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Date Published: 22/05/2001
Author: Martin J Walker Martin J Walker concludes his series on the health hazards of the modern world by looking at life in the workplace and beyond |
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In 1897, a novelist named Robert Harborough Sherard wrote a series of articles which he provocatively titled The White Slaves of England. Sherard had been researching working conditions in the factories of his time; research which deliberately ignored the stories of the managers and industrialists, and had focused instead on the view of the workers.
The scenes which Sherard found could have come from a Heironymous Bosch painting. In the heart of the alkali industry in Widnes and St Helens, he saw that spring was not just silent, but never came at all: ‘The foul gases which belched forth night and day from the many factories rot the clothes, the teeth, and, in the end, the bodies of the workers, have killed every tree and every blade of grass for miles around.’
Inside the Widnes chlorine bleach factories, workers were frequently killed by chlorine gas, which they called ‘Roger’.
‘Roger is a green gas, and is so poisonous that the men (packers) who pack the bleaching powder... work with goggles on their eyes and 20 thicknesses of flannel over their mouths, these muzzles being tightly secured by stout cords. They can pack but a few minutes at a time. A “feed” of the gas kills its man in an hour.’
Sherard found equally cruel conditions amongst the usually female white lead workers of Newcastle. These workers, whose jobs meant they were literally facing certain death, were gradually only able to work for short periods at a time.
‘Chlorosis kills the bloom of the cheek, paralysis distorts the limbs with “knee-jerk” and “wrist-drop”, and attacking the eyes also, may blind where it does not twist them...’
It was these, and similar nightmares of the industrial age, that led in the 20th century, to factory acts, clean air acts, labour protection laws and a whole slew of regulations and improvements designed to prevent such horrors inflicting workers again. The trouble is that, today, the widespread and obvious pollution of the industrial revolution has given way to less visible, but often more insidious, incidences of pollution in the workplace and in the general environment. When we look back on those times, we assume that people could never be subject to such risks again. We rarely understand that they – we – still are.
Today’s toxic truth
In the Britain of 2001, bad working conditions and poor safety standards are still responsible for hundreds of fatalities and 4 million industrial injuries annually, while an ever-increasing number of industrial chemicals are responsible for growing cases of cancer, and chronic conditions like asthma. As with adverse reactions to chemical drugs, the fourth highest cause of death in Britain, the very high levels of occupational toxins and illnesses, which still affect the health of millions during their working lives, are rarely addressed in the public arena. As with the high levels of poisonous chemicals and toxins present in our homes (see last issue) there is no clear scientific position on most industrial toxic substances.
And what is truly ominous is that, unlike the 19th century and even the pre-war 20th century, today most scientific professionals, with some honourable exceptions, side with, and are funded by, the multinational companies who are the cause of so many of the problems.
Today, to read the truth about chemicals and health in the workplace, you have to read one of the few independent scientists or struggling community campaigns, or open one of the increasingly rare labour movement magazines:
‘Latest evidence suggests exposure to industrial chemicals, inside and outside the workplace, is responsible for a large and growing proportion of cancer deaths. But instead of moving towards more stringent controls, governments and industry bodies are fighting hard to keep known killers in the workplace.’
In post-industrial society, industrial vested interests are often represented unchallenged in science, academia and the popular press. Large numbers of science-based professionals make a living either producing, marketing or defending recognised chemical toxins. In The Hazards of Work, published 20 years ago, Patrick Kinnersly stated the workers case, which has not changed:
‘We cannot wait years while scientists play with statistics and computers to establish the exact risk... The technical and statistical debate misses the point: workers are expected to go on breathing an unpleasant atmosphere while the scientists find out how harmful it is… By the time you get the cancer you may have retired, you may have forgotten the six weeks, 20 years ago, when you worked in the tyre factory or the dye works.’
Asbestos lives
One of the most obvious areas in which bad science and bad industry have combined to produce major health hazards is the case of asbestos. During a 50-year regulatory lacuna between the 1930s and 1980s, when the government was forced to bring in regulatory changes, medical research scientists gave asbestos production in Britain a clean bill of health.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, studies by the eminent Sir Richard Doll, and others, provided workers and the public with conservative estimates of the danger of asbestosis and mesothelioma. Working with data provided by the asbestos company Turner and Newall, and in conjunction with their medical consultants, Doll, who had convinced public and government that asbestos was safe, became fiercely protective of the company, eventually even advising them on legal claims.
