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Back in December, Andrew Schneider reported in the Seattle PI that the use of diacetyl-containing cooking oils could be putting professional cooks at risk for the same severe lung disease that’s struck workers in microwave-popcorn and flavor factories. After his article came out, the Unite-Here union requested an investigation from NIOSH (the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health), and the union’s local Seattle chapter requested one from Washington state’s Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention.
Schneider now reports that both of these investigations are underway – and he also highlights two new animal studies by federal scientists documenting that low-level exposure to diacetyl can cause damage. (These are in addition to the many existing studies about the harmful effects of the butter-flavoring chemical.)
Diacetyl – the butter-flavoring chemical linked to severe lung disease in food and flavoring workers – hasn’t been in the news much recently. It got a lot of attention in September, when we drew attention to the case of a Colorado man who appeared to have developed bronciolitis obliterans from eating microwave popcorn twice a day for several years. (More details here.) Major popcorn manufacturers announced that they would be removing diacetyl from their microwave popcorn lines, and OSHA put out a press release saying it was initiating rulemaking on the chemical.
I haven’t written about diacetyl in a while but there are some new developments worth reporting.
Last month, Andrew Schneider reported in the Seattle PI that the use of diacetyl-containing cooking oils could be putting professional cooks at risk for the same severe lung disease that’s struck workers in microwave-popcorn and flavor factories. Now, Schneider brings us news that the UNITE HERE union is urging manufacturers to remove diacetyl from cooking sprays and oils, and members of Congress have requested that NIOSH (the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health) investigate the use of the chemical and the harm it might be doing to workers.
Science bloggers Bora Zivkovic (also known as Coturnix) and Reed Cartwright, assisted by a panel of judges, are putting together an anthology of science blog posts from the past year – and I’m honored to report that my post “Popcorn Lung Coming to Your Kitchen? The FDA Doesn’t Want to Know” is included.
Open Laboratory 2007, like the 2006 edition before it, will be published by Lulu.com and soon available for order. You can also read all of the blog posts by clicking on the links at A Blog Around the Clock. It’s fascinating collection, sure to amuse as well as to educate. Here are some of the posts that Pump Handle readers might find particularly interesting:
OSHA? No. It’s Andrew Schneider and his colleagues at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In “Flavoring Additive Puts Professional Cooks at Risk,” the reporter describes a study commissioned by the newspaper to determine how much of the butter-flavoring agent diacetyl becomes airborne when used in a restaurant cook’s work setting. Exposure to diacetyl is associated with the severe lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans in microwave popcorn plant workers and others, yet Schneider writes:
“Government indifference to the possible threat posed by breathing diacetyl is epidemic. The CPSC repeatedly has said it’s not its problem. For at least three years the FDA has been ignoring the question and only now, almost eight years after the first solid links between diacetyl and workers, has OSHA said it will attempt to set standards for worker exposure, and this is only after repeated hammering by unions and Congress.”
Frankly, we should be exasperated by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s study. We’ve come to rely on a newspaper to do our public health investigations??
Europe is often ahead of the US when it comes to protecting its people from environmental and occupational hazards, but our public health officials led the way in identifying the hazards of diacetyl, the butter-flavoring chemical that causes severe lung disease in workers. When ten workers from a Missouri microwave popcorn plant were diagnosed with the rare lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans in 2000, the state’s Department of Health notified federal officials. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health studied the facility, issued recommendations to improve workers’ respiratory protections, and conducted further research that identified diacetyl as the problem. While our federal regulatory agencies haven’t taken significant action on the issue – despite petitions from unions and health advocates to OSHA and the FDA – some companies have acted to reduce or eliminate workers’ diacetyl exposure, and California’s OSHA is moving toward regulation. (See our Diacetyl page for more on this topic.)
Things are moving even more slowly in Europe, it seems. Last month, the European Food Safety Authority told FoodNavigator.com that it takes US findings seriously and that “experts of the EFSA [food additives and flavorings] panel and its working group on food additives will look at this issue to see if new scientific evidence is available that may require further action.”
On Friday, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) issued a call for all unions with members in food processing to take action on diacetyl, urging them to:
The long awaited EPA study of chemicals emitted when microwave popcorn is popped has just been published. Its results are not surprising: popping microwave butter flavor popcorn releases a sizable number of chemicals into the air, although not necessarily in large amounts. These chemicals include diacetyl, the primary chemical implicated in the bronchiolitis obliterans (“popcorn lung”) cases seen in popcorn and flavor factories.
