Popcorn lung

Workers in microwave popcorn plants are dying of bronchitis obliterans, a lung disease caused by the additive diacetyl.

So far, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA, has found eight flavoring workers with fixed obstructive lung disease, most of those with bronchiolitis obliterans. Twenty-two more have below-normal lung capacity, which may be the beginning of the disease.

"They're finding it there because they're looking there," said David Michaels of the department of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University. Michaels, assistant secretary of energy in the Clinton administration, accuses OSHA of "regulatory paralysis."

"It's not some carcinogen where you get cancer 30 years from now or something. The people are dying right in front of you," Michaels said. "You can't wait until you have all the evidence. You have to regulate it." [WaPo]

OSHA launched a diacetyl safety program last month in response to pressure from the United Food and Commercial Workers' Union and the Teamsters.

Comments

[David Michaels]

Unfortunately, OSHA's newly announced National Emphasis Program is simply an attempt to look busy, since the agency is targeting only microwave popcorn factories, some of the few factories in the country in which federal scientists have already been focused on. They are skipping flavor factories, plus factories where diacetyl is used in snack foods like Twinkies. See my posts on this:
http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2007/04/24/osha-tries-to-look-busy/
and
http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/preventing-flavor-workers-lung-disease/
David Michaels

[Arun]

Eat a Twinkie and help give someone cancer?
Stop eating twinkies and put someone out of a job?

[herbert browne]

You call That "diacetyl"? Look here, mate... This is DIACETYL.
www.edu.pe.ca/rural/botany/halloge/heroin.htm
^..^