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r To : From: TEXAS C 1TY PLA.'IT March 30, 1981 Dr. Mr. Ms. Dr. Dr. Mr. Mr. S. D. Austin J. B. Browning Ann Haughton T. A. Lincoln / H. M. Utidijian* L. A. Wilkinson R. L. Yelton D. L. Engle We were interviewed by this publication. We are indeed grateful that the hatchet swung only at Dow. DLE/gr Attachment ft /yZt 7ZL ucc 054021 I --my production down and holding others up. I believe 1 could have done better when back gets better. Done some jobs by self--where others would have needed help. ... the very things I thought was right seemed to get me deeper in water: I) advising some on how to do job. 2) Leave my job and show apprentice how to do job, if I could. 3) Safety--should have kept mouth shut-- but thought 1 was helping. If I get back on job-- I'll have to make a complete reverse of my safety thoughts and job improvement. Saturday, June 26--They are pulling the strings --it's all right with me--"this psycho stuff," but 1 might have wanted to "see an older one--thinking maybe he'd be more experienced. I could see, and I certainly wasn't worse than lot of others--most overly criticizing toward me. Stone's penmanship, clear and neat on June 24, is slowly becoming that of a first grader. [Undated]--Go see my supervisor--get an appointment with retirement people at Personnel. ... Be sure and don't agree to any retirement that will stop too shortly--like 1 heard happened to sev eral of our men--who signed up wrong agreement. [Undated]--According to (the company doctor), my work has ruined -my cartilege in the right knee. He says this very common on-job in jury--in and out of shells on knees, also knees tak ing a beating when running large air guns, impacts, etc. . 1 know my knees get so sore couldn't hardly crawl back in shell sometime--they got OK in a few days--just kept working tike always. 1 think back and knee should be mentioned in reports to .. . Dow. I Undated]--I've done some real accurate work on my retirement income. Don't know tax right but I'm not off far--1 figured high. I think nty in come will be $623 per week. OREAT! No more bang iron and working them oid condensers. 1 know I'll get to feeling better. All other men looked so much better after they retire. We breathe some terrible fumes out there. After a 16-monlh ordeal that took him through surgery for removal of a lemon-size brain tumor, a second round of surgery for removal of a blood clot in the brain, radia tion treatments that left him paralyzed and bedridden for ten months, horrifying sei zures, and loss of his ability to swallow, eat, talk, or see, Jack Stone died on October 13, 1977, of brain cancer. Mary Stone says Dow has been awfully good to her since. She has a pension, and they look in on her occasionally. 4 SECRETARY FOR A DAY (continued from page 47) But I vetoed the suggestion. Yes, Dresser's name would deservedly get dragged through the mud, but how about my name? No, I had done no wrong, but 1 could see the head lines now: Man Sues To Be Secretary. The media, often blind to the intricacy and sub tlety of complex issues, tend to pounce on the oddity of an event, the entertaining thing that viewers or readers can instantly digest. In this case I was the oddity, and in the twodimensional universe of print or broadcast FortM color Mhogitph, IS**V, ot Kn OtuM "Flying WM TurKoy," mm SS.00 to Bor,Si#-XX, N.Y., N.Y. lOZSA - An Unforgettable Experience To see a Wild Turkey rising from the forest floor is an awe some sight no man is likely to forget. The bird's wing-beats resound like thunder claps, and its feathers fan out in grand display The Wild Turkey is the largest native bird capable of flight and an apt symbol for America's greatest native whiskey-Wild Turkey. MwmsfiwiiiMr **' 9IILMIN Rwfcn Wj|W. am. QtoaBE3Ej WILD TURKEY*/101 PROOF / 8 YEARS OLD Austin, Nichols Distilling Co., Lawrrnccburf, Ktntucky 45 1981 HOUSTON CITY MACAZINfc 9/ ucc 054022 SHADOW OVER BRA7.QSPOBT Sixty miles south ofHouston lies a bucolic coastal community with a thriving economy and the trappingjs ofthe good life. There'sjust oneproblem. n July 4, 1976, Joe and Laura Tod of 88 9 Lake Jackson went over to the center B 9 of town to ring the Bicentennial Bell 9 B as part of the holiday ceremony. Joe B-B started ringing it. He wouldn't stop. Mrs. Tod, then in her early fifties, asked Joe to stop ringing the bell. She said it was too loud and was bothering other -holiday celebrants. Joe, 58, smiled at her eerily and went on ringing. For the next two weeks, Joe Tod, who had worked for 35 years at the Dow Chemical plant in nearby Freeport, behaved irrational' ly. He ran stop signs. He drove on the wrong side of the road, veering only when oncom ing cars were about to smash into him. Then Former Houstonian Lee Hochberg works for radio station KCBS in San Francisco. one day he began vomiting. He was rushed to Houston's Methodist Hospital, where doctors offered a frightening diagnosis: Tod had glioblastoma, a rare and fast-growing brain tumor that four times in five presages a quick and painful death. Four days later, brain surgeons operated on him. Curiously, Tod had familiar company in Methodist's neurosurgery ward that sum mer. Two other Dow employees were under going surgery for the same form of brain cancer, and several others from Dow had nonmalignant brain tumors. Still more resi dents of the Freeport-Lake Jackson area were being treated for other forms ofcancer. One widow of a Dow worker in Methodist with glioblastoma at the time remembers that "the cancer seemed like it was all around you if you lived in that area." Before developing 'W*': - Jffc'-' rent population. Today the 4,500-acre Dow !'Seems like every time complex includes five electrical generating plants and a 500-mile network of pipelines. you turn arounrt^M^ someone you knowf \is getting cancer^ l one widow says: Brazosport has become the fifth-largest income-producing community in -Texas; 14 chemical companies, led by Dow, account for half that wealth. . Dow has even had its hands in the archi tecture of the area: back in 1942, Alden Dow of the original Dow family planned the area's most populous town. Lake Jackson-- . ' V' ' \*gr;v..' `5^VK2L ' ^------ brain cancer, her husband,:Jeny Miller, had worked in the magnesiurn^celh.fwhere an a pleasant place that looks like Houston's Meyerland, plopped peacefully down on the flat Gulf Coast in the shadows of Dow's electric current is used to break down magne belching smokestacks. .' sium chloride into the metal magnesium and Only 60 miles from Houston's frenzy, chlorine gas. He died later that autumn at the. Brazosport is surprisingly bucolic. The eve .age of 38.' Joe Tod diediof brain*cancer in ning exodus along Highway 332 from the -.February 1977.