The study does not attempt to measure or model the exposure consumers get when they pop microwave popcorn at home. Rather, it simply measures what chemicals are emitted when you pop the stuff, and when you open the bags.
Why did the EPA insist on not sharing these results with anyone (including OSHA) before publication?
Just before the House passed legislation last month requiring OSHA to regulate diacetyl, OSHA’s press office went into high gear, announcing the agency was getting to work on just that issue. Two days before the vote, OSHA announced it was initiating rulemaking under section 6(b) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In other words, it was finally going to start the process of issuing a standard to protect workers exposed to hazardous flavor chemicals. As part of that process, it announced a stakeholder meeting, scheduled for October 17, 2007. (I’ll be attending the meeting, and have prepared a statement for it.)
Are the political appointees who run OSHA delusional or merely mendacious? In her column in today’s Washington Post, Cindy Skrzycki reviews the efforts by members of Congress to require OSHA to issue standards protecting workers from diacetyl, the artificial butter flavor chemical that causes irreversible lung disease. One statement jumped out:
“I would characterize us as proactive,” said Jonathan Snare, acting solicitor at the Labor Department, which oversees OSHA.
The facts show this is simply false. The statement is so ludicrous that it should be an embarrassment even to the political appointees who run the agency. After OSHA was notified by the Missouri Department of Health of multiple cases of bronchiolitis obliterans among workers at a microwave popcorn plant, an OSHA inspector visited the plant and announced there was nothing he could do. OSHA did not conduct an inspection of another microwave popcorn or flavor factory for more than five years.
While the House of Representatives was voting Wednesday to approve the Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act (here), OSHA’s Assistant Secretary Edwin Foulke had just mailed a letter rejecting a petition from a group of workers’ who’d asked for emergency protection from the respiratory hazards caused by butter-flavoring agents. Mr. Foulke’s response is not only tardy—it took them 14 months to write a 5-page letter—but its content is insulting. “I assure you that OSHA takes the concerns you expressed very seriously,” he writes. Oh, please. Your meager actions to protect diacetyl-exposed workers speaks volumes. Are we supposed to be impressed by your revelation that OSHA has “evaluated workplace exposure conditions at site visits to three microwave popcorn plants over the last 8 months”? Three plants in eight months? And then to use this paltry information to state
“Thus, OSHA does not have sufficient evidence that a grave danger currently exists in microwave popcorn manufacturing facilities to support the issuance of an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for diacetyl.”
If severely injured workers waiting for lung transplants does not constitute a hazard of a grave nature, what does?
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) explaining his opposition to H.R. 2693, the Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act, which would require OSHA to protect workers from breathing toxic chemicals used in artificial butter flavor:
“If there’s something wrong with popcorn, how did Orville Redenbacher live so long?”
By David Michaels
Updated Below
By a vote of 260 to 154, the US House of Representatives has passed H.R. 2693, the Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act. This was not a pure party line vote - over the objections of the White House and the Chamber of Congress, 47 Republicans voted with the majority, and only 8 Democrats opposed the resolution. The vote demonstrates the widespread recognition that OSHA has failed to protect workers and Congress needs to step in to force the agency to do its job.
Our thanks go out to Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, Workforce Protections Subcommittee Chairman Lynn Woolsey, and the terrific Education and Labor Committee staff.
Please tell your Senators that the Senate needs to pass similar legislation. The Senate phone number is 202.224.3121.
Here’s how they voted: Read the rest of this entry »
By Liz Borkowski
Yesterday, the White House and the OSHA Fairness Coalition (which includes members like the International Food Distributors Association, National Association of Manufacturers, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce) wrote to members of the House of Representatives to express their strong opposition to H.R. 2693, the Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act.
No one who’s been following the Bush Administration’s approach to regulation will be surprised to hear that the responses from the White House and business coalition are strikingly similar to one another, and to arguments used in the past by Big Tobacco and other industries seeking to avoid regulation. They both rely on three main arguments that are easily refuted:
By David Michaels
Days before the House will vote on legislation to force OSHA to regulate diacetyl (the artificial butter flavor chemical that causes bronchiolitis obliterans), the agency has apparently decided that perhaps it is finally time to begin the rulemaking process for this substance. Yesterday, fourteen months after we petitioned OSHA for an emergency standard, the agency has called for a stakeholder meeting to discuss how it might address the problem.
