Heroin and Cornflakes

Silicosis, one of the oldest occupational diseases, still kills thousands of people every year, everywhere in the world.

It is an incurable lung disease caused by inhalation of dust containing free crystalline silica.  It is irreversible and, moreover, the disease progresses even when exposure stops resulting in temporary and permanent disabilities, and death.(1)

Recently, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed penalties of over $100,000 to a steel casting company for alleged serious and repeated workplace violations. These violations included over exposure to airborne silica and a failure to implement engineering or administrative controls for silica over exposure. (2)

Throughout the world, this scenario is all too common place.

• In Vietnam, the cumulative number of diagnosed cases has now reached 9,000. Some 18% of workers engaged in surface coal mining, quarrying, foundry and metallurgy have been found to have silicosis.
• In India, a prevalence of 55% was found in one group of workers, many of them very young, engaged in the quarrying of shale sedimentary rock and subsequent work in small, poorly ventilated sheds. Studies on silicotic pencil workers in Central India demonstrated high mortality rates; the mean age at death was 35 years and the mean duration of the exposure was 12 years.
• In Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais alone more than 4,500 workers have been diagnosed with silicosis. In drought-affected regions in the north-east of the country, the hand-digging of wells through layers of rock with very high quartz content (97%), an activity that generates great quantities of dust in confined spaces, resulted in a prevalence of 26% of silicosis, with many cases of accelerated forms. The state of Rio de Janeiro banned sandblasting after a quarter of shipyard workers were found to have silicosis.
• In the USA, it is estimated that more than one million workers are occupationally exposed to free crystalline silica dusts (more than 100,000 of these workers are sandblasters), of whom some 59,000 will eventually develop silicosis. It is reported that each year in the USA about 300 people die from it, but the true number is not known.  World Health Organization fact sheet.

The Health Ministry has banned the manual sandblasting of jeans and other clothing to prevent the development of deadly and incurable silicosis.

In Turkey, clinicians from four cities reported to the congresses of the Turkish Thoracic Society (TTS) and the European Respiratory Society in 2005, that a total of 35 subjects had developed silicosis.(3)

Nearly all patients were young males in their early twenties or even younger. They had been employed, often as undeclared workers, for only a few years in small workshops where denim jeans undergo jet sandblasting to give them a “worn-in” appearance.

This job involves working long hours under very poor hygiene conditions, without any serious respiratory protection.

Because no thorough occupational history had been taken or because silicosis was not suspected in these “textile” workers, several patients had initially been misdiagnosed as having tuberculosis (or sarcoidosis).

The clinicians also reported the death of two patients who had started sandblasting when they were aged 13 and 14 yrs; both worked little more than 3 yrs and they died within a year of diagnosis, aged 18 and 19 yrs.

Earlier this week Hacı Ünal, a resident of the eastern province of Bingöl,  became the 44th Turkish sandblaster to die from silicosis. Ünal, 24, died after battling the disease for around two years. He reportedly worked as a sandblaster in İstanbul for three years before he was diagnosed. Ünal, who was married with two children, was buried in the Taşlıçay village of Bingöl.  He was Bingöl’s ninth silicosis victim.(4)

Back in the U.S.A, the debilitating disease decreased for three decades but has been rising in parts of West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and, to a lesser degree, Pennsylvania over the past 10 years, says Michael Attfield, an epidemiologist for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

“We’re seeing six times as much simple pneumoconiosis (restrictive lung disease caused by the inhalation of dust) … and about 15 times as much severe disease,” Attfield said during a presentation at the West Virginia Coal Association annual mining symposium. “This should not be happening.”(5)

So why is it happening and why is there limited  public awareness of the dangers of silica and lack of restrictive industrial legislation by governing bodies?

Lets take a closer look.

Crystalline silica up close. 1000 times magnification of sand dust sampled from a bag of common playsand. These particles are small enough to be trapped in lung tissue.

Airborne silica particles pose a carcinogenic threat at concentrations as low as 50 μg/m3.(6)  The maximum allowed concentration of silica in the atmosphere at a workplace is under constant review, with lower maximums proposed worldwide.