^?^^^^^^ Dow plant toward Lake Jackson is not so jj^Last summeri" the federal government-re"-^ much a rush as a slow and steady spread to ported* a' startling." discoveryrat^)east '25 ward home. Off to the left, set far from the `former Dow cmployees had died of brain highway, lies the west end of Dow's ten-mile- .cancer over the last 40 years. That is a figure long complex; to the right, chain hotels rise epidemiologists call statistically significant it from open Helds; dead ahead are the dying is twice the rate among Brazoria County resi remains of a spectacular orange Texas sun dents not employed at Dow, i: set, enhanced by some airborne emission. 3 : Above all there's a feeling of wide-open l razosport, where the mouth of the space and a countrified, satisfied mood as 1 Brazos River empties into the Gulf of the evening lights begin to sparkle within the Mexico south of Houston, is a slick Dow plant. name for nine interlocking communi Last May 30, a headline in the local news ties that serve as hometowns for sev-' paper, the Brazosport Facts, warned area era!; thousand chemical workers in, residents, "Brain Cancer Deaths Higher Freeport. "It's Texas! fastest-grow Than Normal." The Occupational Safety ing industrial complex,'! trumpets the local and Health Administration (OSHA) and its chamber of commerce, and the statistics bear research arm, the National Institute for Oc that out--the area's population-has doubled - cupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), had Since I960, to over'63,000,'and is concen been conducting an investigation that would trated in neighboring Lake Jackson,'Free eventually turn up 18 brain cancer cases at port, and Clute. The population is expected the Union Carbide plant in Texas City, five at to double again by the year 2000, , Monsanto in Texas City, and several more 'The hub of the. area is Dow Chemical. among workers at Texaco, Gulf, and Mobil Known best as the maker of Saran Wrap, plants in Beaumont and Port Arthur. The Handi-Wrap, Ziploc food storage bags, and agencies were curious about Brazoria Coun .Styrofoam, the company actually earned ty records indicating that several Dow em most of its S9.2 billion in 1979 by selling' ployees had died of brain cancer, and both chemicals to other industrial. companies. the agencies and Dow had set out to examine Most of those chemicals are produced at the problem. Dow's report conceded that, Dow's largest facility, the Texas Division indeed, at least 13 of its workers had died of plant in Brazosport. One of the toughest, brain cancer since 1961. best-managed, and fastest-growing compa Although Dow assured its employees that nies in one of the world's most competitive "there is little evidence to suggest a relation industries, Dow ranks 21st in the Forbes 300. ship exists between occupational exposure to It is not enough to say that Dow is the chemical agents and an increased risk of dominant economic force in Brazosport. in brain cancer," the company made a curious fact, Brazosport was essentially created by ly contradictory acknowledgment: that work Dow. In the 1930s, the company recognized ers faced an increased risk of contracting gli that the adjoining 15-mile stretch of coast oblastoma, a highly malignant and fatal was the only piece of-frontal mainland in form of brain cancer, i f they were exposed to Texas--the only piece of shoreline without chlorine, hydrogen chloride, magnesium, or an estuarine system, without salt marshes, magnesium oxide. without barrier islands to restrict the (low of seawater, which is used for cooling and as a immie Robinson's first husband, Jer source of magnesium and chlorine. Dow ry Miller, worked eight years in Dow's pounced on this- geographical peculiarity, magnesium cells before dying that au completing its huge Texas Division plant in tumn of 1976 at age 38. "He thought Freeport by 1940 and importing workers by Dow was the most fantastic place in the thousands. Other chemical companies the world,'' his widow recalls. "He followed, as did 90 percent of the area's cur was happy in his job." Miller was so happy in his job, in fact, that two or three times every week he would work a double shift of 16 hours in those magne sium cells. He did that until April 1976, when he began developing what he thought were sinus headaches. Often the headaches were so bad that he told his wife he wasn't sure he could go to work. "This was a man who loved to work, loved to make money," Robinson says in a comfortable Texas drawl. "His idea was to let him do everything. What he really cared about was bringing home money for the family. We had the perfect family life." Miller's last day of work was May 1. His driving was getting erratic, he had bouts with vomiting, and he gradually began dragging his left leg when he walked. The Millers had no family doctor--they had always been healthy^-and the general practitioner they consulted in Aiigleton diagnosed only a sinus infection. A few days later, sitting at the kitchen table, MiUer asked his wife for a glass of milk*-One already sat in front of him, slightly off to the left. Recognizing that something was wrong, the couple rushed to Methodist Hospital in Houston, where a neurologist