Battle for Breath Industry Lobbyists, Government Watchdogs, and the Silicosis Crisis

...While ostensibly aimed at providing "sound science," it's clear that the Silica Coalition's true purpose is to resist new regulatory efforts...

...Three researchers at Tulane University then began a series of studies that documented widespread silicosis...

...They could, however, sue the sand dealers and equipment makers who supplied their employers: under Texas common law, those selling dangerous products had an obligation to adequately warn users of potential hazards...

...From 1968 until 1982, when he retired, he worked in a Gulf Coast shipyard...

...He also sandblasted pipes and pipe racks in order to clean and recondition them...

...Second, there was contention over "the ability of present engineering technology to create ventilation and hooding systems efficient enough to meet the new regulations...

...And former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich established a special emphasis program on silica, with the announced goal of eliminating silicosis as a work hazard in the United States...

...In these appeals, it was clear that workers' health was not foremost on the SSAs agenda...

...He went to a veterans hospital, where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis...

...At present it appears that NIOSH and OSHA, along with private industry, are approaching a moment of decision...

...In the early 1980s, as the SSA was winding down its operations in Washington, a new epidemic of silicosis was emerging in the oil fields of West Texas...

...A few years earlier, sandblasters and painters in Louisiana's Avondale Shipyards had come forward, complaining of constricted breathing and terrible pain...

...The organization held that if workers used "proper protective devices" there was little danger of excessive exposure...

...Two OSHA administrators in particular have played quietly heroic roles...

...The process of restarting the fields involved reconditioning and cleaning many miles of piping and storage tanks—sandblasting away decades' worth of tar and oil residues...

...On the one hand, the cooperation between the government and industry that led to the March 1997 National Silicosis Conference has resulted in a generally higher awareness of the issue...

...Using legal strategies developed in the asbestos litigation of the 1970s and 1980s, plantiffs' lawyers began to reach substantial settlements, and achieved what OSHA did not: many of the companies began to substitute nonsilica abrasives for the deadly sand previously used...

...And recent attention to the carcinogenic effects of silica—and the resulting fear that silica is not only an occupational, but an environmental hazard as well— will undoubtedly broaden the debate and create untold new conflicts...

...Blair's report proved to be a damning indictment of silica exposures in general and the protection—or more accurately, the lack of protection—that respirators and protective equipment afforded workers...

...48 n DISSENT / Spring 1998...

...Congressional investigations revealed that hundreds of these workers had been buried outside the tunnels, in unmarked roadside graves, by the very company that was killing them...

...The executive director of the SSA commented that "with the change in administration, the ever-increasing avalanche of government regulations has been reversed...

...The SSA was soon receiving favorable attention in the trade press...

...Sline's appeal was in vain, however...

...The tardiness of change is a tribute to the cleverness, determination, and audacity of industry representatives, who have worked for nearly three decades to preserve the status quo...

...Many of those employed to do the dirty and dangerous work of sandblasting were Mexican migrants who had recently arrived in the boom towns of West Texas...

...During the ensuing twenty-eight years, however, tens of thousands of workers continued and continue to be overexposed—even as the scientific evidence of silica's dangers has mounted...

...Many in the industry seemed to assume that the epidemic would come and go—that most of the migrant workers would move on to other parts of the country, or return to Mexico when the sandblasting operations ceased or their health deteriorated...

...The disease is irreversible...

...This work was typically performed by small, nonunion contractors...

...For most of the time at the shipyard, he used a "desert hood," which protected him from ricocheting particles, a cartridge respirator that partially filtered the silicaladen air, and sometimes an air-fed hood, a cumbersome "space suit" that supplied him with relatively pure air for the short time he was able to wear it in the hot and humid shipyard...

...This was the general line that the SSA took in public: "the best available technology could now protect workers," and the reason that workers had come down with silicosis in the past was that they "had no air-fed hoods...

...In late 1994 a Pennsylvania insurance company came to McAteer and Hricko and requested an investigation, saying that it had noticed a sharp increase in silicosis deaths in young miners...

...LAWRENCE BROWN was born in Caplan, Louisiana, in 1946, and, after graduating from the local high school, worked on his father's farm...

...But silicosis never really went away...

...The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) took a keen interest in silicosis almost from the moment of their creation in 1970...

