DEAD ON THE JOB

...NIOSH has identified 1,200 industrial chemicals that produce tumors in animals, and a 1978 report by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare estimated that two out of five cancer deaths in the next three decades would result just from asbestos and five other "high-exposure" carcinogens — arsenic, benzene, chromium, nickel oxides, and petroleum fractions...

...Many — perhaps most — of these casualties could be prevented by testing chemicals and setting standards for their use...

...A century ago, a railroad worker had to prove that the accident in which he lost a leg was management's fault before he could be compensated...

...In 1972, OSHA began hearings to establish safety standards for the asbestos industry, but the corporations mounted fierce resistance, insisting that the dangers were "minimal...

...W. C. Hueper, an authority on the subject, observed in a 1964 book, "Cancers of all types and causes display, even under already existing conditions, all the characteristics of an epidemic in slow motion...

...These are not workplace accidents (which occur at a rate of about 2,000 a month) but illnesses attributable to the thousands of new chemicals, untested for safety, that are being introduced into industrial products and processes...

...ing from the ailments he acquired on the job...

...Ralph Doughtery of Florida State University has found that the sperm count for males has declined in a forty-year period from ninety million per cubic centimeter to sixty million, and that sperm now contains traces of such toxic industrial chemicals as PCBs, byproducts of DDT, and benzene...

...A campaign by progressives and socialists finally established a system of "no fault" workmen's compensation...

...Capitalizing on Proposition Thirteen sentiment, it argues that the costs of regulation are an excessive burden Clearly the pace of technology is outrunning concern for the "human resources" which operate American industry...

...Thomas Mancuso, the University of Pittsburgh researcher who upset the Government and the nuclear industry with his study of radiation effects on atomic workers exposed to nuclear substances at Hartford, Washington, has also contributed distressing elements to the occupational health issue...

...Anthony Robbins, the director of NIOSH, which researches the problem and complements OSHA's 'enforcement, believes the annual number of deaths from occupational disease is probably higher than 100,000...

...The menace of occupational disease resembles that of nuclear radiation: It is invisible...

...This "has brought about the unsettling recognition," says Mancuso, "that virtually all prior limited tests of industrial chemicals, when they were done decades before, were primarily of a single chemical rather than in combination of chemicals used in the work environment...

...Sam Epstein, who says he favors the free-enterprise system, accuses the corporations of white-collar crime and "Watergate-ism" in their handling of safety and health problems...

...The major obstacle to a meaningful attack on occupational disease is the profit-conscious scheme of priorities of corporate management...

...Doctors constantly misdiagnosed his ailments — one blamed an inner-ear infection, another said he had multiple sclerosis...

...The facts, as recounted by experts from labor, business, government, and science, were frightening: An "occupational health survey" undertaken by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) between 1972 and 1974, covering almost a million workers in 5,000 plants, indicated that one worker in four — about twenty-one million working men and women — "currently may be exposed to OSHA-regulated hazardous substances" which can cause disease or death...

...and blacks who come from impoverished homes in the South reveal a substantially higher death rate than blacks born in Ohio...

...Even white males born in the South show significantly higher lung cancer rates than white males born in Ohio...

...He asks, "In the face of these scientific unknowns, how can anyone arbitrarily assume, as has been consistently done in the past, that occupational cancer is a minor problem...

...Zero risk," he says, is impossible...

...anyone who barbecues a hamburger is exposed to carcinogenic substances...

...Yet, according to a 1976 Congressional report, asbestos may itself account for 50,000 deaths a year from cancer and other lung diseases — a number equal to the total American death toll in the Vietnam war...

...Fortunately, an EPA chemist put a crimp in those plans by showing that Egyptian families had been plagued by mental disorders and slurred speech sixty days after a Phosvel spraying program had begun in their vicinity...

...Others include infertility, miscarriages, early menopause in women, and low sperm-count in men...

...Bingham and her OSHA associates convened a recent seminar in Chicago for the news media because they are convinced that occupational disease is the most important domestic issue — and is virtually being ignored...

...Though the Carter Administration made an initial effort to staff the occupational health and safety agencies with such conscientious regulators as Bingham, Robbins, and Froines, it is now yielding steadily to business protests against "over-regulation...

...Before Congress created OSHA and NIOSH in 1970, "consensus" standards were set by industry, and those standards were so loose, says Eula Bingham, that "when we adopted them temporarily it made the agency a laughing stock...

...A physician it retained insisted there had been "no direct psychological effects of exposure...

...No one can calculate the toll for the many other workplace materials believed to induce cancer...

...it is a matter of catching up with decades of under-regulation and neglect...

...Employers knew it was dangerous then, and in ensuing years medical research described how exposure brought on asbestosis, a frequently fatal lung disease...

...In 1918, when world production of asbestos was less than 5 per cent of today's total, life insurance companies refused to issue policies to workers in asbestos plants...

...Epstein estimates it costs $200,000 to test a single chemical for its cancer-inducing potential, or $140 million for the 700 new chemicals brought to market every year...

...Eula Bingham makes the same point: With only 1,750 inspectors and a budget of about $160 million, OSHA manages to inspect each year 2 per cent of the five million workplaces under its jurisdiction...

...But the issue is not over-regulation...

...But as Dr...

...Within a month Donald Jackson's weight fell from 205 pounds to 165...

...Even more disturbing is the relationship between poverty and industrial disease...