detected the tumor. "Later Jerry admitted to me that he had had no feeling in his left foot for quite a while but had been embarrassed to complain," his widow confides. "And I remembered once he had been riding a bicycle and showed up without his left shoe--he couldn't remember what had happened to it. That must have happened a couple of times. He didn't un derstand what was happening." Doctors tried brain surgery and radiation treatments during the summer of 1976. By Texas Division PR manager Jim Hansen says Dow employees `don 7 have a high level of concern about brain cancer. ` 3 APPH 1941 uco 054024 >A display at Dow's TexasDivisionheadquarters in Brazosport. autumn it was dear that Miller wouldn't sur cals in the air here," she says. `Td never had tion of solvents, the chemicals make Brazos- vive. "Probably the most painful thing for sinus headaches before I moved here in 1971, port's "pollutant mix" unique even to petro ;us,'V Mrs.; Robinson says, "was watching but I've had them ever since." Then a pause, chemical-producing regions. this strong and proud man who had worked and an innocent smile. "If I take enough Not until last April did OSHA/NIOSH .so hard for his family--and his company-- Sine-Aid, I can usually get rid of them." investigators examining the Texas City brain revert to being like a little child. It was such a . Jimmie Robinson says she is very happy cancer problem stumble onto Brazoria pitiful sight." Miller lapsed into a coma and where' she Is. County and Dow's seemingly high rate of died early in November. : . brain cancer. The NIOSH study found the Miller's widow-remarried two years later.. obody is really sure whatthat smell in risk of a Dow employee's developing the Her second husband, who works in Dow's the air over Brazoria County is. Most cancer twice that of other Brazoria County paint department, used to work in the very Houstonians who drive the area or residents, the same twofold risk detected same magnesium cells Jerry Miller, had worked in. . / "Scems like every time you turn around, someone you know is getting some son of cancer around here," Mrs. Robinson says, Nthe marshy, barren stretch of the among petrochemical employees in Texas Ci Gulf Freeway alongside the work ty and Beaumont/Port Arthur. horse refineries of Texas City are Just what that finding means, however, is familiar with the odor--an acrid, a hot epidemiological question. "Are the pungent, almost sweet smell that suggestcshtehme icals in the Dow workplace causing settling onto the sofa in the den of her Angle- making of plastics. For a brief momentcjaunscter?" Buffler asks. "Or could Dow's f II ton home. "You rack your brain looking for before dark the air assumes an oh-so-shuebtalelth-insured population be receiving better an answer. Maybe they spray the rice fields green hue, and on those cold, misty, miser medical care, more accurate diagnoses of the around here with something, or maybe it's able nights that are the mark of a Gulf Coast tumors, and, in turn, a more accurate label the kind of foods we eat in this area. But I winter, unmistakable traces of chlorine waft ing of cause of death on their death certifi don't think Jerry or I ever connected his inland on the chilling air. "In the past it has cates than the public at large? problem with Dow." ... been suggested that a number of plants in "The mark of good epidemiology is the Their two daughters, 13-year-old Michelle this area clear their stacks at night, when teasing away of all these other factors in and nine-year-old Vicki, have come away people are less likely to complain." notes Pat order to arrive at some definitive statement from their father's death with an awareness Buffler, associate professor of epidemiology about causality," Buffler explains. "It of health their parents perhaps didn't have. at the University of Texas School of Public would be irresponsible to put too much fear "Vicki went into hysterics recently when her Health. Emissions from these stacks, Buffler into the employees right now--just as it stepfather pricked himself with a catfish says, may contain known or suspected car would be irresponsible to minimize the statis fin," Mrs. Robinson says. "She really cinogens such as vinyl chloride, trichloroeth tic. Some serious epidemiology still needs to thought he was going to die. And she's ylene, and perchlorethylene (Brazoria Coun be done." always asking whether things are poison." ty is a national leader in production of cer Such epidemiology began with the Mrs. Robinson herself isn't asking that tain carcinogenic chlorinated hydrocarbons). NIOSH study and continued with Dow's question. "You can always smell the chemi In concert with the county's high concentra acknowledgment in May that an unusually PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES FREDERICK HOUSEL r * t" HOUSTON CITY MAGAZINE 39 ucc 054025 '-y t!' '.'3f A-"'* cJC,.i * nfe " j--* &sS\ s>>,,7^y ^k^m. %gi :^ * ? '.V^!v ' -'"aS,^ ?-Vf . - *1^ '--.>>>/*7;:>* ** sj&? r^= Rocky Holden had the first of two malignant brain tumors in 1970, He takes 18 pills a day to control the cancer, IN '.high number (13) of its employees had died of brain cancer since 1961--but then some how detoured into a textbook case of a gov- .