Disease is swift, response is slow

[Guest guest]

Several months ago, news appeared about popcorn plant workers suffering

severe llung damage from fumes of butter flavoring. Here is the intro to a

long article discussing the problem in far more detail, and telling just how

widespread it is. Follow the link for more info.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.flavoring23apr23,0,6207887.s\

tory?page=1

Disease is swift, response is slow

Government lets flavoring industry police itself, despite damage to workers'

lungs

By Schneider

Sun reporter

Originally published April 23, 2006

SANTA ANA, Calif. // It took two years on the job and a chemical in

something as ordinary as butter flavoring to turn a strapping factory worker

into someone who sleeps tethered to an oxygen tank.

Francisco Herrera, 32, suffers from an aggressive disease that has destroyed

70 percent of his lungs and could kill him if he doesn't get a transplant. A

physician diagnosed bronchiolitis obliterans after the flavoring plant

worker became ill in 2003, concluding that the disease was caused by

exposure to diacetyl.

This is the same chemical that federal scientists had determined the year

before was toxic when vaporized and inhaled by workers in plants that

produce microwave popcorn. Herrera's case is part of growing evidence,

scientists say, of health hazards from diacetyl elsewhere in the food

industry.

" Everyone knew that the diacetyl was harmful, " said Herrera, a father of two

who contends in a lawsuit that his employer never warned him of inhalation

hazards. " But why didn't anyone tell the workers handling it? "