In 1965 Doll wrote, referring to asbestos production at Turner and Newall, ‘it is possible that the specific occupational hazards to life have been completely eliminated’. As late as 1982, criticising Alice - A Fight for Life, a film on the effects of asbestos which forced the government to bring in heavier regulation of asbestos working conditions, Doll suggested that asbestosis, and cancer caused by asbestos, were no longer a significant risk to workers.
How he came to those conclusions is anybody’s guess. In fact, deaths from asbestosis rose constantly between 1975 and 1995. Death certificates stating asbestosis as the cause of death doubled during this period, and disablement benefit for the illness almost quadrupled. Deaths from mesothelioma, a cancer associated with asbestosis, have increased massively over the last 30 years, from around 153 reported in 1968, to 1,527 in 1998. Analysts now believe that by 2020 there could be between 5,000 and 10,000 deaths annually.
The great majority of these deaths are now outside what is left of the asbestos industry – they are in construction and extraction, energy and water supply and in domestic work.12 Quantities of asbestos are still to be found in houses and offices, including insulation boards in cupboards, guttering and waste pipes, roof tiles and wall-plugging compounds.13 And they are still killing today.
Computer workers
If asbestos is the product of an old industry, other health problems are being caused by a much newer one – the computer industry. Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) has become well-known in recent years, and is related almost entirely to the growing number of people using computer keyboards. The US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health estimates that the problem has grown over the last 10 years from 18 per cent of all workplace illness to 56 per cent.14 The development of RSI follows a similar pattern to other ‘new’ illnesses. Many doctors still refuse to recognise it as a condition, and the government refuses to accept its lay definition for fear of claims against employers.
Research has also shown that computer users have a higher level of triphenyl phosphate in their blood than non-users. Triphenyl phosphate is used as a fire-retarding coating for many computer parts, and turns into a gas as the computer heats up. Exposure to triphenyl phosphate produces allergic reactions including skin problems and headaches.
Computer screens, like television screens, give off low-level electromagnetic radiation, which it has been suggested can interfere with the immune system, causing fatigue, headaches, and irregular heartbeat. International surveys have concluded that up to 90 per cent of VDU workers suffer from at least one of the many VDU-related eye problems, including blurred vision, conjunctivitis, deteriorating eyesight, difficulty in refocusing, headaches and migraine.
Industry-biased orthodox medical research dismisses the idea that low-level electromagnetic radiation is damaging to health. Independent researchers, however, suggest that pregnant women, for example, should not use computer screens because of an increased risk of miscarriage.
Plastic people
Plastics are ubiquitous in modern society, and their negative health effects have impacts both on those who make them and those who use them. Many plastic products contain xenoestrogens; oestrogen-like compounds which are fat-soluble and can be stored in human fat and cell membranes. They are found in water bottles, food containers, food wrap and some children’s toys. In the 1970s, it was found that male plastics workers affected by polycarbonate chemicals developed breasts.18 Bisphenol-A, the oestrogenic chemical in plastic bottles, has been associated with breast cancer.
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is a gaseous material used in the manufacture of plastics. Both the gas and the plastic has carcinogenic qualities. PVC derivatives are used in bottles and food wrap products. Workers who produce these products have been found to suffer from a high level of liver and other cancers. Some researchers put the risk of liver cancer in vinyl plastics workers as high as 200 times greater than average.
Here, too, a constant battle is waged by industry-linked researchers, who talk about a slightly increased risk only of liver cancer20 amongst PVC workers, and independent, clinically-situated analysts who suggest that working with polyvinyl chloride can seriously raise the levels of a variety of human cancers.
The poisoned land
It is not just in factories that workers are exposed to health risks. The countryside, too, is not as green and pleasant as it is often made out to be. In Britain, the proportion of crop land sprayed with artificial chemicals has increased markedly since the 70s; herbicide use has increased in excess of 200 per cent (some areas sprayed more than once); fungicide-sprayed areas increased from under 50 per cent in the 70s to 300 per cent in the 90s; and the use of insecticides rose from only a few per cent in the 70s, to almost 100 per cent in the 90s.
Farmworkers who come into contact with insecticides and pesticides are prone to chronic illnesses. Sheep dip, a mixture of antibiotics and pesticides which protect sheep from scab, fleas, ticks and mites, is a notorious chemical problem on farms. In 1990 it was estimated by campaigners that as many as 2,500 farmers could be suffering side-effects from the use of organophosphate (OP) sheep dips.
