And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----Con't from part 2-------
========================================================
PLANTS KEPT OPEN DESPITE DANGERS
The 1950s brought the Korean War and the arms race, the Cold War and the space
race. America's desire for beryllium had never been greater.
The government didn't want a repeat of the Lorain neighborhood tragedy, and so
it paid Brush Beryllium, the predecessor to Brush Wellman, to build and
operate a plant far from residents.
The site: tiny Luckey, a farming community 15 miles south of Toledo. Here,
only one or two farmhouses would be near.
And for the first time, the government had a safety standard - the one adopted
in 1949 - to limit the amount of dust workers could be exposed to.
But year after year, records show, dust counts in the Luckey plant were high.
Workers were even overexposed in the lunchroom.
Instead of closing the plant, the government eased enforcement of the rules,
allowing workers to be exposed to levels five times higher than previously
permitted.
But even with the relaxed rules, the plant couldn't keep the dust under
control.
Eight years later, in 1957, the plant was replaced by a larger one 10 miles
away near Elmore.
Under government contract, Brush Beryllium built, owned, and operated the
plant. In return, the government agreed to buy 50 tons of beryllium over five
years. The AEC signed a similar contract with the Beryllium Corporation for a
plant outside Hazleton, Pa.
<Picture>Map: The trouble spots
Both contracts had a health clause: If dust levels were consistently high, the
government could close the plants.
Again, workers were overexposed throughout the 1950s and 1960s, industry and
government records show. Dust counts at Elmore were regularly five times too
high; some levels at Hazleton were 4,000 times over the limit.
Yet the Elmore plant was never shut, and the Hazleton plant was closed only
once for about a month, according to a deposition by Mr. Powers, the former
government and industry official.
The beryllium companies tried to meet the safety limit but to no avail. A
Brush doctor blamed the failure on production demands, "triggered primarily by
the space program."
One Brush document says every time the government considered closing the
Elmore plant, "the Navy and AEC weapons people objected because they needed
the metal for nuclear weapons and Polaris [missile] parts."
AEC officials, correspondence shows, weren't sure what to do about the high
exposures.
One official wrote that better equipment had been suggested, but "this would
increase the cost of beryllium by ten times," and "the plants would have to be
shut down and rebuilt."
"The extra cost would be undesirable, but the latter factor is unacceptable
because of AEC need for the metal."
Still, as bad as the dust counts were, they were improving and the disease
rate appeared to be dropping. In fact, some officials thought the exposure
rules might be too strict.
In 1960, a dozen AEC officials met to discuss the issue. They concluded that
the plants, dangerous or not, must remain open, minutes of the meeting show.
"The [government] cannot stand for a cessation of production," one official
stated.
That official was Martin Powers, in charge of buying beryllium for the AEC.
But he was also responsible for ensuring that the beryllium plants were not
overexposing workers.
Four months after this meeting, Mr. Powers left the government to work for one
of the firms he had been responsible for monitoring: Brush Beryllium.
He would spend the next 26 years as a top executive with the company, often
handling the government contracts and overseeing the health and safety
program.
Today, Mr. Powers, 77, is retired from Brush but remains a paid company
consultant. The government, he says, didn't know for sure that workers were
going to be harmed by the overexposures. But he acknowledges the AEC was
taking a risk that they might.
"I think there were certainly cases where you might have allowed marginal
activities to exist hoping - but not really knowing - that they were going to
be all right."
He says pressure on the AEC to keep plants running was enormous. He recalls
receiving a phone call from an admiral who was livid about AEC plans to phase
out a plant.
"This admiral called me and said, 'You will not shut that goddamn plant down.
What are you, out of your goddamn-picking mind? I've got submarines out there.
We need missiles.' "
Mr. Powers says he didn't agree with some government decisions. He says that
the AEC for one or two years, about 1949 and 1950, insisted that Brush not put
warning labels on beryllium products shipped to AEC facilities because it
didn't want to alarm workers there.
Officials who made that decision, he says, "just didn't apparently feel it was
their province to worry about the health issues."
Numerous workers would eventually develop beryllium disease after being
overexposed in the 1950s and 1960s.
Among them: Gary Renwand, an Oak Harbor, O., resident who worked 35 years at
Brush's Elmore plant.
Company records show that he was frequently exposed to high levels of dust -
some amounts five times the safety limit.
