Chemical Industry hiding/skewing medical testing

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After all our pay is because of life expectancy.

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You think Ops get paid good because we are expected to die sooner? Just want to make sure I'm understanding what you are saying.

I'm not saying that is the sole reason, but it is definitely a factor.

I'm an operator in a VCM unit....

and all, for The Love of Money, more than anything else...

RUGER,

did you, or anyone there wear an organic vapor mask?!

I once worked in a Clean Room, and went straight to the cage for a mask after reading the warning label on the cement I was to mix...people made fun of me til they finally bothered to read the label, then they all were wearing a mask...

It is not just Vinyl Chloride Monomer production and reaction plants that are of concern. Ethylenesamines production facilities generate VCM as a by product too. It is listed as about a 1 - 2% reaction product but it can be more concentrated depending on where in the process the sample is taken from.

I remember visiting one such site in Texas and seeing the Mexican (English as a second language) lab workers holding open reactor samples up to their noses outside of the vent hoods as they "looked" at the samples.

These plants typically don't have any health monitoring system for VCM and the Mexican workers have no specific chemistry training to even know what it is they are potentially handling. I can only shake my head in pity.

My advice to you is to get the frick out of the VCM facility unless you are completely protected during any possible exposure. It has been very well known for years to be a carcinogenic problem.

It is not just the VCM production units as you say, but downstream the guys in PVC and other refined products also deal with it. I think people know the possibilities of what could happen, but most people never expected to happen to them. And I don't think the percentages or risks are presented and discussed in the proper dialogues.

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LSU I will finish one day).

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No you wont

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When I was a teenager I spent 2 hours a day hovering over a vat of MEK with my arms submerged in it cleaning parts.

No gloves


Still amazed I'm alive today.

Cancer rate in that place was 1:10

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.....

a co-worker used to boil beamsplitters [ optics ]
in a container of methylene chloride...he croaked not too long after I started there...survived by his 18yo daughter...who worked there too

May room mate for a few semesters during college went to work as a plant operator after graduation (he was a history major) in 1977. I don't know what kind of unit he worked in, but he died from pancreatic cancer when he was 45. I ran into his wife some years later who told me that every person that worked in his unit was eventually diagnosed with cancer, with pancreatic being the most common. The company's industrial hygiene people continue to say there is no problem.