Document xjw605bpjYQq4a7yx2n3M8ZvJ

FILE NAME Newspaper & Magazine Articles NMA DATE 1972 June & DOC NMA013 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION The Wall Street Journal - Safety Unit Sets Tough Rules for '76 on Plants Asbestos & Perilous Particles - Tiny Asbestos Fibers Pose a Health Threat THE WALL STREET 4/1172 4/1172 . Safety Unit Sets Tough Rules for '76 On Plants Asbestos 2 , P Ryn WALY START JOURNAL Ming Regneter F WASHINGTON - The Occupational Safety toughin and Health Administration announced toughin toughin new curbs on asbestos in plants but gave am- ployers four years to comply concentrations concentrations The new standard will limit of asbestos in the work place to two fibers ] per cubic centimeter of air beginning July 1 Fed 1976 the agency administering the new eral Job Safety Law said 1 Unth 1976 the asbestos standard will re- main five fibers per cubic centimeter That arency last December arency last standard imposed by the December December under pressure from from the AFL " The inhalation of asbestos has been linked to a number of human diseases The standards for asbestos represent " weighted average over eight hours But starting July 7 1972 asbestos concentrations aren't to exceed 10 fibers per cubic centimeter of air at any time during the eight period The emergency standard currently in effect hasn't any such upper limit the average of five fibers Government sources said the year per- delay in effecting the new standard was to mit employers to design systems to control as- bestos Imposing the new limita more rapidly would have encouraged employers to comply by simply rotating workers during an eighthour work turn or providing protective breath- ing devices government experts believed The Environmental Protection Agency last December banned open spraying of asbestns fireproofing and insulation and required in- dustry to use filters duced in the mining to clean any gases promilling and manufactur- ing of materials containing asbestos 6/8/72 JOURNAL Perilous Particles Tiny Asbestos Fibers Pose a Health Threat To Workers and Public Long Exposure Can Result ! + In Lung Disease Cancer ~ Industry Seeks Solutions The Bodies Are in the Street By BARRY NEWMAN Sta^ Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL NEW YORK Joseph Marino's gas 812- . Con on the fringe of Manhattan's Spanish Har lem the proven method of cleaning an old brake assembly goes like this Pull off the wheel aim an air hose at the exposed parts and blow the dust out A cloud of brown dust invariably flies right into the mechanics faces says Mr. Marino But it doesn't bother them We got masks and everything Mr. Marino shrugs . don't use them What the hell The guys What the mechanics don't seem to knowlike thousands of other mechanics that the brown dust is dangerous Brake linings are made of asbestos And if a mechanic breathes in enough dust from the worn linings it could eventually kill him The lethal quality of tiny Indestructible asbestos fibers that lodge in the lung is well known Widely publicized studies by Dr. Irving Selikoff of the Mount Sinai School of Medicure lead him to predict that of the roughly 250,000 asbestos industry workers today about 5,000 will die unnecessarily of occupational cancer In the next 10 to 15 years we will enter the as- bestos cancer era says Dr. Selikoff This is one of the great disasters of our time Hazards for Others Too The asbestos industry is well aware of the problem and is taking action to combat it though crites say the steps aren't as drastic as the situation demands But asbestos industry workers aren't the only ones who might fall prey to the lung cancers and other diseases caused by the mineral's irritating fibers It's likely that millions of workers in other indus tries using asbestos fibers could be affected as well as ordinary people who have come into contact with asbestos in the atmosphere Perhaps the most trame fact is that for those who have already been sufficiently exposed changes in procedures and standards of asbestos including a new set announced yesterday by the Department of Labor meaningless It takes as many as 40 years after the first exposure for asbestos diseases to surface Controls instituted now will indeed have an effect but not for decades Harry Bailey one man who isn't likely to find much solace in the new standards Sir Balley isn't an asbestos worker He's a bricklayer in a Mobil Oil Corp. refinery alontside the Delaware River in Paulsboro N.J. He has been working at the plant for 33 years and every year he has gone to the company medi cal department for a chest ray They never said there was any Dung wrong with me anys year Mr. Bailey and in deed he has thus far developed no outward symptoms But a few month ago he and la other workers from the refinery went to Mount Schat for an examination and every one of them proved to have scarred junge sign of Babealuvas 6 nonnialignant lung dueuse Mobil has refused to release his medical ree ords to the New York doctors Mr. Badey anye The company declinca to comment on the mat- ter Ned , Perilous Particles Perilous Particles Tiny Fibers | . 