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Disease found in Stauffer's ex-workers

High rates of a lung disease appear in ex-employees, an expert says, cautioning that a study and tests cannot make conclusive links to their work.

By ROBIN STEIN
Published December 14, 2005

TARPON SPRINGS - In both life and death, former Stauffer Chemical workers experience high rates of a lung-scarring disease caused by inhaling mineral dusts, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said Tuesday.

Death certificates for more than 500 former workers analyzed as part of year-long study indicated that the incidence of the lung disease, pneumoconiosis, was "statistically elevated," agency scientist Steve Inserra said.

The disease also turned up frequently among 36 former workers who volunteered to be evaluated as part of the agency's medical outreach program last year, Inserra said.

"As a public health practitioner, I can say that it's elevated, it's concerning," he said.

But Inserra also cautioned people not to draw conclusions from the findings because neither the research study nor the medical tests included key information. The agency arranged for medical tests to help former workers who might need further care, not as part of a research study.

"I can't assign a cause," he said. "I can't assign it to Stauffer or to any other workplace."

The Stauffer Chemical property, located just south of the Pinellas-Pasco county line, was home to a phosphorus-processing plant from 1947 to 1981.

After officials found high levels of arsenic, lead and radium-226, as well as four contaminants known to cause, or suspected of causing, lung cancer, the site was put on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list in 1994.

Since then, the EPA and Stauffer have worked to come up with a plan to clean up the site. In 2000, residents critical of the process managed to get the EPA to put its plan on hold while more tests were done at the 130-acre site on Anclote Road.

This fall, a federal judge approved a cleanup plan that would entomb the contaminants by mixing the polluted soil with concrete. That concrete mixture would then be covered with a watertight cap.

Through it all, the health of former workers has been one of many issues in the background of discussions about the site.

Six former Stauffer employees sued the company in 1998, alleging exposure to various contaminants while working at the plant. Two dropped their claims and a third died along the way. The remaining three plaintiffs dropped the suit in early 2003 after a judge declined to grant it class-action status.

The agency's efforts to examine death certificates of Stauffer workers began with a list of 2,417 people who worked in production at the plant during its 34 years in operation. Only a quarter of the plant's employees worked at the facility for more than a year, Inserra said. And 30 percent of the workers could not be found.

The agency confirmed that 864 of the former workers were deceased, but attained matching personnel records and death information for only 504.

Still, Inserra said he was able to cull valuable information from their death certificates.

Certificates were gleaned for 92 possible causes of death, and then divided into 10 categories. In eight of those categories, there were no significant differences between former Stauffer workers and the white male populations of the United States or Florida.

But notable disparities did emerge for two categories of causes of death:

Nervous systems disorders, such as Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. Agency officials said they did not know why these causes of death were elevated.

Noncancerous lung diseases, in particular pneumoconiosis. Records showed that 19 of the former workers died from the disease, two to three times the rate of the general population, Inserra said.

Known forms of pneumoconios include coal workers' pneumoconiosis, silicosis and asbestosis.

The death-certificate analysis was conducted without information about workers' job duties and other nonwork-related risk factors, he said.

While the elevated rates of lung disease among former Stauffer workers were "unlikely due to chance," they are not predictive of future cases, he said.

"It's meaningful, but I don't want you to think we're talking about hundreds of cases," he said. "We're not trying to predict any former worker will have any disease."

Inserra and other agency scientists said Tuesday that the increased incidence of the lung disease was not surprising given the agency's 2003 public health assessment, which concluded that the people who worked at the facility while it was operational had been exposed to harmful chemicals, dusts and gases.

Whatever the cause, the research reaffirmed the need for former workers to be on the lookout for early signs of respiratory disease, Inserra said.

"I think we need to pay attention," he said.

That's largely why the agency took the rare step of offering free medical testing.

The agency made the offer to the 425 people who worked at the plant for at least two years. Inserra said he made contact with about 50 workers, 36 of whom were eventually evaluated at a Holiday health clinic.

The men, who ranged in age between 47 and 90, were given X-rays and lung function tests. Nearly 70 percent of the men said they smoked at one time and almost 80 percent handled asbestos during their working lives, both at Stauffer and elsewhere.

The testing showed that 25 of the men had respiratory abnormalities, 12 of which were forms of pneumoconiosis. Smoking does not cause this type of lung disease, although it can often exacerbate the severity, Inserra said.

The evaluations also revealed that two men had cancerous growths, which clinic physicians determined warranted urgent followup exams, he said.

The agency also announced Tuesday the results of a followup cancer data review for people who live close to the former Stauffer site.

A prior analysis had shown an elevated incidence of mesothelioma among women in the early 1990s, but the new data from 2000 to 2002 revealed no elevations in cancer rates.

[Last modified December 14, 2005, 00:40:18]