Word: vc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...vinyl chloride's toxicity has been around for years. Production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was begun in 1938 by B.F. Goodrich Co. That year experiments showed that the vinyl chloride gas used at the plant was dangerous to animals. A 1949 Russian study showed that vinyl chloride (VC) caused nonmalignant liver damage in 15 of 48 workers exposed to the chemical; surveys in other European countries over the next decade and a half confirmed the connection. In 1966 and 1967 British scientists examining PVC workers reported a high incidence of acro-osteolysis, a condition partially characterized by distortion...
Mini-Epidemic. The connection between VC and cancer was first made in 1970 by Publio L. Viola of the University of Rome, who found tumors in the lungs, skin and bones of rats exposed to high concentrations of the gas. The link was strengthened in 1973 when researchers from Bonn University found evidence of liver damage in 19 out of 20 PVC workers at a single plant. The bombshell really burst early this year when B.F. Goodrich Co. reported that three men who worked with VC in its Louisville, Ky., plastics plant had died of angiosarcoma of the liver since...
...prediction could prove correct, for in the U.S. alone some 6,500 workers are involved in making VC gas or converting the gas into PVC; thousands more are engaged in converting the plastic into finished products. European and Japanese firms are also heavily involved in VC production...
Whopping Levels. So far, at least, there is no clear evidence that consumers are in any danger from VC. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have, as a precautionary measure, put a halt to the distribution of spray products using VC propellants.* The FDA had already ordered companies to stop bottling whisky in PVC bottles; whisky dissolves the plastic. Other PVC products offered to the consumer have yet to be proved unsafe...
...risks to plastics workers are real. A research team headed by Dr. Irving Selikoffof New York's 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...