Although OSHA’s press release claims that the agency is “initiating rule-making,” if you read the small print, it is clear that OSHA is simply saying it will start collecting information. Given its timing, it is apparent that this is an attempt to preempt legislation that would compel OSHA to issue a standard protecting workers. There is no commitment to anything beyond a single meeting.
We welcome OSHA’s effort to collect information; after all, a group of public health and union activists met with OSHA staff last December and told them to do exactly this.
But Members of Congress should not be fooled. Read the rest of this entry »
By Liz Borkowski
As David Michaels reported yesterday, the Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act will come up for a vote in the House some time this week. The legislation will force OSHA to issue a standard that will minimize workers’ exposure to diacetyl, the butter flavoring chemical that’s been causing severe, irreversible lung disease in workers from food and flavoring plants.
Why hasn’t OSHA acted to address diacetyl exposure, even though they’ve known about the problem for several years? It seems that these days, top regulatory-agency officials are more interested in a “voluntary compliance strategy” than in actually, well, regulating.
One of the main problems with the voluntary approach is that it’s very unlikely to convince all of the employers to take the necessary steps. Sure, it didn’t take regulation to get Pop Weaver and ConAgra to announce that they’re removing diacetyl from their microwave popcorn products (perhaps just the prospect of regulation did the trick). On the other hand, Kraft has just provided a timely example of a company that seems to need a more forceful kind of persuasion.
By David Michaels
Later this week, the House of Representatives will vote on H.R. 2693 — The Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act. Now is the moment to let your Member of Congress know how important it is for them to support the legislation.
Popcorn Workers Lung is a case study in regulatory failure. As we’ve written many times here, OSHA has ignored this deadly hazard for far too long. At least three workers have died and dozens more have developed irreversible lung disease as a result of exposure to diacetyl.
California often takes the lead in responding to public health issues, so it’s not surprising that their state legislature was the first to take up a bill to ban the artificial butter flavoring chemical diacetyl from California workplaces by 2010. California is home to 29 flavoring plants, and state health officials have diagnosed several flavoring workers with bronchiolitis obliterans, the debilitating lung disease that strikes many young, otherwise healthy workers who are exposed to diacetyl on the job.
State Assemblywoman Sally Lieber introduced the diacetyl legislation in February, and Senator Joseph Simitian followed with a similar bill in the state’s Senate. Yesterday, the Senate bill was up for a vote, and it looked like it would fail until two Democrats swung their votes to support it. Then, as the Sacramento Bee’s Shane Goldmacher reports, things took a couple of unexpected turns:
Over the past week, several newspapers and wire services have reported on the story we broke here at The Pump Handle about the first reported case of bronchiolitis obliterans in a microwave popcorn consumer – quickly followed by microwave popcorn manufacturers’ announcements about the removal of diacetyl from their products, and by additional calls from health advocates and members of Congress for federal agencies to address the problem. It’s interesting to look at the different angles from which the various articles approach the topic, and the details they include.
By David Michaels
The popcorn festival has just ended in Marion, Ohio (nickname: “popcorn capital of the world”), attended by more than 100,000 revelers. The Orville Redenbacher Parade is one of the festivals’ highlights. Redenbacher, who developed the hybrid corn strain that pops so uniformly, was actually from Indiana, but ConAgra Foods manufactures the best selling microwave popcorn brand “Orville Redenbacher’s” (along with Act II brand) at its factory in Marion.
I didn’t get to the festival, but you can be sure that there was a lot of talk about the first reported case of “popcorn lung” in a consumer, and that ConAgra and other major microwave popcorn manufacturers have decided to eliminate the chemical from their product. I’m sure the town hopes this will mean no more cases of “popcorn lung” there. According to Sabrina Eaton at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, at least 50 workers at the Marion and other Ohio plants have sued flavor manufacturers after developing lung disease they allege to be caused by diacetyl, the primary component of artificial butter flavor.