`v^'Vft' ernment-versus-industry occupational safety squabble. At a May meeting in Freeport, the 'OSHA/NIOSH team requested broad access to Dow's personnel records, hoping to relate a specific job assignment to the cancer; Dow flatly refused, demanding'(according to a company newsletter) that the investigators : follow, "a strict protocol which would pro tect any Dow trade secret information . .. and insure Dow employees their privacy and protection of their individual rights." NIOSH investigators were incensed with Dow; officials at Union Carbide in Texas City had fully cooperated. The government didn't hide its annoyance, lamenting in an official press statement that "NIOSH/ OSHA plans ... to determine which jobs or chemical exposures can be associated with the disease are stymied by Dow's non-coop-, eration." Tensions mounted, throughout the sum mer, as further government studies increased the Dow brain cancer death count to 25 since the plant's opening in 1941 and noted that "it is very likely that a large proportion of Dow's former employees have left the area and a number of them have since died of a brain tumor." Dow epidemiologists private ly embarked on their own case-control study, which, in their interpretation, indicated that the number of brain tumor deaths was actu ally no greater than could be expected in a working population the size of Dow's. "That's not true," retorts Buffler, nor mally a moderate scientist and not one to go on the attack, "There is a correlation [be tween brain cancer and chemical exposure], but we don't know what it means. We don't know that it's causal. "You go after the truth in a matter like this, not whitewash it," Buffler says. "You don't put your head in the sand." Meanwhile, a five-part television series on ltd TUmer's Cable News Network examined what several area doctors were beginning to call a "brain cancer epidemic" along the Texas coast. Then-congressman Bob Eckhardt took up the cause and accused Dow of ficials of blocking a complete investigation by NIOSH. He ordered his House commerce subcommittee on oversight and investiga tions to begin a major investigation of Dow and the area's "epidemic levels" of brain cancer. Faced with such negative news, Dow shifted gear in late July, For the first time it went public with its own epidemiological results. Only two months earlier the com pany had acknowledged that the brain can cer death rate was higher than expected, but on July 28 a memo informed all 7,000 Texas Division employees and the press that "there is nothing ... indicating that the number of deaths due to brain cancer in the total work population is above the expected norm for a population of that size." Buffler responds, "If I were an intelligent widow, 1 would have been troubled by that statement." In fact, whether the company had planned it thaL way or not, what had be gun as an exercise in epidemiology seemed to be fast becoming a well-orchestrated pro gram in public relations. ow public relations manager Jim Hansen wearily escorts me to a plush office in the Dow complex. It is a cold, dark, and windy Friday night. Hansen has been in Austin all day. The meeting begins in the fluores cent lighting and stony silence of an empty building. "We've had tome real problems with press coverage of this brain cancer thing," Hansen begins, running a hand over his graying, slickcd-back hair. "It hasn't been easy keep ing this panic from our employees." Hansen is a big, solid man, but as he tilts back his thronelike rocking chair, its thick cushions seem to envelop him. Kicking his feet opto his desk, he looks around at the richly furnished office and sighs. His ydlow Lacoste sweater hangs open to expose a red lacoste shirt that covers a healthy belly. "I think our employees have a pretty high level of awareness about what the media are trying to do, how they're frying to sensation alize this brain cancer story," Hansen says. "Dow employees know that, so they don't ucc 054026 Union representative O. -D. Kenemore worked with vinyl chloride for years. 'Nobody ever told me it was dangerous,' he says. have a high level of concern about brain can cer. I hope some of the material we've re leased from this office has helped keep that concern low.'' - Holden thinks he's beaten the cancerfor the second time, and has only suspicions of its cause. The word on brain cancer coming out of Dow has been by no means haphazard. Since the onslaught of media attention brought on by the Cable News report in July, every pub lic statement from Dow personnel concern ing the cancer has been rigorously funneled through the public relations office. When 1 called Dow's safety director, for instance, he said he was unable to talk.and suggested that I call either the industrial medicine director or public relations director; in the time it took me to hang up the phone and redial those two sources, both had been advised to expect a call. It was as though an alarm had sounded. And within ten minutes Hansen had been contacted in Austin by the home office in Freeport and had called me back. "There's been so much utter garbage printed about this cancer that we make sure everyone goes through us before talking to the press," Hansen explains. "It's not a medical epidemic, it's a media epidemic." , Dow has issued memos to its employees and has installed television screens through out the plant to broadcast closed-circuit films on cancer. TWo films shown throughout July emphatically presented Dow's new stance on the brain tumor question: Dow's brain can cer total is not above the expected norm for a work population of its size. In fact, the sec ond film suggests that the 25 deaths may ac tually befewer than expected in a population that size. ("But this was based on some irre sponsible statistical manipulations," asserts Cancer is nature's way ofeliminating sexually effete individualsa Dow ally testifiedat an OSHA hearing. Buffler. "They made all the conservative assumptions and came out with an unrealis tically high expected incidence of tumors. You can monkey around with figures and get them to say what you want.")The films were repeated at 30-minute intervals on given days throughout the month, reaching, by Han sen's estimate, about one-third of Dow's 7,000 Texas Division employees. A third film, shown 25 times during the week of December 8-12, achieved even great er saturation--as much as 70 percent of the Dow staff, according to Hansen. Titled Re port on Cancer--Can We Reduce the Risk?, it was produced by the American Industrial Health Council (A1HC), a trade association of 110 American companies chaired until re cently by Paul Oreffice, the president of Dow Chemical. The council was created in the late 1970s specifically