THE EXTERMINATOR
Burke, William K.
The EXTERMINATOR Poisons bugs. People, too. BY WILLIAM K. BURKE There weren't many jobs open in Detroit in 1981, and few promised any future. So Steve House, then twenty-six and clean-cut after...
...House is suing Velsicol and Terminix for destroying his health, but he believes the problem runs deeper than two companies...
...But Frommer said that was an unrealistically high level of the chemical not likely to occur in a human...
...If the bugs didn't die quickly enough, he would tell the service worker to "buttermilk" the chemical: illegally mix a double-strength solution...
...He says the Association wanted him to stop requiring his employees to wear protective equipment...
...One manager had a favorite phrase for difficult jobs...
...Samuel Epstein recently published a paper documenting twenty-five new cases of rare blood disorders in people exposed to chlordane and heptachlor...
...One way to prevent their moving from the earth up into a house is to ventilate home foundations...
...He says he has pumped chlordane near wells, into sandy soil that easily soaked up the chemical solution...
...These guys got paid a commission," he says...
...But, like many victims of toxic contamination before him, House says resistance is his best therapy...
...He put his fist through the bathroom door when his wife, Sue, locked herself in during an argument...
...But that didn't bother the exterminators...
...Then he learned his loyalty might be killing him...
...Epstein, professor of preventative medicine at the University of Illinois, is the author of The Politics of Cancer...
...With overtime pay, House figured he could make a decent living...
...He remembers seeing patches of the chemical floating away on a small lake adjoining a house he treated...
...When asked about it, Assistant Administrator Jack Moore told The Washington Post, "I'm not expert in ethics...
...As soon as somebody gets sick, they fire him...
...One way to increase the size of those checks is to cut back on safety-equipment costs...
...But critics say the chemicals kill-sometimes quickly, from rare blood disorders, and sometimes slowly from nerve and liver damage and, finally, cancer...
...Since leaving the company in 1986, Sweeney has become convinced that it is no accident employees weren't told about the scientific evidence against the use of chlorinated hydrocarbons...
...House was accused of spreading infectious hepatitis among his branch's workers and customers after he missed eight weeks of...
...That was because the customer had heard of the dangers of chlordane and its chemical relatives and refused to let Terminix apply them to his home...
...I almost feel as if I got a death sentence passed on me and I'm just waiting for Mother Nature to throw the switch," House says...
...Velsicol's literature insists its products are only dangerous when misapplied...
...For almost a year, they tested House for hepatitis, but then they began to suspect that the chemicals he breathed and splashed on himself every day were causing his problems...
...This amounts to human experimentation, according to Jay Feldman of NCAMP: "They are knowingly allowing human exposure to a known carcinogen...
...Many pest-control compounds are labeled by the EPA for use only by state-certified pest-control operators...
...When Bill Sweeney became service manager at a Terminix branch, he learned that a large part of his job was reassuring frightened customers...
...Elsewhere in the same issue, writer Alan Caruba comments on reports of sick people and contaminated homes causing exterminators negative publicity: "It will not cease so long as the regulatory requirements to enter the pest-control industry remain so minimal they virtually invite a level of incompetence...
...They thrive in enclosed damp areas...
...Homes contaminated by chlordane and heptachlor often must be demolished...
...But that issue doesn't seem to bother the EPA...
...Its pamphlet on subterranean termites says that soaking the ground with chemicals is the best way to prevent termite damage...
...Joseph Moch, an attorney who represents Tvedten, House, and almost 200 other exterminators and homeowners exposed to chlordane and heptachlor, expects to be litigating such cases for at least twenty years...
...In April, however, a Federal judge hearing the case of NCAMP v. EPA, a suit challenging the agency's deal with Velsicol, overturned that agreement, thus banning use of chlordane...
...But in June, the EPA still had no objection to Velsicol's plan to conduct tests in the homes of willing occupants to see if it could find a "safe" way of applying chlordane...
...The exterminators' work isn't measured by the number of jobs they complete safely...
