Protection didn't work

So 25 workers poisoned by beryllium now risk death

David Sanders,
The Arizona Daily Star
Two don protective clothing, including respirators, before entering Tucson's Brush Wellman plant.

David Sanders,
The Arizona Daily Star
A worker at the Tucson plant makes certain a fence is locked

Twenty-five people may die because they worked in a Tucson manufacturing plant where the government and the company failed to protect them from a hazardous metal.

Two can no longer breathe on their own. All have an industrial disease that slowly eats away at the lungs.

They may not be the last to become sick: Blood tests show that 12 others who inhaled dust from a metal known as beryllium may be in the early, symptom-less stages of the disease.

The workers fell ill making electronics parts at Brush Wellman Inc.'s plant, 6100 S. Tucson Blvd., near Tucson International Airport.

The national problem of workers dying from beryllium dates back to the 1940s, reaches to high levels of government and shows the weakness of local regulators.

Internal company documents reveal the government was more concerned about protecting its supply of the strategic defense metal than protecting workers.

An investigation by The Arizona Daily Star shows that the Ohio-based company moved the most dangerous part of its beryllium business to Tucson just as it helped kill a federal safety plan that could have reduced the hazard.

The company then downplayed the risks to workers, assuring them they would be safe if they weren't exposed to excessive levels of the deadly dust.

``They didn't tell me I'd be wearing oxygen at age 32. Or that I couldn't walk to the end of the block without having to stop and catch my breath,'' said Ursula Cruz, who made $9.10 an hour at the plant.

She spends her days with a plastic tube dangling from her face. She's often tethered to a large oxygen machine at home. When she goes out, she slings a bottle of oxygen over her shoulder.

Cruz is one of 11 local workers suing Brush. They allege the company failed to fully warn them of the risks and then reneged on a verbal promise to give sick workers full pay for life.

Brush officials say they've been fair to workers, and told them more about the risks as they learned new information from scientists studying the disease.

They say the company has spent millions of dollars studying the disease and keeping workers as safe as it reasonably can.

``Every day we are making improvements in this facility that I feel are reducing that risk,'' said Stephen Mattix, a Tucson plant manager.

Yet the disease threat is so severe it's part of the reason Brush froze the hiring of beryllium workers here in recent months and started paying more to keep the ones it has, Mattix acknowledged.

The 25 workers with chronic lung disease are among 907 people who worked at the Tucson plant since it opened in 1980, according to David Deubner, the company's medical director.

Companywide, 141 employees have gotten sick. Dozens of others show signs they may contract the disease. The company does not dispute that the workers got sick while working at its plants.

In 1982, Brush moved its ceramics operation from Ohio to Tucson. Years later, researchers documented it has the highest rate of illness of all Brush operations.

The illness is baffling because it can take up to 30 years after exposure to strike. Only some people exposed to the metal contract the disease.

And the severity of the disease varies greatly among victims. An estimated one-third of all cases are fatal.

Despite the risks, some industries covet the gray metal because it is three times lighter than aluminum and six times harder than steel.

Factories rely on it to manufacture everything from auto ignitions to golf clubs to air bag sensors. The military uses it for nuclear warheads and guided missile systems.

It is not known to be dangerous in finished products. But when workers grind or cut the metal, they create a fine dust that can be toxic when inhaled.

White blood cells attack the microscopic bits of metal lodged in the lungs. That causes swelling and tiny, tumor-like growths that stiffen the lung lining and gradually choke off oxygen to the blood.

Doctors prescribe steroids to slow the lung damage, but the drugs typically cause brittle bones, weight gain, headaches, liver problems and other severe side effects.

``I worry more about what the medications are doing to me than the disease itself,'' said Hildegard ``Tommi'' Stoecker, a Tucson machinist who was diagnosed with the illness in 1992.

Chronic beryllium disease started showing up in the 1940s when residents near a Brush plant in Ohio became sick, even though they didn't work there.

One 25-year-old woman shriveled to 85 pounds and died after getting the disease by shaking out and hand-scrubbing her husband's dust-covered factory clothes.

Beryllium is so dangerous that it prompted the nation's first air-quality standard for workers. It wasn't exactly high science and it wasn't based on any health studies. Two government researchers arrived at the standard during a conversation in the back of a taxi cab.

That 1949 standard says workers can't be exposed to an average of more than two micrograms per cubic meter of air over eight hours.

The amount is shockingly small: Imagine a lead pencil tip dispersed throughout an area the size of a football field, six feet high.

As early as 1967, some medical experts questioned whether the standard was tough enough.

Dr. Joseph DeNardi, who treated most of the early Brush beryllium cases in Ohio, wrote to government health officials. He said people allergic to beryllium would get the disease no matter how little dust they breathed.

In 1975, the federal government proposed making the standard twice as tough after studies suggested beryllium could cause cancer.

About the same time, a beryllium researcher in Japan warned Brush that workers there were contracting the disease even when exposed to less dust than the United States allows, court records show. And a California company told Brush one of its workers got sick at low levels, too.

But when Martin Powers, Brush's vice president, testified before federal regulators in 1977, he said the company had ``proven beyond a doubt'' that the standard was ``completely safe.'' He made no mention of the Japanese study, which the company disregarded as flawed.

The company called in its heavyweight customers - the departments of Defense and Energy. Together, they defeated the tougher standard. See related story, Page 9A.

``Apparently there was this concerted effort by Brush to stop the standard and they were successful. And now, as a society, we're paying the price for that,'' says Dr. Peter Infante, the nation's top reviewer of industrial health standards.

``Can you imagine how I feel as an employee of a regulatory agency every time I see one of these workers with chronic beryllium disease who are going to suffocate to death from this disease?''

His agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is researching whether to change the standard.