Silica particles can vary in size  from greater than 10 microns to less than 0.1 microns. Visibility threshold is 30-40microns. Most particulate filter masks remove particle sizes efficiently at above 0.3 microns.(7)

Silica is found in many construction products, including sand, some aggregates, cement, mortar, plaster and grout.  In mixing operations, the highest silica dust exposure tasks typically involve work near rock crushers that may be used to size aggregate, and bag breaking where paper bags of dry cement are broken or poured.(8)

A study (Akbar-Khanzadeh and Brillhart) conducted as part of an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) On-site Consultation Service in Ohio followed individuals working within a construction setting performing concrete surface finishing (grinding) as a major part of their responsibilities.

They found approximately 69% of subjects performing concrete grinding were overexposed to respirable crystalline silica dust.  However, no information from the study indicated whether the individuals were in the process of developing the disease.

In Hong Kong, silicosis is not an uncommon disease (9) and is found associated with the following trades:-

(I) Quarries – among drillers and stone crushers.

(2) Construction – among stone crushers and stone dressers.

(3) Mining and tunneling – among those involved in mining or tunneling through stone,commonly granite, containing silica.

(4) Grinding – among metal grinders, knife sharpeners, polishers and others using grindstones composed of sandstone.

(5) Sand blasting – among those using sand, quartz or granite in sand blasting.

(6) Iron fettling – among those engaged in fettling, chipping or dressing metalcastings which have been cast from a sand mould.

(7) Monumental masons – among those dressing, cutting or finishing granite stone for graveyard headstones.

(8) Glass industry – among those engaged in mixing glass, quartz, sand and silica powder.

(9) Enameling – among frit mixers.

The onset of the disease is usually slow and begins only after the workman has been exposed to silica dust for some years (commonly 15 years but may be from 3 to 40 years).(1o)

The first and most important symptom of which the worker may complain is shortness of breath following exertion.  As the disease progresses, so the breathlessness becomes worse and may eventually be present even when the worker is at rest.  A dry cough is usually evident and gradually becomes more frequent.

In many cases, the natural course of the disease may be complicated by tuberculosis, which will result in a rapid deterioration of the workers health unless treatment is promptly sought.

Without tuberculosis complications, but with continued exposure to silica dust, the condition of the worker will slowly become worse until he finally becomes unfit for any work, he may even have a shortened life span.

Silicosis can be diagnosed easily in all but the earliest stages by means of a chest X-ray and a medical examination.

There is no specific treatment for silicosis but further damage to the lungs by silica can be largely prevented by removing the worker from silica dust exposure.

However, a person with silicosis always stands an increased chance of developing serious lung infection with consequent progressive incapacity but, on the other hand, the earlier the disease is diagnosed and the worker removed from exposure, the greater chance he has of not developing these complications. Thus the disease is one in which prevention is the only cure.

In the U.S.A., silicosis first hit the headlines at the beginning of the 1930’s through the ‘Hawks Nest’ incident.  By the mid-1930’s, silicosis was regarded as the “king of occupational diseases,” as well known and notorious as asbestosis would become in the 1990’s.

The tragedy at Hawks Nest Tunnel near Gauley Bridge resulted in the worst industrial disaster in the country’s history, yet it’s not a story commonly known, even in the state where it took place.

The story began in March, 1930.

Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation began a major project near Gauley Bridge in Fayette County to redirect the New River through a three-mile long tunnel to a hydro-electric dam that would supply electricity to Carbide factories.

The men who dug the tunnel worked 10 hours a day, six days a week in clouds of silica dust with no protective breathing devices or even face masks. They only used water to tamp down the dust when inspectors showed up because “wet drilling” mucked up the machinery and slowed the work.(11)

Epidemiologist Dr. Martin Cherniack wrote the definitive history of the tragedy. In “The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster,” Cherniack concludes that 764 men, most of them black, died as a result of their work at Hawks Nest from 1930-31.  However, others believe as many as half of the 2,400 men who worked there died, most from acute silicosis caused by breathing the silica dust.

