=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #39
—August 24, 1987—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
==========
The Back issues and Index are available
here.
The official RACHEL archive is here. It’s
updated constantly.
To subscribe, send E-mail to rachel-weekly-
request@world.std.com
with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message. It’s free.
===Previous issue==========================================Next issue===
EPA FINALLY AGREES FORMALDEHYDE CAN CAUSE CANCER; MANY AT RISK.
The EPA in April, 1987, released a new report that concludes that the common chemical, formaldehyde, is
“probably a human carcinogen.” The agency took seven years to reach this conclusion. The data that they
published in their April report had been submitted to the agency by an industrial laboratory, the respected
Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology (CIIT), in 1980. The EPA “tried to bury questions about
formaldehyde,” says a report in SCIENCE magazine, the voice of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
The EPA estimates that 4662 workers each year will get cancer if they work in an environment contaminated
up to the limit currently allowed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which is 3
ppm [parts per million]. In the garment industry alone, 770,000 workers, mostly women, are exposed to fairly
high levels of formaldehyde as they press formaldehyde-laden clothes to put “staypressed” creases in
chinos, jeans and other clothing.
Another population at risk from formaldehyde is average people living in their homes and mobile homes.
The EPA estimates that, at current levels of exposure in typical air in homes, 1170 people die each year from
formaldehyde exposure in mobile homes and 630 die in conventional homes.
Original source for this newsletter: Eliot Marshall, “EPA Indicts Formaldehyde, 7 Years Later,” SCIENCE,
Vol. 236 (April 24, 1987), pg. 381.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: formaldehyde; occupational safety and health; indoor air pollution; mobil homes;