Now, with disease threatening not just workers but popcorn consumers, the country is awakening to the potential risks of exposure to airborne diacetyl. Exactly one year ago — Sept 8th 2006 — we formally requested the FDA to remove diacetyl from the list of “Generally Recognized As Safe” food additives. The FDA pretty much ignored us. Now, the pressure is rising for the government to take action to protect consumers. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
Over a year ago, unions petitioned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to adopt an emergency temporary standard for diacetyl (PDF). More than 40 leading occupational health physicians and scientists sent a supporting letter (PDF) to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao summarizing the strong scientific evidence linking exposure to the artificial butter flavoring chemical diacetyl to the lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans. In the more than 13 months during which OSHA has failed to act on this urgent request, further information been published in the peer-reviewed literature linking occupational diacetyl exposure to severe lung disease.
The country is now acutely aware of the hazards of breathing diacetyl, thanks to the case of “popcorn lung” in a popcorn consumer, first reported here at The Pump Handle earlier this week. The airborne diacetyl levels in the home of Wayne Watson, the Colorado furniture salesman with the disease, were comparable to those found in locations in microwave popcorn factories where sick workers had been employed. This led almost immediately to the major popcorn manufacturers pledging to eliminate diacetyl from their artificial butter recipes.
Today, unions and scientists have sent another letter to Secretary Chao to bring the Department of Labor’s attention to the new developments and renew their call for emergency action to protect workers.
What’s changed since the unions petitioned OSHA on diacetyl? Employers in the flavor industry now support an OSHA standard as well. Now, it’s even clearer than before that responsible employers and trade groups need OSHA’s help, and the agency’s continuing inaction only allows irresponsible companies who care little about health and safety to expose their employees to diacetyl. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
Earlier this week, we broke the story of the first case of “popcorn lung” occurring in person whose exposure to diacetyl was not workplace-related. Now more details are coming out, including an interview with Wayne Watson, the Colorado furniture salesman with disease. In today’s AP article, P. Solomon Banda writes that
“When Dr. Rose told me, she said: `Mr. Watson, there is a chemical in butter flavored microwave popcorn called diacetyl and it has been known to cause lung disease of this nature, with your symptoms.’ I went, `friggin unbelievable.’”
In many ways, Mr. Watson was very fortunate. By luck, he had been referred to Dr. Cecile Rose, chief occupational and environmental health physician at National Jewish Medical and Research Center. Dr. Rose is one of perhaps a dozen or two physicians in the entire country who have seen cases of popcorn lung. Read the rest of this entry »
Workers who manufacture microwave popcorn for ConAgra and Pop Weaver will soon be able to breathe easier, since both companies have announced that they will stop using diacetyl to flavor their popcorn. Other workers – including those who make flavorings, baked goods, and other companies’ microwave popcorn – may still be exposed to the artificial butter flavoring chemical.
Other occupational health and safety news this week includes:
Last week, Pop Weaver announced that it was eliminating diacetyl from its microwave popcorn products. Today, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Associated Press report that ConAgra will remove diacetyl from its Orville Redenbacher and Act II microwave popcorn over the next year. This news comes as David Michaels’s post here about federal agencies’ inadequate response to a case of bronchiolitis obliterans in a popcorn consumer has attracted widespread media attention (e.g., from the Associated Press, Denver Post, and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).
It’s great to see that popcorn companies are responding to the problem of diacetyl, since federal agencies are reacting slowly and ineffectually. These announcements still prompt us to ask something we’ve asked before, though: What do Pop Weaver and ConAgra know about diacetyl exposure that the public doesn’t?
By David Michaels
Updated Below
For the past several years, news articles and Congressional hearings have reported on a deadly, irreversible lung disease – bronchiolitis obliterans – that is caused by workers’ exposure to food flavoring chemicals, and more specifically by exposure to a butter-flavoring chemical called diacetyl. So far, attention has focused on worker exposure, rather than on possible health problems affecting consumers who pop popcorn in their microwave ovens. That focus may be changing, however, with a warning sent by one of the country’s leading lung disease experts.
The CDC, FDA, OSHA, EPA – federal agencies charged with protecting public health – each received a letter in July alerting them to the possible serious respiratory hazard to consumers who breathe in fumes from their artificially butter-flavored microwave popcorn. The warning should have resulted in some action by these agencies, but instead, they’ve done virtually nothing.