...Last summer, after a year and a half away from pest control, he had measurable levels of chlordane and several of its metabolites, chemicals produced in the body of a contaminated person—levels ranging from twenty-five to 218 parts per billion...
...Tvedten resigned from the Michigan Pest Control Association in 1983...
...Last August, House wrote a letter to Michigan Governor James Blanchard listing fourteen addresses he believes he may have contaminated...
...The OzonofF-Epstein paper also notes that a Velsicol study of exterminators found the number of deaths from skin, bladder, and lung cancer exceeds statistical norms...
...However, Creagh denies House's version and said recently that the Department has tested twenty-three sites in response to House's letter—several neighbors of homes House listed saw the Department teams at work and asked to be tested too...
...He remembers a manager who died of a heart attack after losing forty pounds at a weight-loss clinic...
...To gather information, House recently raided the dumpsters outside the Terminix branch where he once worked...
...It wasn't either you do it safely or you lose your job, it was you do it or you lose your job...
...Then House discovered that Cook International, the corporation that provided > his health insurance, also owned Terminix...
...House's doctors discovered that House's liver was mostly fat and scar tissue but couldn't tell him what was destroying it...
...But the EPA regulations have an important clause that is usually not talked about...
...In more than four years, House only once used an alternative pesticide...
...After termites were found in two houses in a suburban Detroit neighborhood, Terminix salesmen visited the neighbors with pictures of termite damage and contracts for preventive treatments...
...That's how they can say our employees are healthy," House says...
...Sweeney remembers requisitions for first-aid kits and other safety equipment coming back with the amount of the orders reduced, in England's handwriting...
...House contacted the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides...
...I had to bite my lip," says House...
...As he studied the chemicals he had used, guilt tinged House's fear for his own future...
...Velsicol maintains that chlordane is safe and wants to recapture its share of the $50 million annual market in termiticides...
...Termites work slowly, and careful building and monitoring of foundaIf the bugs didn't die quickly nough, one manager would tell the exterminator to 'buttermilk' the chemical: illegally mix a double-strength solution...
...That's how Bill Sweeney, one of House's former managers, sums up the message Terminix management gave workers in the southeastern Michigan region...
...Sweeney and House describe similar training methods: a week or less of riding along on jobs...
...Department of Agriculture disagrees...
...it's measured by the number of dollars of business they bring in each month...
...He would laugh, then cry...
...He and his co-workers weren't provided with protective clothing...
...they didn't know much about the chemicals they used, and they weren't encouraged to learn more...
...To put it bluntly, I'm a walking can of Raid, thanks to Velsicol and the pest-control industry," says House...
...Managers, House says, "would actually look down on you for wearing a respirator...
...This did not motivate them to offer their customers cheaper alternatives to soaking the soil under and around their buildings with chemicals...
...Sweeney says most of the pest-control workers he supervised were "the type of guy you don't stop and pick up when you see them hitchhiking...
...Another worker had a fatal stroke in a Terminix office after driving a chlordane-contaminated truck...
...If you were a salesman on commission," House asks, "what are you going to go for...
...What he saw in the pest-control industry convinced him that only strict regulation and use of alternatives to chemicals whenever possible can prevent the endless repetition of what happened to him and other workers and customers...
...The training was a joke," says House...
...He even canceled his honeymoon to start his new career...
...After watching a manager pour a coffee can full of chlordane behind a customer's basement wall, a violation of EPA regulations, Sweeney says he asked about cleaning up the chemical—and learned there's no way to neutralize chlordane...
...The company points to its own studies of exterminators which, it says, found no long-term health It wasn't either you do it safely or you lose your job, it was you do it or you lose your job.' problems due to exposure to chlordane and heptachlor...
...crops and sold in home and garden sprays...
...The EPA and Velsicol made a deal last summer, after the Agency accepted research data showing that for every thousand homes treated with chlordane in accord with regulations, three people would contract cancer...
...House also included the names of eleven present and former Terminix workers, four of whom have died, who he thinks should be tested for pesticide contamination...