to represent in dustry in ongoing OSHA attempts to regu late carcinogens in the workplace. Startling- HOUSTON CITY MAGAZINE *1 ucc 054027 10 Dow'spublic relations ; chiefopines, `It will be 4 pretty hardfor us to f, i :>yi take any of*the blamej "Dow has always been open with its em ployees," PR chief Hansen says, "so they trust us. We've had some alarm in our newer employees about this brain cancer, and some of the wives of the new employees have called in; I guess lots of our guys go home and don't tell their wives what we've told them at the plant. I'm sure, though, that on the whole there's a low level of concern." he is aching to get onto a basketball court and out of school for Christmas break. One subject that does not make its way to the dinner table is that a brain tumor lies in side Rocky Holden's head. Holden is in his late thirties, tall and trim, perhaps skinny. The dark hair on his head is barely growing back after last summer's radiation therapy. He has an astrocytoma, a yor mis. , A steady barrage of internal news releases slow-growing, malignant brain tumor that is " fWtiiinr ^ --h continues. One, headlined "Dow Sets Rec not as deadly as the glioblastomas that killed ord Straight on Brain Cancer Allegations," other Dow employees. That is why Holden is ly, an AIHC representative in 1979 testified quotes Dow's vice-president for health and here to talk. before OSHA that cancer is of positive environmental sciences: "Earlier reports of a The kids clear out after dinner and he be -benefit to the human species. "Cancer," Dr. possibly higher than normal brain cancer gins his story on his favorite comer of his Francis J. C. Roe suggested, "is probably rate among Dow's Ifcxas Division employees favorite sofa, ever so slowly, sometimes los /one of nature's ways of eliminating sexually distorted the data available and jumped to a ing his train of thought or struggling for the .effete individuals who would otherwise, in conclusion not substantiated by the facts." word he thinks used to come easier to him, nature's view, compete for available food re- 'The statement seems to ignore Dow's own "I wish this wouldn't happen," he says as his earlier acknowledgment that its brain cancer mind goes blank. Remarkably, though, he ?rate was higher than expected. And in De shows few other signs of frustration. He ex ,The AIHC film shown to Dow employees cember the Dow Texan, a magazine sent to plains it this way. :; iniDecember was not quite so,laudatory almost 9,000 current and retired Dow "My son dropped and broke one of my about cancer's role in toughening .up the employees, told of "gross distortion and glasses before dinner," he says. "I guess I Species. Still, it emphatically insisted that misrepresentation of the data" by the Cable could have yelled at'liim or gotten mad. But chemicals--and the chemical industry--are News Network, described as a new network what's done is done. So instead I said, 'Jerry, . not responsible for the nation's soaring can "just launching its programming" that had guess you better pick up the pieces.' " cer.rate. An authoritative-looking man be- chosen "to dramatize the brain cancer sub Holden first went to work in Dow's tabor sgins the narration, musing, "Sometimes it ject." The Texan again insisted, "There is no pool in 1967, a role that took him to all sec .seems everything we eat, everything we increased risk of brain cancer among em tions of the plant. "If you ask me what I've drink, even the air we breathe has been called ployees at the Texas Division." been exposed to, I can't answer," he says .a carcinogen. The fear worries us at home, it I ask Hansen whether he, as a company quietly, shrugging. But he remembers his worries uaon the job. But what causes can spokesman, feels any concern or responsibil first three months in the pool working with -i cer? Today you will hear from three authori ity for cancer victims, their families, or any soda ash, a very rough caustic that he says ties--you'll find they have pretty much the 'as yet undiscovered victims who might have had him sneezing constantly. "The little `same thing to say." The three cancer re- moved away from Brazoria County before masks they gave us weren't nearly good ..searchers, repeatedly referred to as "ex- dying of brain cancer. Rather than respond enough," he says, "and it was like having a ; pens " and "recognized authorities" in the to the question, Hansen notes a striking epi terrible cold." . . 20-minute film, drive home three points: demiological finding: 68 percent of the Why did he tolerate these conditions? > "The causes of cancer are quite sim known brain cancer victims were employed "I was a brand-new employee," he re- ple"--excess smoking, drinking, eating, and at Dow between 1942 and 1944, and 36 per 'exposure to sunlight; cent were at Dow from 1947 to 1932. Less than 5 percent of U.S. cancer cases "Even if we find that the cause was some are related to occupational exposure, and chemical process in the plant," he says, those are due entirely to exposures 20 to.30 "chances are if you go to that spot in the years ago (this ignores the obvious question: plant, the process will have changed since what will happen 20 to 30 years fromnow as 1942.... There just isn't a hell of a lot you a result of current exposures?); and can do about it anymore." Hansen pauses a * "All unnecessary risks in the workplace moment, glances around the warm, wood- have already been eliminated." Any addi paneled office, takes his feet down from the tional occupational health controls would desk, and begins buttoning up his sweater. mean "plant shutdowns and loss of jobs." "It's not something you can suddenly reach Throughout the film, the narrator asserts back and beat your breast over and say how that "Americans are confused about the terrible we were," he says. Finally, Hansen causes of cancer," that they are "convinced flashes a disarming smile. He opines, "Ifwill that cancer is reaching epidemic proportions, be