Health hazards for U.S. workers: A growing plague

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6 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1990 Third part of a four-part series.

"Each day millions of workers in America enter a battlefield," wrote Jeanne M. Stellman and Susan M. Daum in "Work is Dangerous to Your Health." "The battlefield is the American workplace, and the casualties of this war are higher than those of any other in the nation's history."

Every year, according to official estimates, over 13,000 American workers die and 2 million are disabled in industrial jobs. The actual figures could be twice that. In addition, reports the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 100,000 men and women die from occupational illnesses and almost 400,000 new cases of occupational diseases are recognized each year.

A 1979 Surgeon General's report asserted that the actual extent of occupational disease is probably far greater due to lack of reporting or recognition by doctors. The statistics also do not include the spread of disease to the family of workers. Mercury, lead, and asbestos contamination can be contracted at home from a worker's clothes or from exposures experienced near the plants.

Widespread industrial illnesses U.S. Public Health Studies show that 65 per cent of industrial workers are exposed regularly to toxic and/or unhealthy working conditions. Black lung afflicts about 100,000 miners, and 4000 workers die of it each year. About 17,000 cotton workers have brown lung.

Construction workers have the most dangerous jobs. In 1979, about 16 percent of occupational injuries and illnesses were in the construction industry, 13 percent were in manufacturing, and 11 percent were in minIng.

One of the most hazardous materials that workers face is asbestos. Of about 500,000 asbestos workers, estimates are that 170,000 will die of cancers—or almost two-fifths of all asbestos workers.

Worse yet, is the fact that the public is daily exposed to asbestos contamination in the streets, in water supplies, and in homes, offices, and school. Over the next 30 years, approximately 1000 to 7000 premature deaths are expected to occur as a result of exposure to friable asbestos materials in the schools alone, and 90 percent of these will be people who were exposed as children.

Nine out of every 10 industrial workers are not adequately protected from exposure to at least one of the 163 most common hazardous industrial chemicals, according to a 1979 Surgeon General's Report.

Studies of cancer incidences prove that the rates for both sexes are highest in the most heavily industrialized areas. Toxic exposures to mercury, lead, vinyl chloride, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, benzene and PCBs all produce effects, from fatigue and headache, to inflammation, damage to the liver and central nervous system, and death.

Although PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) were banned in 1979, it is estimated by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal. Employees (AFSCME) that over 103 million small and large capacitators-such as those in TVs, Indoor air pollution Illness caused by indoor air pollution received wide coverage during the last year. It was discovered that occupational illness, long thought of as an industrial problem, has spread to the modern office or institution and is caused by a long list of indoor pollutants.

The syndrome is an outgrowth of the so-called "energy-crisis" of the 1970s, when buildings began to be built with sealed windows and insulation designed to cut back energy costs for employers. It came to public attention in 1976 with an outbreak of Legionnaire's Disease at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia, as bacteria in a hotel's cooling tower spread through the ventilating system, killing 29 people.

The dangers of vapors from photocopy machines, cleaning fluids and solvents, and regular pesticide spraying are just beginning In Silicon Valley, Calif., where 70 percent of the assemblers and operatives are female (60 percent of these are minorities), women with this syndrome have sued the Signetics Corporation for chemical exposure. The company's reaction was typical; they tried to fire the women and contested their claims for workers' compensation. They even hired detectives to follow the women and spy on them in an attempt to discredit their case.

Cancer-a social problem

Average Americans now have more than a 31 percent chance of developing cancer. Cancer deaths for one year (1979) were five times higher than the total U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam and the Korean wars combined.

Samuel Epstein makes the point in "The Politics of Cancer" that if 1000 people died every day of cholera, swine flu, or food poisoning, society would recognize that a major epidemic was at hand and would demand that there be a mobilization against it.

However, there is a sinister myth promoted by the government, the medical profession, and the American Cancer Society that cancer is somehow a part of life. This has led the population to view it as a personal tragedy and not a social problem.

Epstein delineates three very important findings: (1) The great majority of cancer cases are caused by exposure to chemical or physical agents in the environment. (2) Cancer is caused by carcinogens and the chance of developing the disease is related to the length and extent of the exposures. (3) There is no known method for developing or predicting a "safe" level of exposure to any carcinogen and there is no basis to government claims that exposures below certain levels are safe.

Industry and the American Cancer Society have minimized the cancer risk and attempt to link its cause to people's personal habits and diet. They also exaggerate the difficulties and costs of control and attempt to obscure the environmental cause of the disease.

Worse is the fact that the governmental agencies who are supposed to regulate and protect public health are usually sympathetic to the military-industrial complex and are loath to oppose them in any serious manner except in the most extreme cases of negligence or under massive public pressure like that which surrounded the use of alar on apples.

NIOSH estimates that 880,000 workers (continued on next page)

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fluorescent lights, and air conditioners—-were made before the ban and may still be in use.