...More than once," says Sweeney, "I've heard him say, 'If you don't work, you're peeing on my leg and taking my money.'" Bob England refused to comment for this story...
...He isn't the man I married," Sue House said...
...he didn't know why, or how to stop...
...In 1986, House's career landed him in a mental-health clinic north of Detroit...
...He realized he had been ordered to misapply the chemicals...
...I felt like Attila the Hun," he says...
...He sat up in bed dripping cold sweat, trying to erase memories of giant insects and the smell of pesticides, and trying to understand what his symptoms might mean...
...Nightmares woke him often...
...But the EPA took no notice of the neurological and immunological hazards documented by scientists opposed to use of the chemical...
...Last fall, Steve House sat at a hearing in Michigan's Capitol and listened to Velsicol executive and co-owner Charles Frommer explain why Michigan shouldn't ban chlordane...
...The buyer was ServiceMaster, a nationwide carpet-cleaning company that also has a growing division specializing in cleanup of buildings contaminated by chlordane...
...These guys are incredible," he says...
...Sweeney spent three days watching salesmen press to meet their quotas before being put out on his own with a sprayer and a pick-up truck...
...I've had guys who made a living out of delivering pizzas, guys who collected bottles and pop cans who happened to walk in the shop and fill out an application...
...So Steve House, then twenty-six and clean-cut after a four-year hitch in the Army, left his job on a grocery-store loading dock and took a pay cut to go to work for Terminix, a national pest-control chain...
...its products, usually containing both chlordane and heptachlor, once accounted for almost 80 per cent of those sales...
...Noting that chlordane lasts longer than other termiticides, the pamphlet shows worried homeowners how to dig trenches around their homes and fill them with the chemical...
...House says Frommer agreed that one strain of white mice developed liver tumors with five parts per billion of chlordane and heptachlor in their fat tissue...
...Cook International has sold Terminix International...
...He took pictures of bottles holding residues of the lethal herbicide paraquat tossed out in violation of EPA rules...
...They [Terminix officials] hire the walking wounded sometimes...
...Tests eventually showed House's body to hold some of the highest levels of chlordane and related chemicals ever recorded...
...Victims of pesticide poisoning are often warned not to lose weight, since that releases the poisons from their fat cells...
...The managers get bonus checks based on their monthly net profits...
...House remembers pumping chemicals under almost every house in that neighborhood...
...While eleven sites were contaminated, Creagh says, only one had air levels exceeding NAS guidelines...
...I was told I was doing a damn good job and come to find out I was poisoning myself and they didn't care...
...House says that in the branches where he worked, there was almost total turnover of salesmen every six months...
...David Ozonoff, professor of epidemiology at Boston University's school of public health...
...Subterranean termites need moisture to survive...
...While waiting for health tests and consulting with attorneys, House couldn't stop thinking about the homes he had treated...
...While headaches, dizziness, and nausea are symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning, the article suggests that customers exhibiting those symptoms are just stressed by the smell of toxic chemicals in their homes and need to be calmed down...
...The manager said the hell with it, splash it across the crawl and let it hit the cinder-block and run down," House says...
...House said Terminix sells air vents for that purpose, but the logic of economic incentive stops salesmen from recommending their use...
...But one thing has changed...
...A 15 per cent cut of a $900 termite job or a 15 per cent cut on eight air vents that cost $35 each...
...One home had a crawl space underneath it that House, the manager, and another technician couldn't reach...
...William K. Burke is a free-lance writer in Somerville, Massachusetts...
...Salesmen were paid a 15 per cent commission on all sales over their quota of $1,000 a month...
...Sweeney also says an annual employee turnover rate of 200 per cent was considered good...
...Creagh notes that the January meeting was taped, but House and his attorney say substantial portions of the testimony have been edited out of the taped copy they received...
...During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, chlordane was sprayed on U.S...
...tions could reduce chemical use and chemical hazards, environmentalists argue...
...Ozonoff and Dr...