The men began to die.  A few at first but gradually numbers continued to grow. The company devised a plan to quietly dispose of the bodies while keeping the safety problems hidden.  A large number of the dead were reportedly buried in unmarked graves in a Nicholas County cornfield to cover up the immensity of the tragedy.

The excavation work was contracted to the firm of Rinehart and Dennis of Charlottesville, Virginia, which received much of the blame for failing to take proper precautions after it was found that workers were blasting through silica rock.

On May 20, 1931, the Fayette Tribune published the first reports of unsafe working conditions in the tunnel, but confirmation was impossible due to a “gag rule.“  After he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934, Rush Holt brought the plight of the Hawks Nest workers into the national limelight.

Holt: Congress has just started to investigate the building of Hawks Nest Tunnel, known as the village of death. I personally believe that two thousand men are doomed to die as a result of ruthless destruction of life by American industry.

In 1936, West Virginia Congressman Jennings Randolph sat on a Senate subcommittee investigating the catastrophe. The subcommittee’s report lambasted conditions at Hawks Nest but failed to take further action. Despite the controversy surrounding the project, the tunnel was completed in 1935 and has performed its intended purpose ever since. (12)

What about the aftermath? What impact did the incidence have in the popular media and were lessons learned?

Apart from….

• A few articles in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, Engineering News Record

• One unnoticed novel

• One briefly heard song (“Silicosis is killin’ me” by Pinewood Tom) (Josh White)

….it had no enduring imprint on popular culture.

Why not? asks Dr. Helen Lang of the Department of Geology & Geography West Virginia University. (13)

Perhaps the following may have underlying implications in an attempt to find the answer to her question.

Less than a week after the Hawk’s Nest hearings adjourned in Congress, a group of industrialists met privately at the Mellon Institute, a foundation that had been established by financiers Andrew and Richard Mellon in 1913 to “benefit American manufacturers through the practical cooperation of science and industry.”

The meeting led to the formation of a new organization  called the Air Hygiene Foundation (AHF), headquartered at Mellon.

“Because of recent misleading publicity about silicosis and the appointment of a Congressional committee to hold public hearings,” noted a confidential Mellon report, “the attention of much of the entire country has been focused on silicosis. It is more than probable that this publicity will result in a flood of claims, whether justified or unjustified, and will tend toward improperly considered proposals for legislation.”

To fend off these feared laws and lawsuits, the Air Hygiene Foundation planned a public relations campaign that purported to “give everyone concerned an undistorted picture of the subject.” (14)

Leading scientists and public officials were appointed to serve as members and trustees of the foundation.

With the Air Hygiene Foundation, industry had found an effective propaganda formula: a combination of partial reforms with reassuring “scientific” rhetoric, under the aegis of an organization with a benevolent, independent-sounding name. Even though the AHF was governed by and for the dusty trades, it had successfully become a vehicle for deployment of the “third party” technique. (15)

“A survey report from an outside, independent agency carries more weight in court or before a compensation commission than does a report prepared by your own people,” explained AHF membership committee chairman C. E. Ralston at the foundation’s fifth annual meeting.

By 1940, the AHF had 225 member companies, representing such major polluters of the day as American Smelting and Refining, Johns-Manville, United States Steel, Union Carbide, and PPG Industries. In 1941, it changed its name to the Industrial Hygiene Foundation (and later still to the Industrial Health Foundation, or IHF).

By the 1970’s, it had more than 400 corporate sponsors, including Gulf Oil, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Kawecki Berylco Industries, Brush Beryllium, Consolidated Coal, Boeing, General Electric, General Mills, Goodyear, Western Electric, Owens-Corning Fiberglass, Mobil Oil, and Dow Chemical.

