Popcorn workers' lung disease linked to flavoring fumes

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Popcorn workers' lung disease linked to flavoring fumes

By Sara Shipley ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

August 4, 2002

ST. LOUIS – Breathing. Most of us take it for granted.

For 47 years, Linda Redman did, too. Then, inexplicably, her breath faded away.

The smallest tasks became excruciating. She couldn't even walk to the break room at her job at a microwave popcorn plant in Jasper, Mo.

Redman had never smoked, yet her lungs functioned at only 15 percent of normal capacity. She quit her job and resigned herself to an oxygen tank and the lung transplant list.

No one could tell her why she gasped for air, until she got a letter inviting her to take a free lung test at the Carthage (Mo.) Health Department.

Redman would learn that more than 30 other workers at the Gilster-Mary Lee popcorn plant suffered symptoms of the same rare lung disease, known as bronchiolitis obliterans – literally, obliteration of the lung's airways.

Federal health officials believe the workers contracted the disease by breathing fumes from the thick, yellow butter flavoring mixed into popcorn. In a study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, investigators found that workers at the plant had 3.3 times the rate of lung obstruction seen in the general population. Nonsmokers at the plant developed lung obstruction at 10.8 times the normal rate.

The disease is irreversible and potentially lethal. At least four former workers, including Redman, 53, need lung transplants.

"All of these people will suffocate to death," said Jim Ziegler, an attorney with the Independence, Mo., law firm representing the sick workers. "For some of them, it will be sooner rather than later."

The findings could shake an industry where butter flavoring is used widely in products such as snack foods and candy. Microwave popcorn accounts for $1.3 billion in sales annually.

The Food and Drug Administration has not found any risk to consumers from preparing or eating microwave popcorn, and manufacturers say the flavoring is safe when handled properly.

However, "I think what we know about this is probably the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. Kathleen Kreiss, the study's lead author and field studies branch chief for the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety. "There's no reason to think this isn't going on in other places, if the exposures are similar."

At least four other cases of similar work-related lung diseases have been detected at popcorn plants in Iowa, Nebraska and Ohio, Kreiss said. Twelve cases occurred at plants that manufacture food flavorings in New Jersey, Maryland, Indiana and Ohio.

"We need to get the word out to industry that if you're using flavorings, particularly heated flavorings, you need to do lung function tests to see if your workers are having abnormalities," Kreiss said.

Some of the workers have symptoms that go far beyond lung damage.

Donna Woods says she has been watching her husband literally fall apart.

In 1999, when he was 50, Hal Woods' hands were so dry and cracked that they caught on the sheets at night like barbed wire. Inch-thick chunks of skin fell from his feet. "From room to room, I left a trail of skin," he said.

After lawyers for the Woodses contacted medical specialists as well as state and federal epidemiologists, investigators zeroed in on the butter flavoring as the potential source of the problem. In later studies, rats that inhaled concentrations of flavoring fumes similar to what workers might have breathed developed severe lung damage.

"This is a hazard that had not been previously described," said Kreiss, the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety doctor who led the study. "Obviously, nobody thought flavorings would be a problem, because they're safe to eat, so why would anyone worry about workers breathing them in?"

Similar cases had been detected as early as 1985 at other food plants.

"There's no question the industry knew," Kreiss said.

But individual plants might not have recognized the problem.



-- Anonymous, August 04, 2002


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