To this day Brush maintains there is no conclusive evidence to show the standard isn't working.

``Maintaining the existing standard is fundamental to defending against any product liability litigation.''

Brush officials didn't admit the standard may not protect everyone until 1995 - when their medical consultant told them to stop saying that workers got sick only when exposed to high amounts of dust in accidents, court records show.

That was eight years after a Yale Medical School study determined some workers fell ill at levels below the standard. The National Academy of Sciences soon agreed.

James Heckbert, a Colorado attorney representing the Tucson-area workers, recently said Brush should have told workers sooner it could not protect them from the disease. Then the company should have done more to minimize the risk for those who decided to stay, he said.

``If that means handling beryllium in the same way you handle plutonium, in a self-contained suit with supplied outside air, then that's what you're supposed to do,'' he said.

In another lawsuit against Brush, Heckbert represents federal employees strickened with the illness while working with Brush-supplied beryllium at the nuclear weapons plant in Rocky Flats, Colo.

A leading expert on beryllium disease who treated victims, including Brush employees, said his patients generally told him they had little knowledge of the danger.

``I chalk that up to a failure on the part of the industry to communicate the hazards effectively to workers,'' said Dr. Lee Newman.

``I do think that people were not sufficiently protected and informed of the risk.''

``I never smoked. I was one of the ones who always took a shower (to remove the dust after work) and always did what you were supposed to do to make sure you didn't get it.''

Workers had been told in handouts and training videos through the 1980s that less than 1 percent of people were susceptible to beryllium disease.

Although workers removed their uniforms and showered before going home, they changed in locker rooms that held their street clothes, risking cross-contamination. Use of respirators was spotty.

Employees tell of dust piled up on machines. The dangerous particles are too small to see, but visible dust may indicate the presence of smaller particles as well.

When Brush gave blood tests to workers, a startling 15 percent of machinists had abnormal results, showing they were at risk of contracting the illness - the highest rate ever found.

Just as alarming, one of the sick employees handled paperwork in the front office, away from the dusty machines. Another was a contract electrician who got the disease on occasional visits.

Brush officials see no contradiction in saying the federal standard is safe even while workers get sick. Their explanation: Workers might have been exposed to levels higher than the safety limit during accidents.

Imprecise air measurements through the years and the long dormancy period of the disease make it tricky to pin down anyone's actual exposure.

Mattix, the Tucson beryllium plant manager, would not say whether the sick employees here were overexposed.

Even during the 1977 federal hearings, the company testified that its Ohio plant wasn't meeting the standard. And a 1992 internal memo said the same thing.

As for the Tucson plant, company documents show nearly every one of the sick workers was exposed to levels higher than the standard.

One example: A 1982 air sample found airborne beryllium at 488 micrograms. That's more than 20 times the level the federal government recommends for short-term exposure.

Another study showed that between 1985 and 1992, parts of the plant exceeded air standards 8 percent of the time.

Meanwhile, parts of Brush's Ohio facility had excessive levels up to 65 percent of the time.

The company generally blames the high exposures on equipment failure or worker error.

Tabitha Sims, an analytical chemist, said she loved her job at Brush but left in 1993 because the company couldn't consistently control the powder.

Brush took precautions, she said. Air systems drew dust away from work areas and pumped it through filters. Workers put on respirators if powder spilled. The company took air measurements frequently and posted them, she said.

``They tried to do everything they could, but the occasional high counts were due to the fact it's a difficult problem and it's difficult to control,'' she said.

The state's Division of Occupation Safety and Health must catch a company in the act of releasing too much beryllium before it will even look at the company's own air measurements, said Jesus Maeda, a state industrial hygienist.

The company is not required to report a spill unless workers are hospitalized or someone dies, he said.

Records show the state agency inspected the Tucson site four times in the past 16 years.

The agency's Tucson office has only two workers who monitor work place air pollution at all industrial sites in Southern Arizona's seven counties.

``We try to get to companies every three years, but just responding to complaints keeps us busy,'' said Art Morelos, the Tucson office manager.

Brush officials say they keep the plant as safe as possible by continually improving safety measures.

But in 1997, Brush rejected a consultant's recommendation that it replace part of the plant's ventilation system to protect workers.

The Tucson plant's first line of defense for workers is a system of hoses designed to suck up dusty air at the points where tools grind or cut beryllium.

The consultant determined the system's air velocity was too low to adequately remove beryllium particles.

``The system as exists at Brush Wellman's Tucson facility does not meet current industry practices,'' the consultant wrote in a report obtained by the Star.

The estimated cost for a new system: $400,000 to $600,000, or double that amount in the case of complications.

Hugh Hanes, a Brush vice president, would not discuss the report, but said the company chose a different strategy.

Since January, employees must wear respirators all the time in manufacturing areas - even though respirators only reduce, rather than eliminate, exposure.

Only last month, managers told workers they will install air ``showers'' to blow dust off workers in an air lock before they leave contaminated areas.

Fewer people will be allowed in higher-risk areas and workers must wear gloves as a precaution when handling beryllium.

Jerry Mande, OSHA's deputy assistant secretary, said meeting the exposure standard isn't necessarily enough.

``Employers are required by law to provide a safe work place for employees,'' he said. ``Even absent the standard, employers are responsible for looking at the data on the hazards and to take steps to reduce them.''

All the studies ``should lead an employer to worry about the exposures of workers to beryllium and to take steps to reduce that exposure.''

Tomorrow: Tucson recruited Brush to open a plant in the late 1970s, wowed by promises of good paying jobs. Local environmental regulators admit air-quality protections are weak.

Sunday, 9 May 1999

Protection didn't work

So 25 workers poisoned by beryllium now risk death

`Sunday, 9 May 1999`