts u o j / ^ u r j e n i / i u f . t p u , iy /4 , PioyiK si Historical Newspopos The New York Times (1851 -2002) A little bit of crud Expendable By Paul Brodeur. 274 pp. New York: The Viking Press. $8.95. M uscle ud Blood By Rachel Scott. Illustrated. 3OS pp. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $8.95. B y RO BERT CONO T ,. "I think we are all willing to have a little bit of crud in our longs and a full ' stomach rather than a whole lot of clean air and nothing to eat," the Texas legislator from ly ie r says in a newspaper interview quoted in the epi logue of ' `Expendable Americans." ``And 1 don't want a bunch of environ mentalists and communists telling me what's good for my life and family." The "little bit of crud" is asbestos fi ber, a severely lung-scarring and high ly carcinogenous agent. Of approxi mately 875 workers exposed at the Ty ler asbestos plant of P.P.G. Industries, 260 are statistically expected to deve lop cancer during the next 20 o r 30 years, and many others will be incapaci tated by asbestiosis, a drastic reduc- - tion in lung capacity. ' Once asbestos fibers are inhaled or ingested, they remain in the body. For decades it has been known that even secondary contact with asbestos over a period of years could cause cancer. Relatives of workers .have become diseased simply by being exposed to ' the dust workers brought home on their clothes. Years ago a New Jersey 'engineer who had developed an asbestos pipe covering died from mesothelioma, a previously rare type of cancer now associated with asbestos. His daughter also died from mesothelioma--and her only exposure had been to occasional samples of asbestos brought home by her father. In Tyler, the seeds of cancer have been strewn far beyond the pod of the plant. Although P.P.G. Industries dis mantled the factory in 1972, other workers in the industrial park in which it was located had been exposed for years. Waste material was trucked to huge open dumps. A half million bur lap bags impregnated with asbestos dust were sold to a nursery, which used them for packaging plants. Robert Conot is author of "American Odyssey," a history of Detroit and America. Reproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner Further reproduction prchrbted without perm ission The magnitude of the ( f a s te r result- ten times those of the general popuia- Well then, the manager went on, ing from "the little bit of crud" won't tion. you've also got calcium deposits on be fully established in Tyler until the In Idaho's Sunshine silver mine 91 yur ,un8s- You must drinking too year 2000. In the meantime, workers men died because the evacuation order * . and communities elsewhere in the na-was delayed a half hour after smoke Jn tion continue to be subjected to the began billowing through the passage-are finan?ed by iniustry and^by hazards of asbestos. ways--no foreman was willing to take wishy-washy Federal and state en- The Reserve Mining Company keeps responsibility for halting production inforcement of labor laws. Thousands of dumping large amounts of'waste con-case the fire could be extinguished. At men have died while members of the taining asbestos in Lake Superior and the Thiokol Chemical Corporation in "medical-industrial complex," as contaminating the water supply of Georgia slipshod safety regulations re-Brdeur calls it. have pigeonholed and more than 100,000 people living in the suited in a devastating explosion that P*aced slanted interpretations on their Duluth area, even while it is appealing killed 29 workers and maimed m a n y ^ " ^ e y ^ c o lle c te d " ^ n* anayzed a desist order in the courts. In Ambler, others. In the California fields farm Many y government officials are Pa., a 10-block-long asbestos dump workers labor among hazardous pesti-protective of industry. Studies fi- snakes throught the heart of town and cides. nanced by public funds are tucked is used by kids as a playground. , Miss Scott spent more than three away and are difficult to obtain, de ' ,,spite the Freedom of Information Act. U the current rate of funding, a Feder al health and safety inspector would visit each business on the average of about once every. SOyears. Neither author suggests what might be done to get industry to clean its own house, except to have stricter and xpanded implementation of current laws. But the enormous expansion of |the Federal bureaucracy this would en- ail is certainly not the answer. Indus- |try has been lackadaisical about safety and health because it has not been held sponsible for its own shortcomings, worker cannot sue his employer. The 15,000 workers who are killed on he job or the 100,000 who die from ccupational diseases annually have no edress against their companies. Neither do the estimated 390,000 mm vho are disabled each year, and who oust then support their families on the 3,000 to $4,000 a year they receive rom workmen's compensation and velfare. .............. .............. ........................... If new laws were enacted giving Sure, even tnougn iour-nnns or mills, ana his c n ^ ^iijil^ ^ ^xiapatyr^vvorkers killed or disabled on the job the areas in its factories already meetthe assembly lines. Her journeys into benefits equivalent to their lifetime those standards. The explanation, ac- the homes of disabled workers are wages, industry would find it essential cording to a labor union official, is trips of depression and despair. to **1 corrective measures. Managers that other firms using raw asbestos Both authors are angry, and their would, of course, claim they could not and asbestos products supplied by sympathies are dearly with the work- affo" j such a cleanup, and that it Johns-Manville might have difficulty ers. Management will undoubtedly criii- ^ "u d l 5 sl!lt ^ h,ghf L p rc ffn meeting the standar,ds add be force.d to-e,e the books as unbalanced. And hEuTgeEdruni iZn t2erm5 s o2r 5lo,st5 m2an2powe!r switeh to substitutes or go out oftheyare. and deprived families. business. Factories, mines and construction So far as ^ ^ t y of the public is While in "Expendable Americans" Proief^s are places of hazard, and a concerned, it is clear that stringent Brodeur concentrates on asbestos, Ra-certain nund>er accidents are inevi- measures are needed to test and monichel Scott, a 27-year-old reporter forteMe' But what is galling to any fair-tor the tens of thousands of industrial TTie Baltimore Sun explores the wholeminded Person is ^ e hypocrisy dis-chemicals that have come into use. It pec <* M t t l M = .tol t e a m "Muscle 1 Si * * f e _ .te > e s to treatment of employes as drones th atwhich been In Hazleton, a town in the depressed t* discarded after their usefulness * " ? ,n `he very and application coal-mining area of eastern Pennsylva- over * these chemicals. nia, beryllium has caused the same w hen th X-rays of one of the work- rodeur ant* ^cott have broken im- Wnil nt hai- ae asb esto in Tvler In ?e . portant ground. Let us hope their books k a t theJ y Ier P,ant showed a sPot onwiil stimulate Americans to demand the steel mills, the mostly black cokea | ungi the manager called Mm in and that scientists and government offi- oven workers, continually exposed to told him he'd better stop smoking. TheCials go on and dig even deeper into coal tars, have cancer rates three to worker replied that he'd nevef smoked,the hazards and abuses. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.