It appears that the Bush Administration’s efforts to destroy the regulatory system are succeeding; the agencies seem unable to mount a response to information that a well-functioning regulatory system would immediately pursue. The agencies aren’t even trying to connect the dots.
In July, Dr. Cecile Rose, the chief occupational and environmental medicine physician at National Jewish Medical and Research Center, the most prestigious lung disease hospital in the country, wrote to the FDA, CDC, EPA and OSHA, informing the agencies of a patient she had recently identified
“with significant lung disease whose clinical findings are similar to those described in affected workers, but whose only inhalational exposure is as a heavy, daily consumer of butter flavored microwave popcorn.”
This letter is a red flag, suggesting that exposure to food flavor chemicals is not just killing workers, but may also be causing disease in people exposed to food flavor chemicals in their kitchens. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
The media has been buzzing (see here and here and here) about the announcement by the Pop Weaver Company that they will soon be marketing a butter flavored microwave popcorn that doesn’t use diacetyl in the butter flavor. As readers of this blog know, diacetyl (a component of artificial butter flavor) has been implicated in dozens of cases of terrible lung disease in workers who manufacture, mix and apply flavorings. (We’d like to know if the chemicals that have replaced diacetyl are safe – but that will be the subject of a later post).
We still don’t know if exposure to diacetyl at home is dangerous. A year ago, we asked the EPA to release the results of a study of the airborne materials that are released when bags of microwaved popcorn are opened, but the agency has refused, although the agency acknowledged it has given the results to the popcorn industry. Now, it appears that the still secret findings helped convince Pop Weaver to drop diacetyl.
By Liz Borkowski
Although work has begun on a fifth borehole into the Crandall Canyon mine, officials acknowledged yesterday that the six miners may not be found. This LA Times article describes the anguishing choice between leaving the miners underground – a notion “akin to soldiers leaving comrades on the battlefield” – and risking more fatalities in a rescue operation that’s already claimed three lives.
In today’s Washington Post, Karl Vick and Sonya Geis report that the focus has now shifted to determining the cause of collapse, and the retreat mining techniques being used are the first thing many people will examine. MSHA will also come under scrutiny, for a couple of reasons.
Jeff Lehr at the Joplin Globe reports that a new round of lawsuits has been filed against makers of an artificial butter flavoring used at a microwave popcorn plant in Jasper County, Missouri. Exposure to artificial butter flavoring – in particular, the chemical diacetyl – has been linked to severe obstructive lung disease, and the 44 plaintiffs in the two latest lawsuits allege that exposure to butter flavoring caused severe impairment of their lungs. Lehr explains:
Back in April we reported that OSHA, facing scrutiny over its failure to protect food and flavoring workers from exposure to the butter flavoring chemical diacetyl, had announced a National Emphasis Program for the microwave popcorn industry. Last week, OSHA published a directive (PDF) to launch this one-year program.
OSHA’s effort will involve “inspection targeting, direction on methods of controlling chemical hazards, and extensive compliance assistance.” The most glaring hole in the program, as we noted earlier, is that it only covers microwave popcorn manufacturing.
With a bipartisan voice vote yesterday, the House Education and Labor Committee approved a bill that would force OSHA to regulate workers’ exposure to diacetyl. Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, chair of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections and chief sponsor of the legislation, commented:
What’s troubling is that if OSHA had taken action in a timely manner, we would not need to pass a bill to require OSHA to do something that it should have done a long time ago. …While OSHA has ignored the warnings of NIOSH and others concerning this devastating disease, workers have become sick and disabled, and several have died, all in an astonishingly short period of time. That’s why this legislation is so important - it will save lives.
For more information, see our post on the legislation or past posts on diacetyl.
As David Michaels reported earlier today, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey has introduced legislation that would force OSHA to issue standards for occupational exposure to diacetyl (an interim standard within 90 days and a final standard within two years). This artificial butter-flavoring substance has been linked to severe lung disease in workers exposed to it in airborne form. Workers from flavoring, microwave popcorn, and other food manufacturers have become ill, many after only a year or two of exposure.
As with other pressing issues, California’s legislature has decided not to wait for the federal government to act. A bill to prohibit the use of diacetyl in California workplaces, introduced by California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, passed the state’s Assembly on June 4th.