Thanks largely to the work of the AHF, silicosis began to fade from the headlines by the end of the 1930’s. (16)

Its disappearance from the headlines is ‘arguably an even bigger scandal than the cover-up at Hawk’s Nest, because the disease itself has not been eliminated, even though its cause is well understood and avoidable’. (17)

Despite years of assurance that silicosis was a disease of the past and that workers could be adequately protected through proper ventilation, substitution of non-silica abrasives such as steel shot or garnite, and protective equipment, the reality is that during the postwar years workers continued to be exposed to excess amounts of silica and that silicosis never really vanished,” write Rosner and Markowitz in Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth Century America.

They state: “However, it is virtually impossible to develop reliable statistics concerning its prevalence in the decades following World War II given the general complacency of industry and the industrial hygiene and medical communities regarding this disease and the fact that silicosis was often not listed on death certificates as a cause of death or contributing factor. In general, doctors were neither trained to diagnose this disease nor given reason to suspect its prevalence among industrial workers.”

If doctors have little knowledge of the disease, what chance is there for the industrial worker?

What about the future? Do workers have reason to be concerned?

If they are employed on the upcoming project (PROJECT NUMBER 107279) advertised on the Fed contract opportunities board by the Army Corps of Engineers, then maybe.

The work of this contract involves the painting of the existing Morning Glory Inlet structure, sluice gate operators and frame and steel conduit liner for the Eau Galle Reservoir outlet works near Spring Valley Wisconsin. The estimated magnitude of this acquisition in terms of price is between $250,000.00 and $500,000.00. (18)

Work is required to be accomplished between December 2009 and the end of January 2010, when reservoir inflows are typically low.  The Corps of Engineers will lower pool elevations below the Morning Glory intake structure. The Contractor will be required to maintain water levels below the Morning Glory intake by passing required flows until the work is completed.

Why the concern?

The work of this contract includes, but is not limited to the following items:

1) Sandblast, restore, and repaint the steel conduit liner that passes flow through the dam.

2) Construct containment structure, remove, collect and properly dispose of existing lead containing coatings, and apply new vinyl paint coating system to Morning Glory intake structure.

Perhaps we are wrong to be concerned.  Perhaps the Contractor will keep sandblasted lead contaminated dust clouds from reaching the atmosphere and the working environment.

Lets hope they provide adequate breathing equipment and the workers heed the following warnings that appear on specialist silicosis websites warning of the dangers of silica dust.

Silicosis Warning: Disposable Paper Dust Masks will not protect the silica worker or sandblaster from dangerous free silica dust that can cause silicosis. Respirators are not to be used as the primary means of preventing or minimizing exposures to airborne contaminants. (19)

SANDBLASTERS WARNING: The use of sandblasting hoods/desert hoods commonly used by sandblasters can be dangerous to ones health and lead to silicosis. THESE HOODS DO NOT PROTECT ONE FROM DEADLY FREE SILICA DUST THAT WILL CAUSE SILICOSIS. A CERTIFIED RESPIRATOR FITTED AND TESTED IS A MUST. DON’T TAKE A CHANCE WITH YOUR HEALTH.(20)

A health that does not achieve high status on many employers list of priorities. Nor governmental bodies. It beggars belief that they are contracting out an operation that includes sandblasting lead.

Why can’t they replace the old Morning Glory structure with a new one? Surely it has to be a safer option, or is this deemed impractical due to cost?

It seems lessons have not been learned.

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Subtle measures have been, and still are used to conceal and limit the dangers involved within industry where dust is concerned.  For example employing scientific folk to override evidence of dangers of dust to ones health.

As in the case of Hawks Nest Tunnel, damage limitation is the order of the day.

Lets hope Spring Valley, Wisconsin is not a repeat scenario.

And for those purchasing faded jeans from sweatshops in Turkey, here’s Pinewood Tom …..

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Thank you

Ann Margrain

Founder, ‘Heroin and Cornflakes’ blog.

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For further reading

http://www.geo.wvu.edu/~lang/Geol484/HN-shorter.pdf

http://www.silicosis.com/index.php

http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/searchresults.category?p_text=silicosis&p_title=&p_status=CURRENT

This entry was posted Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 4:03 pm and is filed under general. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.