‘Of the 3-4,000 people who have registered with us after suffering from the effects of pesticides, more than 2,500 are directly attributable to contact with sheep-dip. Organo-phosphorus compounds are designed to kill...’
OP use has led to what might be called epidemiological warfare, with industry-biased researchers suggesting that certain individuals are vulnerable because they have weak immune systems. The few independent researchers have found their warnings ignored and their voices drowned out, despite the fact that the destructive health effects of OPs have been recorded since the mid-1930s.
In 1999, one of the few independent research teams at the Institute of Occupational Medicine studied sheep-dipping farmers. They found an association between exposure to OPs and evidence of chronic peripheral neuropathy. The study concluded that exposure to concentrated forms of OPs could be associated with long term negative health effects.
Sheep dip sufferers find it hard to understand why government doctors and scientists have refused for decades to recognise their symptoms. As one farmer recounted: ‘Three years ago, I first passed out after using sheep dip. Doctors and specialists could not get to the bottom of it, even after giving me every kind of test, even a brain scan. Only by chance did I link it all to sheep dip. I have 13 of the 19 possible side effects which can come from being in contact with sheep dip. Exposure to sheep dip has done my nerves irreparable damage. There are farmers who feel they are going crackers because no one will recognise their symptoms.’
OPs can also affect the general population, not just farm workers, via the watercourse, either directly or as a consequence of sheep running through rivers. Described by the National Rivers Authority as a ‘powerful pollutant’, OPs also kill fish, birds and small animals.
Contamination of ground water by agricultural chemicals is now a serious environmental concern. As well as fertilisers, this concern covers many substances used above ground. A survey of levels of pesticide residues in England and Wales revealed levels above the Maximum Admissible Concentration for any single pesticide in 298 water supplies.
Car culture kills
Dr Simon Wolff was a brilliant young toxicologist at the University of London, who died with tragic swiftness in November 1995. A truly independent researcher, Wolff set about challenging the view propounded by the orthodox cancer establishment that cigarettes were almost solely to blame for the incidence of lung cancer. What he found was fascinating:
‘I have worked out that road transport in the UK churns out one million tons of carcinogens every year. There are soots, all the poly-aromatic substances – lots of six chain ring stuck together with interesting nitrogen/oxygen groups. Something like 5 per cent of the output of a car is benzene, which is a well known cause of leukaemia. We know that carbon monoxide tends to accumulate in the blood of unborn babies and I would imagine that this would be a risk for low birth-weight babies – women who live on busy roads tend to give birth to low birth rate babies. Nitrous oxides in exhaust are respiratory tract irritants which probably contribute to emphysema.’
After Sir Richard Doll and others concluded that cigarette smoking was the major cause of lung cancer in the 1960s, the media swooped upon it as if it were the only form of cancer. Because of this myopia the petroleum industry was gifted 30 years of unquestioned production. Waking from this critical torpor, independent researchers are now pointing the finger at the petrol engine as a cause of multiple chronic illnesseses.
A recent European study found that three times as many people died from the health-damaging effects of vehicle exhausts than died in road accidents. In 1999 a Swedish study, carried out at the Institute of Environmental Medicine in Stockholm, concluded that people living in areas with heavy traffic pollution over 30-year periods had a 40 per cent greater than average chance of developing lung cancer, whether or not they were smokers.
Vehicle exhaust emissions contain benzene, a dangerous volatile organic compound and a hydrocarbon, which is present in both petroleum products and cigarette smoke. Benzene causes leukaemia, and some researchers now suspect that it could be responsible for rising incidence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Benzene is easily absorbed by the lungs, and 50 per cent of an inhaled dose is retained.
Exhaust emissions also contain lead, nitrogen dioxide (which exacerbates asthma), asbestos, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, various particulates associated with an increased risk of death from heart and lung disease, and sulphur dioxide (an agent responsible for bronchitis and chest complaints).
Many of the polluting chemicals present in the home, the workplace and found in vehicle exhaust emissions, are present in up to four times higher concentration inside cars in traffic. The interior of cars themselves also give off high levels of toxins. Pregnant women in America were recently advised to drive with their windows open in hot weather because interior plastics could leach an ammonia gas linked with foetal abnormalities.