Now, he is often in and out of St. Charles Mercy Hospital, battling heart and
lung problems related to his disease. On one such day, he sits up in bed and
recalls making beryllium re-entry shields for space capsules and watching the
capsules on TV careen back to Earth.
<Picture>Photo: Gary Renwand in a hospital bed
"I thought, 'Hey, we made that shield.' And I was proud. I was part of this. A
new era."
He forces a laugh.
"Young and dumb," he says.
SAFETY PLAN FOUGHT; SECRET BARGAIN CUT
Only once in the last five decades has the U.S. government tried to tighten
exposure limits.
That was in 1975, when OSHA proposed cutting the exposure limit in half - from
2 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 1.
The plan met tremendous opposition from the beryllium industry and U.S.
weapons officials. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger warned that the plan
might drive beryllium firms out of the metal business and cut off U.S.
supplies.
"The loss of beryllium production capability would seriously impact our
ability to develop and produce weapons for the nuclear stockpile and,
consequently, adversely affect our national security," he wrote in 1978 to
Labor Secretary Ray Marshall and Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary
Joseph Califano, Jr.
Secretary Schlesinger wanted the scientific basis for the plan reviewed.
Defense Secretary Harold Brown made a similar request.
So the plan was delayed until outside experts could review it. In the end, the
experts concluded that the science behind the safety plan was indeed valid.
But the plan never went through.
One factor: In 1979, the Cabot Corp., now the owner of the beryllium plant
outside Hazleton, Pa., quit making beryllium metal, leaving Brush Wellman as
the sole U.S. supplier.
Almost immediately, the government cut a secret deal with Brush, according to
government and industry records. Brush promised to continue to supply the
Energy Department with beryllium for its weapons; in return, the agency
promised to:
� Pay Brush a one-time 35 per cent price increase.
� Not develop other sources of beryllium.
� Try to persuade OSHA to drop its safety plan.
Within a few years, OSHA's safety plan died.
Throughout the fight, one thing remained constant: Workers continued to be
overexposed.
PLANTS RARELY INSPECTED; METAL'S USE NOT TRACKED
Today, more than 50 years after the disease was discovered, the rate of
illness is higher than ever.
A study published in 1997 found that 1 in 11 workers at the 646-employee
Elmore plant either have the disease or an abnormal blood test - a sign they
may very well develop the illness.
And while dust counts at the Elmore plant are much improved, some remain over
the legal limit, company records turned over in court cases show.
OSHA is responsible for inspecting the plant and making sure dust counts are
low. If not, inspectors can write citations and issue fines.
But years have gone by without an inspector setting foot in the plant, OSHA
records show.
When inspectors have found high dust counts, Brush Wellman has escaped
penalties.
In fact, OSHA records show, Brush has never paid one cent for high exposures
at any of its several facilities nationwide.
OSHA officials says there are simply not enough inspectors to regularly check
the plants.
"We have about 2,000 compliance officers to cover 6 million work sites that
employ more than 100 million workers," says OSHA spokesman Stephen Gaskill,
who recently left the agency.
"So to say that we are spread thin is a severe understatement."
To make matters worse, no one knows what companies - from large corporations
to small machine shops - are handling beryllium and whether safeguards are in
place.
"There are beryllium-copper golf clubs now being used," says Dr. Peter
Infante, OSHA's director of standards review. "Where are those being tooled
and polished?"
Thousands of companies are believed to handle beryllium, but no one knows how
many workers are potentially exposed. Estimates range widely, from 30,000 to
800,000.
Improvements, officials say, are in the works.
The Energy Department says it is spending millions to improve ventilation and
air monitoring at government-owned sites. And Brush Wellman says it is
improving equipment and work practices to reduce exposure.
Theresa Norgard, wife of disease victim Dave Norgard, of Manitou Beach, Mich.,
says she has heard such promises before.
"Tired, worn-out phrases," she says. "Different time periods, same messages:
'Mistakes were made. Now we're doing better. We're doing everything we can.' "
Time and time again, she says, the government sacrificed the workers.
"They were just like pieces of equipment. They were disposable. They were
dispensable. They weren't even seen as being human."
=======================================================
----End-------
Comments:
These were not the only dust problems from stragic carcinogens. In Oak
Ridge uranium dust and nickel dusts also produce larger health problems.
This is only the tip of the iceburg connected to the magnitudes of what really
has happened.
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