In other news:
By David Michaels
The simple, powerful statement on the website of FEMA, The Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States, summarizing the trade association’s position:
The Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States supports H.R.2693, legislation to assure workplace safety in flavor manufacturing.
Thank you FEMA. Read their press release here.
David Michaels heads the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) and is Professor and Associate Chairman in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.
By David Michaels
Regular readers of this blog are probably aware of the many workplace hazards that OSHA has failed to address, including silica, beryllium, and, of course, diacetyl – the artificial butter-flavoring chemical that’s associated with severe lung disease in workers at flavoring, food, and microwave popcorn plants. (Click here for our past posts on the subject.)
Today, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey has introduced legislation that would force OSHA to issue a standard protecting workers exposed to diacetyl. We fully support the bill, but the fact that it is needed at all highlights OSHA’s tragic failure to safeguard the health and safety of American workers.
H.R. 2693 would give OSHA 90 days to issue an interim final standard that would include measures to minimize workers’ diacetyl exposure, and two years to issue a final standard containing a permissible exposure limit and controlling exposure to diacetyl to the lowest feasible level. Some at the agency may complain that this timeline is too short, but quick action is warranted when a clearly identified hazard is leaving workers with a debilitating illness, in some cases after only a year or two of exposure.
It’s also useful to remember that OSHA has had several opportunities over the past years to address this problem, and has instead chosen to ignore it. Here are a few items from the diacetyl timeline: Read the rest of this entry »
By Liz Borkowski
While we’re waiting to hear what EPA and ConAgra have learned from studying emissions from microwave popcorn, it’s worth remembering that airborne artificial butter flavoring isn’t the only concern associated with this particular convenience food.
Rebecca Renner reported last year in Environmental Science & Technology about a study by FDA scientists on consumer products that contact food. They were investigating potential sources of the 4-5 ppb of PFOA, a suspected carcinogen, that most Americans carry in their blood, and one of the things they looked at was fluorotelomer coating on paper food packaging, which can degrade into PFOA. (To learn more about PFOA, see this case study at DefendingScience.org.) The packaging with the most fluorotelomer content was microwave popcorn bags.
What matters isn’t just how much PFOA is in consumer products, but how much of the chemical migrates from the product to the food cooked in it. Renner compares the scientists’ findings on microwave popcorn bags to findings on certain nonstick cookware that’s produced by a process that uses PFOA:
By David Michaels
“The cooperation of ConAgra Foods and the EPA has yielded a comprehensive understanding of butter flavor emissions for consumers.”
- Patricia Verduin, Senior Vice President Product Quality & Development, ConAgra Foods, Inc. in a November 29, 2004 letter to Paul Gilman, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Research and Development, U.S. EPA
As regular readers of this blog know, my colleagues and I at the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) have been pushing for regulation of occupational exposure to artificial butter flavoring, which has been linked to severe lung disease in workers from microwave popcorn plants (including the Orville Redenbacher plant in Marion, Ohio), flavor manufacturers, and other facilities. (See our case study on the topic for details.) We’ve also been trying to get an answer to the question that many people ask us when they learn about our work on this issue: are consumers who pop bags of microwave popcorn and inhale the buttery vapors also at risk?
The Spring/Summer 2003 issue of EPA’s Indoor Air Quality Research Update (PDF here; see page 5) announced the EPA was conducting a study to answer that very question – specifically, “to identify and quantify contaminants emitted while popping and opening a bag of microwave popcorn.” In July of 2006, after I inquired about the status of the study, the Chief of the EPA’s Indoor Environment Management Branch informed me that they anticipated sending a manuscript of the study to a peer-reviewed journal. I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the study and related materials, and I recently received a packet of documents from EPA. It did not contain the results of the study – those, I’m told, will be published in a journal soon – but it did contain an interesting letter from ConAgra, the manufacturer of the Orville Redenbacher brand of microwave popcorn, to the EPA. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
We’ve been writing for the past few months about U.S. regulatory agencies’ failure to take meaningful action on diacetyl, a toxic component of artificial butter flavor, despite having been aware of its risks since at least the start of this decade. Now, mounting evidence suggests that some flavor manufacturers have known about diacetyl’s association with severe lung disease and failed to take appropriate action for even longer - since the early 1990s, when diacetyl started killing workers in flavor plants. Disabled workers are currently suing flavor manufacturers over their failure to alert purchasers of artificial butter flavoring to the substance’s dangers.
