Document qaxMVXEoQ8Jd3YyzEBod1DBME

CHEMICAL MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION August 15, 1994 Dear Vinyl Chloride Health Committee Members: The American Cancer Society's response to our August 1, 1994 letter is enclosed. The response is very favorable and you may want to consider sharing it with your legal departments. Dr. Heath's opinion as the Vice President of the Epidemiology and Statistics Department of the American Cancer Society would add considerable weight to the industry position. I am looking forward to speaking with you on September 9 at 3:00 p.m., EDT. If you have any questions, please call me at (202) 887-1192. Sincerely Enclosure Hasmukh C. Shah, Ph.D. Manager, Vinyl Chloride Panel R&S 144713 2501 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 Telephone 202-887-1100 Fax 202-887-1237 Responsible Care11 A PublicCommitment AMERICAN V cancer ? SOCIETY' NATIONAL HOME OFFICE CLARK W. HEATH. JR,, MD Vice President Epidemiology and Statistics August 4, 1994 Hasmukh C. Shah, Ph.D. Manager, Vinyl Chloride Panel Chemical Manufacturers Association 2501 M Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20037 Dear Dr. Shah: Thank you for your recent letter. The Time magazine chart is certainly misleading. It may well be that the American Cancer Society source they are citing is Cancer Facts and Figures 1994, in which case it is unfortunate that they ignore the word "possible". Cancer Facts and Figures is widely quoted and not infrequently quotations are not entirely accurate. We review the Cancer Facts and Figures text and update the numbers each year and shall certainly take your comments into consideration. There are, of course, many degrees of "possible" when considering risk factors, and in the instance of lymphoma I would think there is a distinctively lower possibility for vinyl chloride than for herbicides, neither being proven. The document is not meant, of course, to be an exhaustive treatise on all possible cause factors at each cancer site, but to provide brief overviews of major points. For no site other than liver (angiosarcoma) is vinyl chloride evidence conclusive, and even there it concerns only high, repeated, occupational exposures to vinyl chloride monomer (ideally, we should distinguish between monomer and polymer;. Again, thanks for your letter and its attachments. Sincerely Clark W. Heath, Jr., M.D. cc: S. Montgomery A. Stone J. Laszlo, M.D. 1599 CLIFTON ROAD, N.E., ATLANTA, GA 30329-4251 * 404-329-7686 FAX 404-325-1467 R&S 144714