pretty hard for us to take any ofthe blame despite what the `experts' say." For this state for this." I leave Hansen with a handshake of affairs he blames "constant media atten and walk out the stone-silent halls. tion" and the "so-called consumer advocate groups attached in some way to Ralph p Highway 36 about 13 miles in West Nader." And at-one point, as the narrator Columbia, I meet Dow employee frets that "many people are convinced that virtually EVERYTHING causes cancer, despite what we have heard from these recognized authorities," the camera zooms in on three women doing their weekly shop ping in a grocery store. The third, a middleaged woman, is curiously eyeing a display of Rocky Holden, his wife, Kathy, and his two children, 14-year-old Jerry and 10-year-old Deanna. We cluster around the dinner table for a plateful of Rocky's homemade burritos. The family talk is easy and unforced. Deann"aTehxey're a cold-blooded bunch ofpeople, ' citedly reports that she has gotten her Hfif.thF-, Miller says of the company's medical feminine napkins and tampons. grade pictures today; Jerry, meanwhile,msaanysagers. n april ii ucc 054028 T-M ,,+ ' t iH. F. Miller retired earlyfrom Dow-seven years after being knocked unconscious by a blast of chlorine gas. -- - plies. ,*'I didn't think to complain," 4',.' :> of a tumor in Rocky Holden's brain.' admiringly at the man they know is the house From there it was three months in the ' Holden later went back to work, passed "pro," but both they and their father are i magnesium plant, working around a sulfur his pipefitter test in 1973, and worked at his surprised when 1 run the table. As the eight : compound that Holden says "took theoxy-, craft throughout the decade. In 1979, how ball drops into theside pocket, Rocky's face gen out of you. It took 20 minutes.to get over ever, he began suffering seizures on the job suddenly means business, and he steps mena it." He moved on to the hazardous ethylene and was forced to move to the less dangerous cingly toward me. Tension fills the room. . diamine area of the plant, where he saw "one valve shop. In 19S0 he began taking radia "One thing about this brain tumor," Rocky guy who lost lots of weight working with the tion therapy for a newly active brain tumor. growls, "is that it makes my temper act real stuff." Holden wanted to hold'on.to what His doctors gave him a SO-SO chance for funny." He takes one more step toward me. weight he had, so he began pursuing a craft. survival. Then both he and his children break into By 1969 he had earned an apprenticeship as a Today, 18 pills each day help keep Holden mile-wide grins. Rocky Holden has not lost pipefitter. alive, employed, and apparently feeling well, his sense of humor. ' "I had a chance to see how the workers ifsluggish and slow to react, He thinks he has felt about chemicals," he says matter-of- beaten the cancer for a second time and has f there is any crack in the wall of accep- factly. Once his apprenticeship brought him only suspicions about its cause. H tance that is Brazosport, the best place to to an area of the plant where vats of glycerin "Dow might be aware of something caus H find it is at the local union halls. Union were handy. Glycerin, a sweet liquid ob ing all this," he says easily, "and sure. I'd * boss O. D. Kenemore says he is not tained from fats and oils, is used as a solvent, like to know more about what is really going alarmed by the discovery of brain tumors antifreeze fluid, plasticizer, and sweetener, and . in the manufacture of dynamite, cos metics, liquid soaps, inks, and lubricants. "The guys used to heat up the stuff, drop rings of it into the vats, and make glycerin `doughnuts,' " he remembers. "Then they'd eat them for breakfast or lunchi"' on. But I'm just a pipefitter. It's not as though I'm Mr. Super Safety. I'm not in a position to know, or do anything about it." Holden remembers once going to a Lake Jackson doctor for treatment of an arm rash and asking the doctor what might have caused it. " `Dow didn't do it!' the doctor Bat Dow, but only because he worked there 22 years--and saw a lot worse. "The standing rule at the plant," says Kenemore, president of two local labor councils and business manager of the Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local No. 390 in Freeport, "is to never get enough of any Late in 1969 Holden began acting strange started telling me," Holden recalls. " `Dow fumes to make you fall down. Otherwise, ly. He had laughing spells-for no apparent didn't do it! Dow's my bread and butter!' I any exposure is okay." reason, and tears flowed from his eyes. His hadn't even asked him if it was work-related. Kenemore came to Dow in 1951 and spent friends told him to see a psychiatrist. Car- "But that's the way it is," Holden says. "I six weeks in a labor pool before advancing to pooling to work one morning, he told a trust Dow to a point. Beyond that, it's out of his permanent job as a pipefitter. His first as story, broke into unchecked laughter, passed my power." signment was in Plant A, where vinyl out, and woke up in the Dow Industrial Deanna and Jerry Holden come out to the chloride is made. He retired in 1973 to Medicine Facility. By early 1970 doctors had den and shoot a few games of pool with the become a full-time labor representative. removed what they thought was the entirety guest. Then it's Rocky's turn. The kids gaze (continued on page 93) ; - HOUSTON CITY MAGAZINE 43 1JCC 054029 After the 1979 season, when McMullen de cided to go after free agent Nolan Ryan, Smith thought the price too high and feared for the salary structure, but McMullen, with fanfare, signed Ryan anyway; Smith was displeased. Smith initially frowned upon McMullen's query regarding drafting free agent Joe Morgan, but later, as McMullen saw it, basked in the media's approving spot light when Morgan was signed; McMullen was miffed. The new ownership of the New York Mets asked McMullen's permission to talk to Smith about a job, but