Word: vc
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Trouble with VC. Although the EPA's decision sets a precedent for protecting human health from potentially toxic substances, it 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...
This gigantic segment of the U.S. economy rests, like an inverted pyramid, on the production of VC, and OSHA's new standards threaten that production. The agency ruled that starting Jan. 1, workers cannot be exposed to more than one part of vc per million parts of air (v. the present 50 p.p.m.), averaged over an eight-hour day, or to more than 5 p.p.m. for any period longer than 15 minutes. The new rule applies only to the some 6,000 workers who handle VC directly in 50 U.S. plants...
There is no doubt that some ruling was necessary. Ever since vc was invented in 1937 by the B.F. Goodrich Co., it has been linked to disease. First it was shown to be dangerous to laboratory rats and mice. Later it was implicated in a variety of human ills: hepatitis, a crippling bone disease, and cancer. This year B.F. Goodrich reported that three workers had developed angiosarcoma of the liver, an extremely rare and invariably fatal form of cancer (TIME, May 13). Since 1961, 16 deaths of angiosarcoma among vc workers have been uncovered in the U.S., and another...
OSHA's problem was what to do about it. The agency's charter calls for it to prevent any occupational disease -and it had theoretical evidence to show that even slight exposure to VC might cause cancer. On the other hand, if OSHA set a zero level of exposure, it would force the closing of major segments of an immense industry...
...final ruling was a compromise. Nonetheless, Dow Chemical Co. was quick to describe the new limit as "unnecessarily stringent." Having dealt with vc for nearly 25 years and cut exposure levels to 50 p.p.m. back in 1961, the company reported no cases of angiosarcoma; its evidence thus indicated that amount as a safe level of exposure. Moreover, the industry says that it simply does not have the technology to comply with the new restriction, and the Society of the Plastics Industry has sued to overturn OSHA's ruling...