Steff Posted March 9, 2004 Share Posted March 9, 2004 Workers blame illness on popcorn flavoring Tue Mar 9, 9:40 AM ET Add Top Stories - Chicago Tribune to My Yahoo! By E.A. Torriero Tribune staff reporter For nearly 15 minutes, the only sounds in the small courtroom were the wheezing, coughing and gasping of Eric Peoples as he went through his laborious breathing treatment. In the jury box, seven women and five men fidgeted, chewed on pencils, or looked downward as a videotape showed Peoples, 32, struggling to suck in air from a medical device that is part of his daily regimen. "His normal breathing is like breathing through a little soda straw all the time," Dr. Allen Parmet, who helped diagnose Peoples' rare lung ailment, told the jurors as they watched the tape last week. "Eventually, he will reach a point where he will not be able to function even with oxygen." Along with about 30 former co-workers experiencing similar degenerative conditions, Peoples blames his sickness on toxic fumes inhaled in the late 1990s at his $7-per-hour job mixing buttery-smelling chemicals at a microwave popcorn factory outside Joplin. Armed with medical arguments and supported by government investigations, Peoples is hoping for millions of dollars in damages in the first of a long line of civil lawsuits pitting blue-collar Americans against themultinational conglomerate that made the butter flavoring. Originally the suits were filed as a class action but are being tried individually. Much of the flavoring was manufactured at a now-defunct, small plant on Chicago's North Side and shipped to Missouri in white, 5-gallon, paint-style buckets with labels expressing no known health hazards, according to testimony. International Flavors and Fragrances Inc., one of the world's largest flavor and fragrance creators, and its subsidiary Bush Boake Allen Inc., which owned the plant in Chicago, deny liability. Company attorneys contend that more study is needed to find what damaged workers' lungs at the plant in Jasper, and they say the popcornmaker is responsible for the safety of its employees. "We don't exactly know what went on in that [popcorn] factory," Mike Patton, an attorney representing International Flavors, told jurors last week. Federal food regulators say there is no threat to consumers because the contamination comes from repeatedly inhaling the heated chemicals during processing and not from eating popcorn. Now known to federal investigators as popcorn workers lung, the disease has been detected in people who worked in at least a half-dozen popcorn plants nationwide, they say. The ailment progressively saps the lungs of strength and has swelled the ranks of people waiting for lung transplants. Crux: Proper warning The lawsuits allege that International Flavors and Bush Boake Allen were aware or should have known of the flavoring's dangers and did not provide appropriate cautions for its handling after it was shipped. Peoples' lawyers presented three medical and occupational hazards experts last week who told the court that the warnings to popcorn plants were fuzzy and inadequate. "It's a very important case, one that has brought national attention and one that has brought world-class research," Ken McClain, an attorney who represents Peoples, said in opening arguments. "It's also one that could have been completely avoided." Attorneys for the flavor manufacturers cast blame in court on the formerly family-run popcorn factory in Jasper that they say failed to install adequate ventilation and provide protective equipment for its workers. "Our product is not defective if used with proper control," Frank Woodside, an attorney for Bush Boake Allen, said. The Jasper plant is not party to the lawsuits. Plant manager Jim Cook said in a taped deposition aired in court that he was unaware of the risks from the flavoring and read no labels warning of problems. To lessen chances for mistrial and to stem leaks, Jasper County Circuit Judge William Carl Crawford imposed a gag order on attorneys, witnesses and all parties to the lawsuits. Former workers involved in pending lawsuits came to court wearing mouth masks or with ventilator hoses in their noses. Crawford refused to allow them to attend opening arguments so as not to prejudice the jury. Jasper Popcorn has been in southwestern Missouri since 1974, when the plant opened to process locally grown corn and put some 170 people to work, plant manager Cook testified. At first, the small, red-brick factory produced bagged popcorn. In 1986, it jumped on the invention of microwave popcorn, initially using a powdered butter ingredient, he said. Soon the plant began buying several brands of a gooey, artificial additive that resembled pudding and had such a buttery odor that residents in the town of 1,000 could smell it for blocks around the plant. A yellow cloud often blended with the night sky over the plant, residents said, leaving an eerie glow. Plant workers received the additive in buckets along with food data sheets that summarized its contents as having "no known health effects," according to testimony in court. Factory employees known as "mixers" dumped the flavoring into open kettles, Cook said, where paddles mixed it with salt, oil and water heated to more than 110 degrees. The vats sat in a room the size of a one-car garage where workers inhaled the fumes, according to court documents and testimony. Jasper Popcorn came to prefer an additive made at the Bush Boake Allen plant on Irving Park Road just west of the Chicago River. It had a particularly strong flavoring, Cook said. The Jasper plant used the Chicago batches as much as 70 percent of the time, according to court statements, and Peoples testified that he mainly worked with the Chicago flavoring. Plaintiff's story "It was very, very potent," Peoples told the court. "Your nose would run, your eyes would water." Bush Boake Allen had manufactured its butter flavoring in a sealed system since 1990, according to testimony. And in 1994, after several Chicago workers reported eye irritations when dealing with the flavoring, the company required all handlers to wear respirators covering their faces, attorneys said. Bush Boake Allen also began testing employees for health problems in 1996, according to testimony. In Joplin, however, plant manager Cook said the factory was never told of the Chicago problems and was oblivious to potential issues with the flavoring despite safety instructions developed by the flavoring company in 1992 that came with the product. The safety data warned workers to avoid eye contact and "gross inhalation of fumes," flavoring company attorneys told the court. While use of a lung protector was "not generally required," the attorneys said, the precautions recommended using a federally approved respirator if the flavoring was subject to "high heat." In 1999, workers at the Jasper plant developed rashes and respiratory problems. A year later, Kansas City, Mo., occupational physician Parmet, hired by workers' attorneys, isolated the problem by comparing records of eight victims. "I said, `My gosh, they all work at the same plant. Holy smokes, they've all got bronchiolitis obliterans,'" Parmet testified last week. He was