by Carissa Kowalski
Science is a part of our everyday discourse. At work, we chat about the latest computer software; at home, we tinker with our cars and our appliances; in our leisure time, we read about space telescopes and wonder drugs. But how do we get our information? Chances are, we get it from the mass media, which in turn relies on ready-to-use soundbites or press releases from industry public relations people like J. Patrick McGinn.
McGinn is the manager of communications and media relations at PPG Industries in southwestern Louisiana, an area sometimes called the "cancer corridor" because of the many chemical manufacturers that operate there.
PPG Industries manufactures ethylene dichloride (EDC) and vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), carcinogenic chemical precursors to the vinyl plastic that appears in everything from children's toys to electrical insulation and home siding.
Louisiana and Texas are responsible for almost all of the EDC and VCM production in the United States, and they have suffered the environmental consequences. In Louisiana alone, 14 million pounds of EDC and 1.7 million pounds of vinyl chloride were released into the air and water between the years of 1987 and 1996.
are forced to undergo
the type of scrutiny
that McGinn received,
but obviously more should.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 1995 Toxic Release Inventory, the county where PPG Industries is located ranked in the top 20% of all counties in the U.S. in terms of air and water releases of known cancer-causing agents. PPG itself was responsible for releases of 174,044 pounds of known carcinogens, plus another 336,298 pounds of other pollutants including suspected carcinogens, suspected neurotoxicants, and known developmental toxicants.
The worst victims of these exposures have been plant workers who have died from rare cancers linked to toxic exposures--individuals like PPG employee Henry Toussaint, who died earlier this year at age 54, or Dan Ross, who worked at the neighboring Vista Chemical plant and died of brain cancer at age 46. Their attorney, William Baggett, has won large settlements for their families and is currently building a conspiracy case against 29 chemical companies, along with the Chemical Manufacturers Association and the Society of the Plastic Industry.
The lawsuit has unearthed hundreds of thousands of pages of internal company memos, letters and other documents. In June, Houston Chronicle reporter Jim Morris published a series of stories based on the documents, which Morris said "depict a framework of dubious science and painstaking public relations. . . . There are two dominant themes: avoid disclosure and deny liability."
The lawsuits also placed PPG communications manager McGinn on the witness stand. On July 31, 1996, Baggett put him through an extensive deposition about his work and his written statements about the safety of PPG's operations.
McGinn is the sole author of a semi-regular newsletter, The Source, which is billed as "a public resource for PPG environmental information." Under Baggett's grilling, however, McGinn was forced to admit that he received no input from the environmental employees of the company, nor did any of the "environmental people" look over his work before it was published.
"I do things at the very last minute, and I do it as quickly as I can," McGinn said in what was at best an admission of ignorance and at worst an effort to evade responsibility for the accuracy of his own statements.
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In Mossville, a largely African-American community near the PPG and Vista plants, EDC-contaminated groundwater has forced many of the residents to abandon their homes. |
Deadly Combinations
A great deal of McGinn's deposition revolved around the difference between "vinyl chloride monomer" and "polyvinyl chloride" (PVC).
PVC is the material that most of us think about when we hear the word "vinyl," but its production is a complicated process. Chlorine, derived from salt, is combined with ethylene, a petroleum product, to form ethylene dichloride (EDC). EDC is then converted into vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and put through the polymerization process to form PVC resin.
Both EDC and VCM are toxic substances. EDC is a liquid sometimes used to make commercial solvents. It has been shown to cause cancer, birth defects, and damage to the lungs, liver and kidneys. Exposure to large amounts of EDC has resulted in death from lung and heart failure.
VCM is a colorless, flammable gas with a faintly sweet odor. Evidence of its negative health effects began to appear when workers who cleaned VCM reactors developed acroosteolysis, a deformity of the hands caused when the bones of the fingers erode. It can also cause scleroderma, which causes the skin to become smooth and tight, as well as Raynauds syndrome, which damages blood vessels.
These maladies, unfortunately, are only the tip of the toxic iceberg. Vinyl chloride can damage the developing fetus, and an excess of spontaneous abortions has been reported among workers and spouses of workers exposed to vinyl chloride. Increased rates of birth defects have been reported in areas where vinyl chloride processing plants are located.