...House says that Keith Creagh of the Michigan Department of Agriculture reported at a January hearing in Lansing, held in response to his letter, that five of the homes he listed had been tested and three were found to have air levels of chlordane and aldrin in excess of National Academy of Sciences safety standards...
...The U.S...
...Though House blames the job pressures—and his own ignorance of the chemicals he worked with—for misapplications of termiticides, he insists that Terminix's sales structure results in systematic pesticide overuse...
...The profusely illustrated pamphlet contains no mention of chlordane's hazards, beyond an admonition to follow the label instructions...
...Restricted-use pesticides may also be applied by workers under the supervision of a state-certified pest-control applicator...
...House knew that pesticides involved health hazards, but he was told the chemicals were safe as long as they were used properly...
...After the recent ban, the only remaining chlordane users (other than those taking part in Velsicol's research program) will be homeowners spraying the chemical without supervision until whatever's left in private hands is used up...
...They weren't going to give up appointments for sales to train some idiot how to squirt chemicals on the floor...
...Tvedten has filed a lawsuit against Velsicol, the National Pest Control Association, and the MPCA, claiming he and his wife were poisoned by chlordane because of industry-wide negligence...
...For the next four-and-a-half years, he averaged sixty hours a week spraying buildings for roaches and pumping chemicals into the earth to kill termites...
...House remembers a friend who was threatened with dismissal and quit after developing symptoms similar to his own...
...But in February 1987, Sue House saw a news story about efforts to ban chlordane because it causes cancer in laboratory animals and can damage human nervous and immune systems...
...He believes now that such treatments should be illegal...
...The EPA label specified that termiticides were to be injected underground to prevent the fumes' reaching residents...
...I didn't know what chemical I used the first day I did pest control," recalls Sweeney...
...NCAMP's Baxter says there are no safe levels of exposure to the chemicals and tests have shown them to remain lethal for more than thirty years...
...This means that across the United States, a manager can acquire a state certificate, usually by taking a written test or paying a fee, hang it on his office wall, and send out poorly trained employees to pump and spray chemicals...
...And no one knows how much chlordane and heptachlor is still in circulation...
...House thought he was going insane...
...The deal allowed continued spraying of existing stocks of chlordane...
...In 1978, after tests showed chlordane to cause cancer in laboratory mice, the Environmental Protection Agency banned all uses of the chemical except for killing underground termites...
...They haven't changed a thing...
...Nor did anyone point out to House the page in the Terminix field manual that said the long-lasting chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides chlordane, aldrin, and heptachlor concentrate in people's fat tissue, so other types of chemicals should be used whenever possible...
...Bob England, the company's regional manager, had a phrase he applied to em-' ployees who questioned procedures or demanded more money for safety equipment...
...He met Steve Tvedten, who owns a pest-control company in western Michigan...
...House cites NCAMP literature pointing out that frequent inspections, use of plastic and metal barriers, and ventilation, combined with chemical spot treatment of infested areas, can prevent most termite damage...
...He had frequent headaches, dizziness, and severe mood swings...
...The Velsicol Chemical Corporation is the sole manufacturer of chlordane...
...Almost all Americans probably have . some level of chlordane in their fat tissue, according to Dr...
...Then House learned he was not alone...
...The Terminix branch manager told House he could rise to a management position within a few years...
...work for an open liver biopsy...
...NCAMP toxicologist Diane Baxter, who runs a clearinghouse for people exposed to chlordane and heptachlor, helped House confirm what his own doctors suspected: He was a victim of chlordane poisoning...
...I had sprayed this stuff around families with children without knowing anything about its toxic properties...
...Until Steve House's doctors told him to quit pest-control work, he was proud of his loyalty to Terminix...
...In the February 1987 issue of Pest Control Monthly, an article explains how to soothe worried customers...
...I honestly believe," says Sweeney, "the philosophy was if they can make you at ease [about the chemicals], then it's easier for you to explain it to a customer and make a customer at ease...
...Several Velsicol executives were indicted for concealing those studies from the EPA, but the case was thrown out because of prosecutorial misconduct...
Vol. 52 • August 1988 • No. 8