The American company, Lex Vehicle Leasing, recently launched a campaign to protect the health of its 93,000 company car drivers. Lex claimed that vehicle manufacturers were not telling the public the truth about the 60,000 allergens which are emitted from treated textiles and leather and which might be present in cars. The International Society for Research and Testing in Textile Technology is trying to institute strict new standards, known as Oeko-Tex 100, for car manufacturers. Despite the Society’s warnings that process chemicals used in car interiors could have a ‘dangerous effect’ on health, only Volvo has so far agreed to submit its interior components to these tests. But pressure is likely to grow.
Power and the people
If health in the workplace and health while you’re getting there are still very much at risk in modern society, other dangers are even more widespread. It was back in the 1970s that an American report first revealed high levels of leukaemia in children living near overhead power cables in Denver, Colorado. In Britain, however, successive government agency reports ruled out any connection. As the evidence grows, though, they may have to start backtracking.
In June 2000, Dr Alan Preece, an independent researcher at Bristol University Medical School, announced research findings that agreed with research carried out by Professor Denis Henshaw of the university’s physics department. Both pieces of research suggested that people living near to, and downwind of, power lines, could be up to three times more susceptible to airborne cancer-causing pollutants.33 Dr Preece’s research estimated that around 3,000 deaths a year, particularly from lung and mouth cancer, could be caused in this way.
Preece and Henshaw both suggested that the reason for the increased risk was that ions – electrically-charged particles created by power installations – attached themselves to airborne pollutants. Inhaled, this combination pollutant sticks to the surface of the lung and breaks down cell walls.
Both scientists concluded that no new houses should be built near power cables – nor cables near houses. Such a ban has existed for some time in America and Sweden. On the announcement of Dr Preece’s research results, Dr John Swanson, scientific adviser to the National Grid, reportedly said: ‘We have never said in a categorical way that power lines are safe. What we have always said is that when you look at the totality of studies, then you come to the conclusion that the balance of evidence is that power lines and the fields they produce do not have an effect on health.’
Meanwhile, the National Radiological Protection Board’s Advisory group on Non-ionising Radiation (Agnir), and the UK Co-ordinating Committee for Cancer Research, has consistently maintained, as they did in a 1992 report, that there was no evidence ‘of the existence of carcinogenic hazard’. Six months after Preece’s authoritative research, however, Agnir announced the results of a literature review, coincidentally begun at the end of 2000, which tentatively suggested that ‘there is a slightly elevated risk of cancer near to power lines’.
The Agnir research team consisted of Sir Walter Bodmer, a retired cancer charity administrator, Professor Colin Blakemore, a member of the Research Defence Association, and Sir Richard Doll, Britain’s most renowned epidemiologist. The new report, which made no reference to Preece or Henshaw’s work, suggested that a small number of children each year might develop cancer from living near power lines.
The link between power cables, suicide and depression was investigated by Dr Stephen Perry in the West Midlands. When Perry disclosed his preliminary findings – a threefold increase in suicides in urban roads carrying heavy underground cables – to the previously helpful Central Electricity Generating Board, access to their information was quickly cut off. His final paper suggested that people living within high magnetic fields next to power lines were 40 per cent more likely than the average to commit suicide. Perhaps unsurpisingly, his findings were passed over by most of the people who matter.
Chemical soup
The growing recognition that chemicals in diverse forms are responsible for a new genre of illnesses like multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), as well as long-recognised older ones, is of course a good thing. But it has led to the chemical companies adopting new strategies to avoid responsibility and to keep business booming. They range from arguing that individuals are idiosyncratically susceptible to chemicals, to suggesting that cancer sufferers have increased their chances of cancer by adopting a risky lifestyle.
Science and industry have also attempted to convince the public that human life inevitably involves a degree of risk; that there are thus no ‘risk-free’ foods, environments, or medicines. Through these arguments, industry is gradually denying the consumer information which could aid choice of low or no-risk alternatives.
A favourite and timeless way of promoting such arguments is the industry front group. Two of the most notorious organisations to scientific argument to propagandise about the safety of chemicals in the US are RISE (Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment) and the ACSH (American Council on Science and Health). Both serve as models for groups in Britain and elsewhere.
Taking the RISE
The goal of RISE is, allegedly, ‘to communicate environmental health, safety and benefits of the proper use of pesticides to policy makers, regulators, end-users and the general public’. It is RISE’s position that there is no documentary evidence that pesticides, ‘when used in accordance with label instructions’, have caused harm to human health.