6/872 + > Of Asbestos Pose ^ Health Threat 6/8/72 _ First Scarring Then Complications Asbestusla begins with ray acarring like that found in Mr. evidence of Bailey's lungs As the ducase progresses the lungs auffen and breathing becomes difficult The work harder and beart has to can become mately death may be caused enlarged Ulu or auffocation by heart attack , The mineral can also fact cause lung cancer asbestos can cause place in the body if cancer just about any particles are somehow in- gested The ability of the sharp tiny particles to penetrate the lung once breathed pro- duced a high incidence in has of cancer in the mem- | brane surrounding the lung a disease called " mesothelioma populace it workers < asbestos died of it bseoinfgarstudied by Dr. Selikoff 32 have : The Mobil refinery works like all high factores in the oil and about sulphur too he says We complained the dust and dirt Nothing is done to down The fans make it keep it worse and you can't under company bought new respirators but conditions they clog in 15 minutes In the asbestos cutting rooms he adds there aren't any vacuum attachments on the | power saw's And when the insulation Law Asbestos sheets outside the workers room or mix cement in a wheelbarrow the dust anybody can get Moby disagrees with the description of working conditions In response to a query the Continuad From Parat Page these the depending asbestos is harmless to users on how it's added to the But products asbestos can pose a Ureat to workers in the factories where the products are made 1 Until six months ago for instance asbestos and years and there's nothing wrong with When them working in closed quarters he says his men use drop cloths and fans but they don't wear respirators because they're too hot they don't work Nevertheless the federal Protection Environmental was being used as an anuleak ingredient in Agency is preparing regulations ex- Prestone antifreeze made by Union Carbide pected to be announced this summer that Corp. At a Carteret N.J. plant run for Union Carbide by General would attempt to impose controls on air pollu tion from demolition American operations These could Transportation the asbestos would arrive in paper sacks include requirements for wetting down the Workers would cut the bags open with knives work areas or the removal of all asbestos be and feel the powdery while asbestos into tanks fore a building is toppled The technical of antifreeze says James Irving a fire and lem of measuring dust levels however copruolbd- safety engineer who has worked in the plant toss out the demolition regulation entirely for 22 years says James Krowder an engineer with the They'd wear face EPA's hazardous pollutants branch clothing Mr. masks but no protective Setting a standard for asbestos in concentra- the room Irving says and the blowers where they worked would send the tions at work sites has been for similarly difficult Occupation dust out to where others the fledgling Safety and Health were working Then Administration . they'd pile up the bags outside the year Department of building and a crew would pick them up and throw them Labor unit The reason much asbestos is Nobody knows how onto the truck dangerous The asbestos in raising a big cloud of dust dustry led by Manville larg Asbestos was removed formula late last from the Prestone Corp. the est in the field has fought for a standard allow- year Mr. Irving says the ing five asbestos fibers per cubic change took place after the Oil Chemical and Atom.c Workers made centimeter of air in the factories But the doctors at Mount an issue of it Union Sinal and elsewhere argue that the Carbide denies that The decision says Herbert zero J. Hannigan the only true safe level of asbestos pollution would be of company's technical manager The government's decision yesterday was in auto products was based on marketing con siderations and had impose a fiber average with a maximum nothing to do with concentration in the work area of 10 fibers per health . cubic centimenter at any time In 1976 the new Asbestos also can pose hazards to the ulti regulations call for a more mate consumers of certain limit with stringent fiber products Bits of as the year delay intended to bestos used in filters for beverage making have the industry a chance to control the give been found in wine and beer for instance and The problem could be dangerous if swallowed The use of industry save even a fiber limit could hurt it economically J. B. Jobe Johns such filters in beverage making seems to have Manville's execuave vice been curtailed but knowledge of the hazard ap president said at hearings in March that it would be socially irs pears to have had little effect elsewhere even responable to adopt much in medical circles Asbestos says a soon hons stringent regula Health use very little of auch do use is material and what we |' used under strictly controlled tions Recently the condi- Occupational Safety and Administration and carried out an