Word: pvc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Russia, researchers have found that workers exposed to chloroprene (the base for several synthetic rubber products) have higher rates of skin and lung cancer than the rest of the population. Vinyl chloride, a colorless gas that is the basic ingredient of the widely used plastic poly vinyl chloride (PVC), has been identified as a cause of angiosarcoma of the liver. Until recently, this cancer was so rare that one Los Angeles hospital found only one case in 52,000 autopsies. Since last year, however, doctors have confirmed 19 cases of the cancer in the U.S. alone, 17 of them...
BIRTH DEFECTS. The Ohio department of health has found that women in three communities with PVC plants-Painesville, Ashtabula and Avon Lake-bore more children with birth defects and other malformations than women in other communities in the state; laboratory research has shown that vinyl chloride can cause chromosomal damage in humans. Anesthetic gases also appear to be teratogenic, or capable of causing birth defects. Russian, Danish and U.S. studies all show a high miscarriage rate among women anesthesiologists and operating-room nurses...
...hardly compares in impact to the action by the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The agency established final limits for workers' exposure to vinyl chloride (vc), a colorless gas derived from chlorine and petrochemicals. It is the major ingredient in polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-the material from which seat covers, phonograph records, credit cards, detergent containers, floor tiles, shower curtains, and a vast number of other familiar plastic products are made. In total, a recent Arthur D. Little study reveals, about 2.2 million jobs in industries selling up to $90 billion worth of goods annually...
...Environmental Protection Agency also got into the act, announcing that it will set air-pollution standards for vinyl chloride. A special EPA task force has found that more than 200 million Ibs. of vc and 50 million Ibs. of PVC are being discharged into the environment during the conversion process. In other words, people who live downwind of factories that make PVC might also unknowingly be getting a whiff of the gas. Two cases of angiosarcoma have in fact been reported in people whose houses were near a PVC plant in Bridgeport, Conn...
...Mount Sinai School of Medicine has found that workers at one plant are exposed to VC levels of 400 to 500 parts per million of the gas, more than enough to cause liver disease in rats. Workers involved in cleaning the reactors in which VC is converted to PVC are exposed to even higher concentrations of the gas. One study showed that VC levels in these cookers range from 600 to a whopping 1,000 parts per million...