...its victims die one by one, usually years after the disease is spawned...

...He notes that chemicals which may inflict little injury by themselves — such as ferric oxide — greatly increase the risk of cancer when combined with other chemicals...

...It would take a half century to cover them all — and perhaps longer if business steps up its resistance...

...In the petrochemical era, a new and more pernicious hazard, invisible and difficult to trace, has been added to the old hazards of job-related injury, illness, and death...

...A NIOSH study released in January 1978 found otherwise — the chemicals were responsible for "abnormalities" in 40 per cent of the workers tested, including Donald Jackson, who is still suffer...

...Jeanne Man-son, a specialist in reproductive toxicology at the University of Cincinnati, calls it an "overwhelming human health issue...

...Obviously, the Government can not be asked to regulate back-yard hamburgers...

...During the next two years, he saw many others at the pesticide plant develop similar symptoms...

...The nation took notice when the thalidomide scandal erupted many years ago, she notes, but "birth defects are only one part of the problem...

...NIOSH Director Anthony Robbins and his deputy, Dr...

...The sum is trivial for an industry that does $72 billion worth of business annually...

...Since the advent of the petrochemical era in the 1930s," says Dr...

...One day he tried to run across a parking lot and found he couldn't — his left ankle refused to flex...

...Dead on the job Steady work can be a suicide trip Sidney Lens A particular American form of suicide," says Eula Bingham, executive director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), "is holding a steady job...

...Epstein believes this estimate is low, since it takes no account of the effects of nuclear radiation and other carcinogens...

...M Case study Donald Jackson was once a varsity football linebacker and all-district baseball pitcher at a Texas high school He is only twenty-five years old now, and has been disabled since 1973, when he worked for a subsidiary of a large conglomerate which produced a pesticide called Phosvel at a small plant near Houston...

...These figures suggest, says Mancuso, that poverty is a major factor in cancer...

...the cause of death or illness can easily be hidden or denied by management...

...Through a continued, unrestrained, needless, avoidable, and in part reckless increasing contamination of the human environment with chemical and physical carcinogens...

...The consequences for future generations remain a frightening mystery...

...Typical of the corporate attitude is a comment by Ronald A. Lang, executive director of the American Industrial Health Council, that the debate hinges on a trade-off between "government control and freedom...

...Though her figures are disputed by big business, Bingham insists that at least 100,000 workers die each year — and three or four times that number are disabled — as a result of occupational disease...

...Their strategy, he says, is to "blame the victim," "minimize the risk," "exhaust regulatory agencies" with1 protracted legal actions, and propagandize the nation against the high costs of regulation...

...No one knows," he says, noting that with a staff of 950 and an annual budget of $80 million, NIOSH's "impact falls far short of what is needed...

...Thus, the American Industrial Health Council, a management creation, ascribes occupational cancer to smoking, poor diet, and hypersuscep-tibility, rather than to the chemicals at work...

...It is a hazard that has not begun to receive the attention it deserves...

...Research by Dr...

...She isn't kidding...

...ing their working lives, leaving them subject to disablement...

...S.L...

...Meanwhile, the corporation was trying to persuade the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to approve the pesticide for spraying on lettuce and tomatoes...

...none attributed them to his job or Phosvel...

...Irving Selikoff, an occupational epidemiologist, showed in the 1950s that the rate of lung cancer among asbestos workers was about eight times the norm for the general population, and that the rates for cancer of the colon, rectum, and stomach were also inordinately high...

...Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of occupational disease is in the area of human reproduction...

...Consider the case of asbestos, the "magic mineral" which is tensile, fire-resistant, and readily spun into yarn or woven into cloth...

...Within the last six months, she told the Chicago seminar, "our inspectors have been turned away from plants where there have been explosions and told by management to go to court for warrants...

...It was not until early 1976 that NIOSH finally began looking into the problem of Phosvel, and even then the company continued for a time to sell its pesticide here and abroad...

...the stage is being set indeed for a future occurrence of a catastrophic epidemic...

...Swiftly he developed other symptoms: His neck ached, his vision blurred, his right hand shook, he couJdn...

...Lately, according to Epstein, big business has taken a new tack: It does not deny that there are occupational risks in chemicals, but it insists that those risks must be accepted as a tradeoff for "progress...

...The Quebec Asbestos Mining Association has taken the position that while asbestos may have been dangerous in the past, conditions have improved so markedly that it is now "safe...

...Demographic studies in Ohio show that foreign-born male workers had a higher rate of lung cancer than native white males...

...But here, as elsewhere, the imperative is to maximize profits...

...On the other hand, there were no differences in lung cancer rates between the white and black males that were born in Ohio...

...Samuel S. Epstein, author of The Politics of Cancer, "a vast array of new synthetic organic chemicals have been introduced into commerce, generally in the absence of testing for carcinogenic and other chronic toxic effects on humans and the environment...

...hold his balance, he had difficulty urinating and was often constipated, he was sexually impotent...

...John Froines, assert that "occupational safety and health problems are the largest collection of preventable deaths, injuries, diseases, and disabilities" we have...

...And twice that number may have had exposure at some point durSidney Lens, a contributing editor of The Progressive, is a long-time labor leader and peace activist in Chicago...

...Millions have died and will continue to die because society does not seem to care, and because a profit-oriented economy judges everything — even life — by the standards of the cash register...