McMullen flatly refused; Smith was miffed. And so it went. These were'not the private boardroom skirmishes of.the business world, quietly ` .V . (continued on page 124) BRAZOSPORT (continuedfrotq page 43) 1 Unlike Rocky Holden, Kenemore seems almost ashamed of the tales he tells. "All those years working with vinyl chloride," he says, shaking his head, "and nobody ever told me if was dangerous." Kenemore remembers back in 1953, when he would wake up at night in panic, unable to breathe. Sometimes during the day he and other employees-would have difficulty exhal ing. He says he went to the company doctor, . who told him not to worry about exhaling, that inhaling was the important thing. "And he told me," Kenemore recalls, "that even if I passed out, I could be dragged out of the plant and regain consciousness before long. "Nothing, was- barred in those days," Kenemore says with a grimace. "Workers had their bare hands in the chemicals, and nobody thought.anything of it." Some conditions at Dow have improved since 1953, Kenemore is quick to point out. But as he sees it, the corporate attitude has never changed, "I have tried to get the com pany to place-small cards on equipment warning repairmen of particular dangers in certain areas of the plant," he says. "Dow refuses. They say, `You knew this wasn't an ice cream plant when you came to work here.' " But in truth, many employees do not realize the dangers they will face when they come to work at Dow. H. F. Miller worked 23 yean as a rigger at Dow before poor health forced him to retire in 1975 at the age of 58. Now he putters around his Lake Jackson home or pals with friends at the union hall. A glance at his face shows he has paid his dues. Miller has a huge, round head and a crew cut. The creased skin on his face and neck is so distinctive that he looks like an Oliphant cartoon caricature of a hardened, grizzled roughneck. In 1968 Miller was knocked unconscious by a sudden blast of chlorine gas at the plant. He was taken to the Dow Industrial Medicine Facility. Electrocardiograms were taken, and TIME is your most precious resource. It is ,that measurable asset which universally, limits your opportunities .'., your, productivity , . your profits. "TRAVELAIRE: Immediate Air Transportati n for Key Personnel and Critical Production .Components^-' : -..-Jj-.; Corporate prop-jet service, .Y# Certified air.carrier :V 'VC-' ; * All weather capability throughout North / America, Central America, and the Carribean. ;, TELEPHONE: (713) 64^8123 TWX: 9108815593 HOUSTQN CITY MAGAZINE 93 ucc 054030 1 i i 94 APRIL 1981 he was placed on oxygen overnight. He spent the next three days there. Two years later, when he began having severe chest and arm pains, his personal doc tor sent him to a Galveston hospital for two weeks, then to Houston for an arteriogram that found a badly damaged heart muscle and circulation problems. - "The doc asked me when I'd had my heart attack," Miller says in seeming disbelief at his own experience. "I said I hadn't had any heart attack. `The hell you didn't,' the doc said. `You had a severe heart attack at one time--and you would have felt it when it happened.'" Miller thought back to when he had been overcome by the chlorine fumes; that was the only time he could remember that he might have had a heart attack and not known it. His cardiologist asked Dow for the elec trocardiogram and medical records from Miller's three-day stay. "But they told him they had no records of my ever being there," Miller says. Federal law requires Doty to re tain all employee medical records for the du ration of the employee's tenure at the com pany, But William Fishbeck, Dow's Texas Division medical director, admits, "It is not unusual for us to look back and not find a particular event." In 1974, six years, after his Dow accident. Miller underwent triple-bypass heart surgery in Houston. "They're a cold-blooded bunch of people," he now says of Dow's medical and health management. "They play every thing like they're afraid people are going to get to them. They make you feel guilty-- even if you complain of a backache, they try to make it seem like you did something t your back on your own time." The stories pour out of this union hall: of a Dow employee electrocuted by supposedly faulty equipment on the job, and subsequent claims of collusion by Dow and local author ities to blame the accident on an unrelated heart attack; of lost or missing medical rec ords; of still more employees in their last days Of fights against all forms of cancer. Jake Willis of Freeport worked 27 years at Dow before retiring in 1979. An outgoing and relaxed sort, he doesn't seem to have any ax to grind. But his message is dear. "No, they don't WANT to kill you--that's kilting themselves, that's killing their company," he says. "It's almost as if they talk themselves into believing that they're doing the right thing, that there really is no danger." In an analytic rather than accusatory fash ion, union representative Kenemore dis cusses Dow's top brass. "Dow is a terribly competitive, overzealous place, even within its own ranks," he says. "Those managers would throw a rock in front of one another to get ahead. The company gets so wrapped up in itself that it begins to think it is the law, that it must defend itself from everything and everybody who would cause problems." 