James McNair has an important article in the Cincinnati Enquirer on the diacetyl disaster at the flavorings plant in Carthage, OH, owned by the Swiss multinational company Givaudan. Three workers at the plant have died from bronchiolitis obliterans. Evidently, the director of environmental health and safety at the plant (formerly known as Tastemaker Corp.), who was hired after the first worker death, thought the plant couldn’t be operated safely. So he was fired: Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created more than thirty years ago to make the American workplace more safe. And officials there say that deaths and injuries on the job have declined on their watch. But critics say OSHA has dropped the ball when it comes to safety regulations for everything from oil refineries to popcorn plants.
That’s the description of the segment of today’s edition of the always interesting Kojo Nnamdi Show, starting at 1:00 PM EST. I’ll be one of Kojo’s guests, along with Jim Morris, the author of the terrific National Journal article Slow Motion, about OSHA’s failure to address obvious and serious workplace hazards; Project Manager, The Center for Public Integrity; Marc Freedman, Director of Labor Policy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and David Sarvadi, Attorney, Keller and Heckman.
Kojo’s show is broadcast on WAMU-FM (88.5) in the Washington area, or can be heard at www.wamu.org. We’ll be taking questions, so please call in.
By David Michaels
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has just released a study examining lung disease and exposure to flavor chemicals among workers at the Carmi Flavor and Fragrance Company factory in Commerce, California. One or possibly two cases of bronchiolitis obliterans had been known to public health authorities before the investigation. Of the thirty-four workers studied, three were found to have severe obstructive lung disease; NIOSH reports the expected prevalence of this condition in a group of relatively young workers is about one in a thousand.
A professional colleague close to the investigation provided The Pump Handle with this summary of the study and its implications: Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), chair of the House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FDA has called on Food and Drug Administration to ban diacetyl until more research is completed. As we’ve written (here and here, for example), diacetyl is the artificial butter flavor chemical that has been crippling workers employed in flavoring, popcorn and snack food factories around the country.
In announcing her letter to FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach, Congresswoman DeLauro said:
In light of overwhelming scientific evidence, the possibility of harm to people who regularly prepare popcorn products containing diacetyl in a microwave oven can no longer be disregarded. For this reason, I am urging the FDA to consider revoking the generally safe designation for diacetyl and removing it from the market until further testing is completed. This chemical poses a real threat to the workers exposed to it. The FDA needs to take action on this issue and employ its regulatory mandate to protect the public.”
Here at the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP), we attempted to alert the FDA to the problem eight months ago. In September 2006, we petitioned the FDA to remove diacetyl from the “Generally Regarded As Safe” (GRAS) list, pointing out that “there is compelling evidence that breathing diacetyl vapors causes lung disease and there is no evidence of a safe exposure level.” In March 2007, the FDA wrote us back, essentially blowing us off.
Now, one of the members of congress who controls the agency’s funding has weighed in. I think we’ll see the FDA finally focus on diacetyl.
Here’s the text of her letter:
By David Michaels
In the last few days, the national media has finally focused on the failure of OSHA to protect workers from devastating lung disease caused by exposure to artificial butter flavor. (The problem goes well beyond microwave popcorn factories, to the flavor industry and other snack food plants.) Articles in the Washington Post, the New York Times and The National Journal all compare OSHA’s inaction with the activities the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (or CalOSHA), which is moving toward a rule forcing employers to protect workers in the food industry exposed to diacetyl, the butter flavor chemical implicated in the illnesses.
OSHA may be in “Slow Motion” (the title of Jim Morris’s article in the National Journal), but CalOSHA is not only working on a new standard — the California legislature is considering banning diacetyl from that state’s workplaces.