referring to a rare lung disorder that attacks roughly 1 in 40,000 Americans and causes breathing problems and airway obstructions. Doctor warns authorities Parmet testified that he alerted state and federal regulators who traced the workers' condition to fumes from a chemical agent in the flavoring. A federal occupational safety report issued in The New England Journal of Medicine (news - web sites) in August 2002 deemed workers' illnesses "caused by the inhalation of volatile butter flavoring ingredients." Under new federal guidelines, the Jasper popcorn plant now operates a closed system that contains fumes and pumps ingredients through pipes. It also requires handlers to wear face and lung protection. The Jasper plant was sold in 1999 to Gilster-Mary Lee Corp. of Illinois. The Chicago flavoring factory was closed last October in a consolidation move after Bush Boake Allen merged with International Flavors, according to company reports and testimony from a former plant executive. Peoples, who worked in the Japser plant's mixing room from October 1997 to March 1999, sits in the Joplin courtroom. Most mornings, he uses a portable respirator to breathe. His case was heard first because Peoples is one of the sickest of the former workers. "The volume in his lungs is going down, and it's going down faster than we would expect," said Parmet. Peoples will soon need a double lung transplant, his doctors say. Generally the transplants work for about five years and, at best, for a maximum of 10 years, medical experts testified. Each morning, Peoples takes at least five pills to help him breathe, according to medical testimony. He then breathes into a device for at least 15 minutes to clear his lungs of mucous that builds up overnight. Peoples' father, David, fought back tears as he told the jury of his son's travails: his marriage nearly breaking up, debts and declining health. Sitting at the attorneys' table, Peoples' wife, Candy, sobbed. In an unusual agreement for trial litigation, attorneys agreed to let Peoples testify sporadically because of his failing health. Last week, his attorneys showed the jury pictures of Peoples' family while he took the stand for 25 minutes. Taking in air from a respirator, Peoples talked not of the best-paying job he ever had but of his family. Looking at a photo of his 10-year-old daughter, Audrianna, Peoples said softly: "Every father looks forward to giving away his daughter when it's time for her to start a family." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MurcieOne Posted March 9, 2004 Share Posted March 9, 2004 Uh-oh I work in a movie theatre.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texsox Posted March 9, 2004 Share Posted March 9, 2004 Heard all over manufacturing plants "$100,000 to upgrade the equipment?! Move the factory to China." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathew Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Uh-oh I work in a movie theatre.... So does BEgood? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mreye Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 International Flavors and Fragrances Inc., one of the world's largest flavor and fragrance creators, and its subsidiary Bush Boake Allen Inc., which owned the plant in Chicago, deny liability. Now Bush is going to get blamed for this too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NUKE_CLEVELAND Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Now Bush is going to get blamed for this too. HEY! You ignorant, simplistic stooge, didn't you know that there are studies linking Republicans to popcorn factory workers health problems? How can you be so narrow minded? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mreye Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 HEY! You ignorant, simplistic stooge, didn't you know that there are studies linking Republicans to popcorn factory workers health problems? How can you be so narrow minded? Yeah, Big Popcorn screws the little guys again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NUKE_CLEVELAND Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Yeah, Big Popcorn screws the little guys again. "Big Popcorn" is right!! They have armies of lobbyists following important Congressmen around making sure that their million dollar subsides are safe. Add to that the fat cats of the popcorn industry who conspire to make their workers lives miserable while sitting in their boardrooms with a bowl of "extra buttery" on one side and a bowl of caramel corn on the other. BASTARDS!!! I say we all march down to the popcorn plant and protest this grave injustice to humanity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texsox Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Ahmm, there are corn subsidies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Be Good Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Uh-oh I work in a movie theatre.... What do you do Box, concession or usher Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Ahmm, there are corn subsidies And plenty of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Queen Prawn Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 This industry (located in the US) is far from the only one that doesn't provide safety equipment for potentially deadly situations a job might cause. This is something that I know for a fact. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texsox Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 This industry (located in the US) is far from the only one that doesn't provide safety equipment for potentially deadly situations a job might cause. This is something that I know for a fact. Well what our conservative friends will tell us is we do not need more government rules and laws. People just will not work for these companies that have unsafe working conditions and they will either fix things or go out of business. We cannot have the government getting in the way of free enterprise, unless it is the media. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Queen Prawn Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Well what our conservative friends will tell us is we do not need more government rules and laws. People just will not work for these companies that have unsafe working conditions and they will either fix things or go out of business. We cannot have the government getting in the way of free enterprise, unless it is the media. lol All I would like is for the current OSHA rules to be enforced. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texsox Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 lol All I would like is for the current OSHA rules to be enforced. Easier and cheaper to move the plant to China where people are dying for these jobs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Be Good Posted March 11, 2004 Share Posted March 11, 2004 lol All I would like is for the current OSHA rules to be enforced. OHSA, we have that in my movie theatre. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted March 16, 2004 Share Posted March 16, 2004 The jury has spoken $20,000,000.00 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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