4 ucc 054031 Kenemore paints a portrait of a town bom and raised on chemicals, its faith in chemi cals reinforced daily by a seemingly benevo lent corporate parent. One thinks back to Laura Tod, widow- of Joe Tod. Joe worked from 1941 to 1946--the same years as did two-thirds of Dow's brain cancer victims--in Dow's acid and caustic plants before moving to the employee relations office, where he worked for the next 29 years. In 1974 a letter Joe wrote to the company was published in Dow's annual report. Mrs. Tod proudly shows off her copy. The letter begins, "How can I express to you what it means to work for a company like Dow?" Two years later he was dead from a brain'tumor. "Dow was wonderful to my husband," Mrs. Tod now says. "And ( wouldn't clean my bathroom if I didn't trust chemicals." "This town has grown up believing that if Dow were to fold, then the community would fold," Kenemore ^explains. "That means the industry as well as the Weingarten's that supplies goods for industrial em ployees. In Brazosport, the average man is simply afraid to make too much noise." Yet if there is tragedy in Brazosport (and most townfolk will assure you there is not), it goes beyond the residents' not knowing or caring about possible dangers around.them. It may be, instead, that many do know what is around them but are too proud--or too afraid--to talk about it. There's Rocky Hol den, who thinks back to his laughing spells and ponders, "Can you imagine,"thinking you need to see a psychiatrist?" There's Jerry Miller, who kept losing his left shoe but was too embarrassed to complain,. There's H. F. Miller, who today has a friend at Dow with brain cancer who is "as ashamed of that as I would be about VD." And then there's Jack Stone. n the surface, Jack Stone's story is not unlikeJoe Tod's or Jerry Miller's, or those of the other 22 Dow employ ees who died of brain cancer. It is told by his widow, Mary Stone, a charming woman who wears her 50-plus years with exceptional grace. Her clothes are immaculate, the living room in her Freeport home spotless and tasteful. Jack Stone worked at Dow for almost 34 years, first in the chlorine ceils, later as a boilermaker. In his later years he really wanted only one thing--to retire with Mary, who herself had just retired after 30 years with the phone company. "He was really bent on retiring so we could spend some time together," Mary says. "He used to come home and tell me all of his plans, where we would go, what we would do." Like Tod and Miller and Holden, Stone truly enjoyed his job, according to Mary. But he did have a bad back. She remembers him "going to work sometimes so hunched MONOGRAM ^ . r'_ ,i:' l* 11443316. South ybsi ip. Kroger C__enter * i-'.kJW w >lJIrin "" J/-' bIveltuwipeemn'S.Wan*FPpe/liihpikeWfif WWoiwodiuwvaivy 71^977-U^r'Housum,-TX; 77637 ucc 054032 HOUSTON CITY MAGAZINE $ Sunbathing * Entertaining * Lounging Dining A deck adds an extra dimension to your home. We can design and build your deck at a fraction of the cost of adding another room. Enjoy a new sense of satisfaction and quiet pleasure. Itwill add space, architectural distinction-, and value to your home. Our business is the design, engineering, and construction of the very finest in decks and other building and remodeling projects. Ostdsop Imiimments 713/820-8519 Exchange Bank Member F.O.I.C. The Commercial Bank in the Gaiieria Area 1800-C S. Post Oak Rd. Loceted in Saks Fifth Avenue Telephone 713-627-1910 Center of Fashion 1Member First International Sancshares, Inc. 96 APRIL 1981 up he looked like a freak." Doctors said he had a deteriorating disc, but there wasn't much they could do about it. Mary says he never complained. In June 1976 Stone's personality began changing. "He would talk constantly," his wife says, squinting her eyes as if fascinated by the recollection. "He never used to talk much about what went on at work, but now he'd come home and tglk alt the time about safety. He was hooked on it. I told him safe ty was the supervisors' job, but he said he couldn't stand to see other people getting hurt all the time. And he would just talk on and on." When Stone went in for a back checkup, Dow's medical staff took note of his behav ior and sent him to a psychologist, then to a psychiatrist. "Everybody thinks I'm crazy," Stone told his wife with a laugh. On June 24 Dow's industrial medicine physician, on a routine check of Stone's ach ing back, saw in Stone's behavior something* he didn't like. He apparently told Scone he was suffering from 'tension." That same af ternoon, Stone was admitted to Brazosport's Community Hospital. Jack Stone's story is different from those of other Dow employees because he left be hind a personal diary. Inside arc glimpses of a man Mary Stone today admits she never knew. As he entered the hospital. Stone, un aware of the tumor within his brain and un aware that others would soon see his private thoughts, recorded fears and worries that only he, as a boilermaker at Dow Chemical in Brazosport, would know. Thursday, June 24--Industrial Medicine Ap pointment. They didn't even give me heat treat ment??? I tried to explain that first things should come first. He say that back trouble would come later--but I need to get treatment for other prob lem in hospital___ I say I'm going to check in hos pital, but I need to go to shop--change dothes, give car keys to Rider. He say they don't want me in plant right now.... All of sudden, two nurses come hurrying in, wrap arm around me and lead me out,... I'm escorted to Community Hospital. All this escorting and rushing me In hospital hurt me, and excited me more than anything in my life. , . . What 1 couldn't understand--why no heat treatment, why ail this escorting??? Talk about tension!!!! All this really shook me up.... this was terrible way to start treating me for tension, or whatever. ... This was the most ridiculous going on I have ever experienced. .. . Actually, the way I've been treated on job--my tension naturally high--this should be called a job related illness-- The way I was treated--naturally create tensions. ???????? Friday, June25, morning--I still say my tension and whatever--was brought on by the way I have been treated, and should be on Industrial sick leave --????? I wanted to be on lnd. sick leave, see my fantily doctor, and let him recommend a psycholo gist to see--but (the company doctor] say no......... Friday, June 25, (Jternoon~Industrial sick leave? The way I've been treated over the last years --enough to cause anyone tension or whatever____ I was being downgraded for talking and visiting ucc 054033