extensive thorough inspection of the entire Paulsboro refinery No violations were plant's handling of asbestos materfoiuanlds in the Bailey's Mr. Bailey's union the Oil Chemical Atomic Workers is and Steven Wodka a unipornotheesatlitnhg athnadt inspection cialist says little safety spe- violations attention was paid to health And he complains that after of a week accompanying the inspectors the inexplicably had me kicked company Mobil declines out of the plant contment on Mr. Wodka's charge , versatile Oil refineries are by no places where asbesins turns means the only up The substance is a fireproof binder and thousands of insulator in plastics shingplreosdupcatpeerinaclnudding such things as pipes In niast of Please Turn Page 10 Colum~-n \4 published study is being used in some hospi tals as a filter for intravenously fed liquids giving the particles an entree into the blood stream The use of asbestos in fireproof textiles is common Once in a while asbestos fiber even finds its way into ordinary fabrics William Nicholson an associate of Dr. Selikoff at Mount Sinal has a girl's charcoal winter coat with red trim hanging in one of his laborato ries It's one of coats made with more than 200.000 a4, asbestos fiber imported sold two The company operates the largest asbeslo factory in the country at Manville N.J. where according to a of the workers 400 recent Mount Sinai study die of axbesine cancer Corrective steps being taken already Johns Manville maintains are adquate to dral with the problem without causing a cutback in the plant's production the lifeblood of the New Jersey town of 15.000 At least one asbestos fact tory run by Class Works a PPC Industries and joint venture in Tyler Corning Texas closed last February because of profitability years ago Some of them are presumably still being worn Give that coat a shake says Dr. Nicholson and you get dust levels as high as in an asbestos factory and concern over safety & spokesman says contamina Actually the curbing of asbestos tion is more an exercise in good housewfering than capital expenditure While the COSI ni Asbestos workers in the construction indus slopping pollution at a power plant or smeller try are perhaps the most sensitive of all work- might run into the hundreds of millions the ers to the asbestos hazard It was the contruc tion industry which wes thirds of all sing cost of cleaning up an asbestos operation would be closer in a 10th of that magnitude accordi bestos products that was the target of the wave of antiasbestos publicity more than years ago At least four cities York first four Bos sing to doctors engineers and union officials Some of the staples of such an operation als ready in use in many plants are compara ton Chicago and Philadelphia banned tively inexpensive closed plastie bags for mixi the spraying of asbestos fireproofing material altogether Substitute materials are being de- veloped though there's some raised about their safety too question being Among construction workers outside the as bestos virtually all of whom are ex posed recuy Jacob to asbestas whether they work with it die or concern remains relatively low Novak business manager of the Asbes- tas Workers Union Incat in New York says he has tried without success for instance to in duce a group of plasterers Some of these people don't to have checkups want to face a free ray because they're afraid of what they might hear says Mr. Novak A year veteran of the asbealba trades who had a nonnia lignant tumor removed mom a lung last winter ing cemeal vacuum attachments on power power saws drop cloths suppressant chemicate and powered respirators that blow tile tered air into the user fare to ease discoms fort . The new Labor Department standards de indred call for many of these wormenta tire rules But while they are urquestinati B needed step toward strict controls Di Se int? says The he also potential sav ne Femains for surveillance is * pees resume oe AVA because ni the Sinall undesfinanceundesfdinanced atafts of federal and state inspectors A surv recently compielet at Mount Siray of 9.4K AN bestos Lane Lane Workers around the country for in Enowed that in 1970 and 1971 there was only one dust round taken in astralus every 20.000 dave worked p^/risf^r Bren a Anxiety in the demolition Industry alsol alsol And while he says he appreciates the ashes seems minimal We don't have a dust pink lies industry a expressed expressed interest in solving the lem in demolition #ats Leonard Kapy vice pli.blem Ir Selikoff is Rare pie.orm pie.orm in es president of Wrecking Corp the largest demolition of America one of plain the continuing apathy among many works companies in the coun- ers and managera This isn't just Both try Some people think you can take down a scate he says Some people want to see the 1 building without dust he says with a laugh bodies in the street before they become mn X. As for asbestos Atr Kapy isn't wornsed " know fellas who have laid antim cerned Unfortunately In this case case the bodies pipe for me in the street PLAINTIFI EXHIBIT 1611