...Following discharge in 1977, Brown, who was white, began working as a sandblaster and painter for a local paint company that contracted nonunion workers out to virtually every major refinery in the Port Arthur, Texas, area...

...This has meant that miners have had to drill through silicaladen rock to reach the coal...

...He found that "the protection afforded these workmen is, on the whole, marginal to poor...

...Finally, alluding to the ongoing crisis brought about by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), audience members argued that the new equipment demanded by the regulations would be "cost-prohibitive or energy-wasteful...

...Thousands of silicosis lawsuits were filed against foundries, metal mines, potteries, and construction companies...

...When he was seventeen years old, he was drafted into the army and served in Vietnam for five years...

...If OSHA makes new attempts to reduce inhalation standards or to ban the use of sand as an abrasive, epic battles between government and industry are sure to ensue...

...when domestic oil prices skyrocketed, marginal fields were suddenly profitable once again...

...Beginning in the late 1960s, it became clear that thousands of workers—especially in the oil industries of the Gulf Coast—were losing their lives prematurely because of silica exposure...

...NIOSH reacted swiftly...

...Under Clinton, OSHA has taken silicosis more seriously—although it is still not clear whether the agency will fight again for reduced silica inhalation standards...

...Silicosis was one of the oldest and best-documented occupational diseases, and NIOSH officials hoped that developing the scientific base for an enforceable silica standard would be politically less controversial than establishing standards for newer toxic substances...

...Most of the time he wore a desert hood and sometimes a paper dust mask as he blasted the inside of storage tanks and other vessels, preparing them for painting...

...With competing demands for resources, OSHA focused on other issues, and the SSA was successful in delaying any action on the proposed silica standards...

...In the ensuing three years, regulators' concern has continued to increase...

...DAVID ROSNER is professor of history and public health, Columbia University, and co-author (with Gerald Markowitz) of Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease...

...In June 1990 his x-rays were reevaluated, and he was diagnosed with silicosis...

...The SSA has been saving you anywhere between $150.00 to $300.00 [for] every sandblaster you have had working for you each year," he reminded the members...

...Silicosis patients suffer from chronic coughs and severe shortness of breath, and are vulnerable to respiratory infections of all kinds...

...They don't...

...But OSHA regulations aren't the only potential weapon against silicosis...

...In the past two decades, as the coal resources of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky have become tapped out, mining firms have pursued veins that are thinner and deeper in the ground...

...Even under Carter appointee Eula Bingham, under whose watch OSHA adopted more occupational-safety standards than in any similar period before or since, no new silica regulations were adopted...

...Three major silicosis conferences—one of them sponsored by OSHA—have been held since 1995...

...Many of the workers were never provided with adequate protection from the silica sand they blasted...

...These studies seemed tailor-made for the new federal agencies...

...He had difficulty even exerting himself to take a shower...

...WHEN NIOSH and OSHA were established by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, silicosis was just returning to policy makers' radar screens...

...In June 1983 the SSAs board of directors met and concluded that because "regulatory activity in and from Washington is at a dormant level . . . the association should be put on hold...

...But in mid-1974, two other NIOSH-supported projects revealed the prevalence of silicosis among shipyard workers and steel fabricators in New Orleans and elsewhere...

...What the SSA officials did not reveal, however, was a private study completed nine months earlier that showed that "under conditions considered good work practice," in a 46 n DISSENT / Spring 1998 plant of one of the officers of the association, nearly half of all air samples were above the threshold-limit value...

...By the early 1990s, scores of silicotic workers, mostly Hispanic and mostly young, had been diagnosed...

...Three years later, he had deteriorated to the point where he "was no longer able to walk and can only stand briefly while using supplemental oxygen...

...In all the case histories, names and other identifying information have been changed...

...Two years later, unemployed, he had lost over twenty pounds and suffered from persistent coughing and occasional episodes of vomiting...

...THE FINAL blow to the NIOSH proposal to ban sand was dealt by the arrival of the Reagan administration...

...Industry representatives in the audience challenged him on three grounds: First, they argued that the medical data about silica and the incidence of silicosis were incomplete...

...The records of the organization were placed in storage and the offices closed...