My prediction is that a few years from now, the food industry will look back with regret that OSHA didn’t issue a standard sooner. When the feds abdicate their role in protecting the public, states are stepping in. California has insisted on greenhouse gas reductions; other states are following. Now California legislators may ban diacetyl; they wouldn’t be considering it if OSHA had not virtually ignored the problem for the last five years. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
All of a sudden, America has become acutely aware of the terrible lung disease caused by workplace exposure to artificial butter flavor. Last week, the failure of OSHA to do anything in response to the outbreak of cases across the country was the subject of several powerful newspaper articles (including a front page story and editorial in the New York Times) and hearings in the House and Senate. In addition, the obstructive lung disease cases in the flavor industry were discussed in an alarming article in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The article reported that
Bronchiolitis obliterans has been identified in microwave-popcorn workers in several states, including Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, New Jersey, and Illinois; bronchiolitis obliterans in flavor-manufacturing workers has been identified in Ohio, California, Maryland, and New Jersey.
No doubt prompted by all the unwanted publicity, OSHA has announced a National Emphasis Program, finally promising to inspect microwave popcorn plants. To me, this is little more than a half-hearted attempt to make OSHA look busy, since NIOSH has been focused on the hazards in microwave popcorn production for the last six years. If OSHA really wanted to inspect factories with dangerous exposures and sick workers, they would start at the factories where flavors are manufactured and mixed, then visit the plants where diacetyl-containing snack foods like Twinkies are made.
A colleague who has been following the developments in the artificial butter flavor debacle sent me a note, underscoring just why OSHA’s emphasis program misses the boat: Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
Following up on a powerful indictment of OSHA’s failure to protect workers from diacetyl and other hazards published two days ago in the New York Times, today’s edition of the newspaper has a scathing editorial on the demise of OSHA under the Bush Administration. The editorial writers particularly go after OSHA Assistant Secretary Edwin Foulke, whom they refer to as “one of the most zealous of the antiregulatory ideologues.”
The problem goes beyond the actions (or inactions) of one anti-regulatory zealot – OSHA has been beaten down and handcuffed for so long, even well-meaning regulators would have trouble getting the agency to work well.
Celeste Monforton and I first identified the failure of OSHA to do anything about flavoring workers’ lung disease and FOIA’d the documents cited by the Times in 2004, long before Mr. Foulke came to OSHA. We first wrote about OSHA’s lack of response in an academic paper we published two years ago. Unfortunately, we entitled the paper “Scientific evidence in the regulatory system: Manufacturing uncertainty and the demise of the formal regulatory system,” (PDF here) and it was widely ignored until recently, perhaps because it had such a boring title. Since then, we’ve posted a tremendous amount of material up on SKAPP’s website, using diacetyl as a case study in regulatory failure.
Its very gratifying to see that a national discussion devoted to examining the crisis we identified and have been compiling information about.
Here’s the full text of the New York Times editorial:
By David Michaels
On April 26, 2002, exactly five years ago today, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published a report about the risk of a terrible and sometime fatal lung disease, bronchiolitis obliterans, in microwave popcorn workers. The report appeared in the CDC’s widely-disseminated Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Since then, dozens of workers at factories where artificial butter flavors are produced, mixed or applied have become sick, and at least three workers have died. Others are awaiting lung transplants.
By coincidence, today CDC has issued a new report in MMWR about bronchiolitis obliterans among workers in the flavoring industry.
By David Michaels
On the front page of today’s New York Times, reporter Stephen Labaton highlights a trend that we’ve been writing about here at The Pump Handle for some time: Occupational Safety and Health Administration has delayed or halted work on important standards for worker protection and put more of its energies into voluntary programs that let employers decide how far they’re willing to go to protect workers’ health and lives.
Labaton’s article focuses on OSHA’s failure to protect workers from diacetyl, an artificial butter flavoring that numerous scientific studies have linked to the lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans. Much of the material he presented comes from the case study on flavor worker’s lung disease as an example of regulatory failure, posted at www.DefendingScience.org, the website of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP). Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
As regular readers of this blog know, worker health advocates have been pushing for regulation of diacetyl, an artificial butter flavoring chemical that’s been linked to bronchiolitis obliterans, a terrible, sometimes fatal lung disease.
Today, in anticipation of two Congressional hearings and a major newspaper article due out tomorrow, OSHA has announced that it will take its first steps to protect diacetyl-exposed workers. Unfortunately, OSHA has announced it will ignore thousands of workplaces where workers are being exposed with no protection, and will focus only on microwave popcorn factories, the one set of workplaces where NIOSH has already been helping employers address the problem. So when OSHA inspectors go out, they will likely find the problem under control in the popcorn factories. And more workers in the remainder of the food industry will get sick.