In 1972, Italian researcher Cesare Maltoni found that VCM exposure levels previously thought to be harmless caused an excess of angiosarcoma, a rare form of liver cancer. Studies have also linked VCM to cancers of the brain, lungs and other organs.
According to Morris at the Houston Chronicle, the vinyl industry sponsored biased research in the 1970s designed to downplay these risks, but even its own studies found disproportionately high cancer rates in vinyl workers.
By the mid-1970s, labor organizations and the federal government had become aware of the dangers associated with vinyl chloride, and stricter exposure limits were imposed. In the meantime, however, thousands of workers had already been exposed during the 1950s and 1960s. The consequences of these exposures are still unfolding, as workers continue to die from liver and brain cancers.
Vinyl vs. Vinyl
Even finished PVC resin is not entirely safe. The resin must be combined with chemical additives to make it usable. Plasticizers and other additives such as DEHP (a known carcinogen) are added to make it flexible; heavy metals are added to change its color or make it more rigid; fungicides are added to kill bacteria. Research points to fires involving PVC products producing a deadly gas of hydrochloric acid.
Finished PVC, however, is vastly less dangerous than vinyl chloride monomer, a point that came out repeatedly during McGinn's deposition.
Baggett focused in particular on McGinn's statements in the August 1995 issue of The Source, which was distributed to announce a partnership between PPG Industries and Vista Chemical to operate a new VCM facility in the area.
"The vinyl industry has more than a 50-year documented record of safe performance," McGinn had written, in a section titled "Now you know."
Under interrogation, however, he admitted that this statement would have been a lie if it referred to the vinyl chloride monomer which is manufactured by Vista or PPG. "At the time, I wasn't referring to our industry," he said.
What was he referring to? Finished PVC, he said--the plastic that goes into home siding and molded chairs.
Baggett was incredulous. After all, neither PPG nor Vista manufacture PVCs in Louisiana.
"Now, the phrase 'vinyl industry'--when a person reads that, you don't think that they were entitled to think that you're talking about plants like PPG?" Baggett asked. "Do you think they are supposed to be thinking about people who are manufacturing chairs?"
Baggett also challenged a sentence in The Source which stated, "Study after study has confirmed there's no evidence that vinyl affects human health."
"You're telling me . . . your average reader is going to think they're talking about something different than what PPG and Vista are doing here?" Baggett inquired.
"Yeah," McGinn said.
So why did he focus on vinyl end products rather than the chemicals his company actually manufactures? "I am trying to get people to think. . . 'I shouldn't be afraid of my vinyl siding. I shouldn't be afraid of my vinyl seats in my car, my vinyl dashboard,'" he claimed.
that you find often
in those kind of national
public relations things,"
McGinn admitted.
In the same section of the newsletter, however, McGinn had written, "The vinyl industry has drastically reduced emissions (99%)"--which seems to refer to the manufacture of VCM rather than PVCs. When asked if this statement could refer to chair manufacturers, McGinn pleaded ignorance: "I have no idea what they are talking about here," he said. "I am taking it word-for-word out of a vinyl industry book."
According to McGinn, his statements in The Source came directly from an information packet distributed by the Vinyl Institute, an industry trade association. He hadn't given any thought to fact-checking, he admitted, nor had he thought about whether people might miss the distinction between VCM as vinyl and PVC as vinyl.
"My intent is, it's midnight. I've got to make this thing," he explained. "I've got some white space. I remember I've got a Vinyl Institute binder. I thumb through it very rapidly and find some little bullet points that I can put in there. I have got no time for anybody to see this, so I type it word-for-word out of there."
Ignorance Is Strength
McGinn claimed that he knew little or nothing about the health distinction between VCM and PVC at the time he produced the August 1995 Source. "What the distinctions are, I am not aware of," he testified.
As a result, he had not made any attempt to explain the risks associated with his employer's product. "I personally have not informed the public of any risks associated with vinyl chloride," he said.
Few PR professionals are forced to undergo the type of scrutiny that McGinn received from Baggett, but obviously more should. They are often the primary source of health information for employees, the media, and the community at large. As McGinn himself admitted, their statements cannot be taken at face value.
At one point during the deposition, Baggett questioned McGinn about another item in The Source, which asserted that the manufacture of vinyl is one of the "most closely regulated production processes in existence."
"Do you believe that?" Baggett demanded.
"It is hyperbole that you find often in those kind of national public relations things," McGinn replied.
Counting Chemicals
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