...Therefore, if equipment was capable of lowering exposure to "safe" levels, there was no need to change the existing threshold-limit value for silica...

...Almost immediately after the agency released its recommendations, industry groups launched a massive organizing effort to ensure that OSHA did not adopt the proposed standards...

...O'Neill, the chief of OSHAs division of health-standards development...

...At a meeting of the Industrial Health Foundation in Pittsburgh, business leaders confronted J.P...

...After considering A different version of this article appears in Public Health Reports...

...One report, by Tulane's Morton Ziskind, argued that the best way to protect workers would be to develop alternatives to sand as an abrasive: "The use of sand substitutes for abrasive purposes is the surest way of protecting against silicosis...

...In the early 1970s, NIOSH contracted with Austin Blair, an industrial hygienist from Boeing Aerospace Company in Seattle, to survey working conditions in sandblast operations...

...The association's president, L.L...

...After graduating from high school he spent two years in college, joined the army as an artillery setter, and then worked as a laborer and sandblaster...

...The sandblasting and paint industries quickly shattered NIOSH's hopes that silicosis would be an uncontroversial subject of regulation...

...One audience member asked, "Do we really know that the present standard wouldn't be adequate if it were fully enforced...

...In 1993, just as the Texas workers were winning their settlements, the Clinton administration arrived, and some of Washington's sleeping dogs began to stir...

...With a Republican Congress and a timid executive branch, the silica industry may outlast OSHA once again in hand-to-hand competition...

...Despite this new attention, it remains the case that none of the reforms recommended by NIOSH have yet been implemented...

...Sline, whose painting firm had forty to fifty sandblasters operating every day, was convinced that sandblasting was safe: "We've done thousands of man-hours of sandblasting with thousands of tons of sand, and we've never had a case of silicosis...

...By 1982, the Washington environment had changed so drastically that the SSA began to question the need to sustain itself...

...In addition to the massive dust clouds that often enveloped him, Brown was exposed to the asbestos and other insulating material that covered these pipes...

...Three years later, in 1988, at the age of fortyone, he developed night sweats, violent coughing, and shortness of breath...

...Because of his small size (he was only five feet six inches tall and weighed less than 125 pounds) Farmer was often sent into the holds and double-bottoms of ships, which were poorly ventilated, where he sandblasted off asbestos and other residue...

...In 1983 he took up work as a truck mechanic and finally in 1985 began work as a farm laborer...

...Shortly thereafter, the SSA wrote to various industries requesting financial support—and also urged companies to write letters to OSHA, requesting a delay in the public hearings on NIOSH's proposed standards...

...The Silica Coalition describes itself as "a diverse association of trade associations and companies involved in the mining, processing, production, and use of silica and silica-containing materials...

...In February 1975, more than fifty industry representatives gathered in Houston to DISSENT / Spring 1998 n 45 BATTLE FOR BREATH form the Silica Safety Association...

...In 1988, when he was fifty-three years old, a doctor diagnosed him with "massive progressive fibrosis," noting that "he was very short of breath while standing up and walking a mere three feet to the examining table...

...He had sandblasted for only ten years...

...Its purpose, they proclaimed, was to "investigate and report on possible health hazards involved in [the] use of silica products and to recommend adequate protective measures considered economically feasible...

...While the SSA was gathering its energies, OSHA—with a relatively small and dispersed staff—was consumed by the overwhelming responsibility of deciding on which NIOSH recommendations to adopt...

...John Farmer,* an African-American sandblaster, was born in 1935 in the Gulf Coast town of Orange, Texas...

...And industry groups are marshaling their lobbying forces once again: in 1997, the "Silica Coalition" arrived in Washington...

...They're designed in a single size which, in the opinions of the interviewed blasters, fit no one...

...What destroyed these workers was silicosis— a devastating lung disease that results from the inhalation of silica particles...

...Sline, owner of Sline International Painters, Inc., opened by noting that NIOSH's recommendations "could have [a] serious cost impact for all sandblasting operations...

...Blair wrote unevasively: "Some mention should be made of respirator fit...

...In 1981 the SSA claimed credit for forestalling and delaying any new standards, declaring that "to date, the efforts of SSA have been the major influence in the continuation of sandblasting in the United States...