Unsurprisingly, the governing board of RISE is composed of representatives from some of the largest chemical and pharmaceutical companies in America. The strategies by which RISE hopes to achieve its goals include becoming ‘the recognised industry resource and primary voice of the specialised pesticides industry for media, regulators, legislators and academia’, and ‘responding to media coverage’, which means publicly replying to television and radio programmes or newspaper journalists who are critical of pesticides.
RISE has its own PR company which places positive ads in trade papers and retains its own scientists to argue its case. It has developed a ‘safe use’ argument, which is similar to the Wise Use movements in other areas of US industry. And in the battle against the recognition of multiple chemical sensitivity, RISE has joined with other industries to form the Environmental Sensitivities Research Institute. The Institute aims to ‘bring science back into the discussion of MCS’, and ‘diffuse the emotion surrounding the phenomena’.
ACSH – telling it like it is?
Set up in 1978, the American Council on Science and Health places great emphasis on the scientific objectivity of its ‘position papers’ on a wide range of products and substances, and their effect upon health. The organisation was pump-primed by the Gulf Oil-based Sarah Scaife Foundation with a grant of $125,000. ACSH, too, is funded by many of the largest oil, chemical, food and pharmaceutical companies42 and receives money from all the industrial sectors about which it commissions ‘scientific’ papers. For example, whilst writing such papers about the health effects of sugar and sweeteners, ACSH is funded by Coca-Cola, sugar companies and processed food companies.
Independent scientists who reviewed ACSH reports for the Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSIPI) concluded that the reports were biased and unscientific with many omissions of fact. An early ACSH report on cancer, for example, failed to discuss the involvement of industrial production and products in relation to cancer, and the discussion on diet and cancer was considered by the experts to be ‘inadequate’.
More recently, ACSH has been involved in the debate on electromagnetic fields and human health. Elizabeth Whelan, the founder and President of ASCH, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, ‘we now know’ that electro-magnetic fields risk is a ‘phoney health risk’. It is typical of the sort of statement they regularly make. ACSH is intimately connected to the American Council on Health Fraud, sharing members and views in defence of pharmaceuticals and orthodox medicine.
Moving on
Yet try as industry and front groups might, it is no longer possible to escape the conclusion that a substantial proportion of modern-day illness is caused by manmade chemicals and environmental pollutants. Unfortunately, there is no sign that causal scientific reasons for the escalation in modern illnesses will be consensually agreed by scientists.
The abdication of independent science in the area of public health has led to epidemiological anarchy, with corporations, their apparatchiks and agencies, as well as government, constantly broadcasting inaccurate or partial information about health threats. One simple fact shows very clearly the extent to which a genuine cover-up of the truth exists. When, in 1991 and 1992, the American Environmental Protection Agency offered an amnesty on large-scale fines to any manufacturer turning in health studies previously kept from the Agency, more than 10,000 studies which showed that chemicals already on the market could pose a ‘substantial risk of injury to health or the environment’ were turned in.
What we need now is the will to regulate and police industry in favour of worker and consumer health. Where communities find that they need new epidemiological evidence about threats to their health, they should steer well clear of the industry-sponsored university and think-tank epidemiology factories, and try to organise their own independent studies.
As well as constant lobbying for stricter regulation, consumers must also make personal choices about boycotting products which contain toxic chemicals. In 1995, the American Cancer Prevention Coalition, chaired by Samuel Epstein and working with Ralph Nader, hit upon the regular publication of a ‘Dirty Dozen’ list of toxic, mainly carcinogenic, ingredients in household products and processed foods. The first and most significant personal change that people can make is a move to organic food and towards a chemical-free home. High on the list of priorities, after the domestic situation is resolved, must be the fight for pollution-free public transport.
The orthodox medical and scientific establishments, industry and government will continue to claim that they are concerned about the welfare of workers, consumers and the public. But until scientists disengage from industry and the state, and begin to come clean about the effect of modern chemicals on the health of the people, they will remain a conspicuous part of the problem rather than the solution.
Martin J Walker is a writer and researcher, author of Dirty Medicine and five other books. He is presently writing about alternative cancer treatments in Britain since the 19th century. Any information on this subject, or on Dr Franklin Bicknell, will be gratefully received. Contact him at Slingshot Publications, BM Box 8314, London WC1N 3XX.
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