...The agency further recommended that silica be banned as an abrasive in blasting: "uncontrolled abrasive blasting with silica sand is such a severe silicosis hazard that . . . silica sand, or other materials containing more than 1 percent free silica, should be prohibited as an abrasive substance in abrasive blasting and cleaning operations...

...GERALD MARKOWITZ is professor of history John Jay College and CUNY Graduate Center, and coauthor (with David Rosner) of Children, Race, and Power: Kenneth and Mamie•Clark's Northside Center...

...In late 1974, the agency recommended a Crystalline Silica Standard in which the Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) would be cut in half, "so that no worker is exposed to a time-weighted average (TWA) concentration of free silica greater than fifty micrograms per cubic meter of air...

...One measure of this is the number of silicosis-related sites that have developed over the course of the past year on the World Wide Web...

...McAteer points out that miners now use "better drills that can drill through rock they couldn't go through before— but that means they are drilling through silica...

...They could not productively sue their employers, who were protected by workers'-compensation statutes that had been devised in the 1930s to minimize liability...

...Blair's indictment of protective equipment was serious enough...

...In the mid-1980s, young men began to appear in doctors' offices, complaining of shortness of breath, coughing, and sweating...

...In the course of the next few months, the SSA developed its argument on behalf of the continued use of sand...

...As a result, OSHA's proposed abrasive blasting standard has been moved from a top priority 'target' regulation to the back burner...

...Scientists have discovered correlations between silica exposure and certain cancers, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer has named silica as a probable human carcinogen...

...But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Texas workers exposed to silica began to file lawsuits...

...Among NIOSH's primary tasks was to write reports that would provide scientific guidance for OSHAs regulatory activity...

...These fields, which had long been in decline, were revived by the OPEC crises of the 1970s...

...If only 10 percent of occupationally exposed workers (or their heirs) believed their lung cancer is due to their occupational silica exposure...

...He argued that industry owed a great deal to SSA because it had saved substantial sums "by not BATTLE FOR BREATH having sandblasters and others working in the area of Abrasive Blasting medically examined and other unnecessary procedures...

...Without better epidemiology, they maintained, lowering the threshold-limit value or banning sand was premature...

...By the late 1940s, following the introduction of filters and ventilators for workers, business leaders declared silicosis a disease of the past, whose current victims were a legacy of the unhygienic and primitive work conditions of a bygone era...

...To make matters worse, the administration gutted OSHA by drastically reducing the number of inspectors and inspections nationwide...

...On the other hand, this new public attention has not reduced the underlying conflicts...

...The American Painting Contractor, for example, editorialized in May 1975 that the survival of sandblasting with silica "might well depend upon the [Silica Safety] association's accomplishments in the next few months...

...O'Neill argued there that "the prevalence of silicosis has not really dropped at all," and that therefore NIOSH's proposed standards were reasonable and just...

...The Washington law firm Payton, Boggs recently sponsored a conference called "Silica in the Next Century," at which industry representatives and their lawyers vented their fears of asbestos-scale liability suits...

...so, as we say about sleeping dogs . . . ." Almost a year later, Sline appealed to member organizations to keep contributing or face the closure of the SSAs offices...

...In the years after the Gauley Bridge revelations, silicosis was considered "the king of occupational diseases...

...These industries responded by convincing state governments to incorporate silicosis into workers'-compensation schedules, thus taking the disease out of the courts...

...The February 1982 Silica Safety Association Newsletter noted that "it's been a while since our last newsletter [because] federal regulations have also been few and far between...

...In an abstract entitled "Toxic Tort Litigation Overview," Jean McHarg noted that "approximately two million workers are exposed to respirable silica annually...

...The primary purpose of the Silica Safety Association, he explained, was "to represent interested parties in the attempt to assure the continued use of sand in abrasive blasting operations...

...Two years later, he was dead, at the age of fortysix...

...44 n DISSENT / Spring 1998 BATTLE FOR BREATH him for a lung transplant, the physician noted that this fifty-six-year-old man's future looked "bleak both for his longevity as well as quality of life...

...Davitt DISSENT / Spring 1998 n 47 BATTLE FOR BREATH McAteer (himself the son of a miner) and Andrea Hricko of the Mine Safety and Health Administration have documented the spread of silicosis to the coal mines of the eastern United States, where it had never been considered a threat...