Popcorn workers' ills may be tip of iceberg: 30 may need lung transplants

St. Louis Post-Dispatch ^ | 8.1.02 | Sara Shipley

[rface]

For 47 years, Linda Redman did too. Then, inexplicably, terrifyingly, her breath faded away like a shadow swallowed by the night.

The smallest tasks became excruciating. She couldn't even walk to the break room at her job at a microwave popcorn plant in Jasper, Mo.

[rface]

I dismiss many stories like this because they sound like scare tactics, but this looks for-real.

Ashland, Missouri

[AppyPappy]

My father-in-law worked in Benzine most of his working life. Nasty way to go.

[lonestar]

I'm with you. This is not like blaming fast food chains for being fat! This is sad.

[Humidston]

I'm an ex-smoker with emphysema. I have no one to blame but myself for doing this to my lungs, but it's beyond sad to think others can have the same problem - due to outside influences!!

[Born to Conserve]

3.3 time the normal rate? That's NOTHING!

If 1 in 100,000 get it, than in the popcorn factory, the rate would be about 1 in 30,000. The article says 30 workers have gotten it. Do the math -- 30 x 30,000 = 900,000 people work at the plant?

This is pure ambulance chasing bull$hit.

There are people out there that eat a package a day of buttered popcorn. EAT IT. HEAT IT UP AND STICK THEIR NOSES IN IT.

"The Food and Drug Administration has not found any risk to consumers from preparing or eating microwave popcorn"

[IronJack]

Another food scare. Is this the Aspartame boogeyman? Or the saccharine monster? Or Red Dye No. 2? Or nitrites? Remember them? They were supposed to give anyone who looked at them cancer.

Sorry, but the FDA and Co. have cried wolf so many times that I'm convinced I could eat plutonium tailings and chase them with a glass of DDT and get nothing worse than gas.

[blau993]

This is interesting.

I used to love popcorn when I was a kid, but for many years now the smell of it has nauseated me. I am very reluctant to go near movie theaters because the smell is so pervasive there. It is not butter. I use butter in cooking and as a spread with no problem. It is the smell of popcorn.

[Diverdogz]

So when they cough phlegm, is it yellow and buttery?

[maxwell]

Hal Woods' hands were so dry and cracked that they caught on the sheets at night like barbed wire. Inch-thick chunks of skin fell from his feet. He collected a giant pickle jar of dead skin, like globs of gray, moldy pasta.

DagGONE. I'd say whatever this guy gets out of any legal action, he more than deserves...

[chaosagent]

So they'll be going after BIG Popcorn now?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

When I was a little kid in the early 1950's, my dad made popcorn in a skillet with bacon grease instead of cooking oil. He'd make four or five pans full and pour it in grocery store sacks. Then, he melt some real butter and pour it on the corn with a light dusting of salt.
Better than anything from a microwave. We had enough popcorn for a week.

[RicocheT]

Here is a material safty sheet on DIACETYL,

http://my.execpc.com/~goodscnt/msds/md101411.html

It seems the inhallation danger is now recognized. It wasn't before as earlier safty sheets just warned about the low burning or flash point and said keep away from sparks while transfering.

[Eagle Eye]

3.3 time the normal rate? That's NOTHING!

It's only a 330% increase. Nothinng? No, it is significant.

If 1 in 100,000 get it, than in the popcorn factory, the rate would be about 1 in 30,000. The article says 30 workers have gotten it. Do the math -- 30 x 30,000 = 900,000 people work at the plant?

How did you come up with 1 in 100k? You seem to have simply pulled that number out of your butt out of thin air. The town of Jasper has only 1000 residents! The plant employes about 1300 people. (http://www.perryvillemo.com/ida/labor.htm). 30 out of 1300 is WAY too high.

This is pure ambulance chasing bull$hit.

Care to prove your statement? NIOSH hasn't dismissed it, the NEJM has studied it as well as the state epidemiologist. Your credentials for making your statement are what?

There are people out there that eat a package a day of buttered popcorn. EAT IT. HEAT IT UP AND STICK THEIR NOSES IN IT.

You simply don't understand the hazard, do you? The consumer isn't inhaling a fine particluate with toxic chemicals in it 8 hours a day, day in and day out.

"The Food and Drug Administration has not found any risk to consumers from preparing or eating microwave popcorn"

And your point is? You obviously don't understand the difference between ingestion of a finished product and inhilation of materials.

Don't quit your day job.

"The Missouri department of health began investigating the cases two years ago after a local doctor became suspicious. The eight all worked in the same area of the factory, and investigators pinned the problem down to the tanks where soya beans, salt and flavourings are mixed to produce the buttery flavour.

Similar cases are now being found at some of the other 141 popcorn plants in the US. Microwave popcorn is the fastest-growing segment of a huge industry.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,741176,00.html

ARTIFICIAL BUTTER IMPLICATED

“We exposed rats at NIOSH to vapors from heated artificial butter flavoring. They had profound damage to the respiratory epithelium, but not alveolar damage.... Our toxicologist had never seen anything like this: The damage extended below the basement membrane,” Dr. Kreiss told PULMONARY REVIEWS. NIOSH has yet to identify a particular component of the flavoring mixture as the culprit.

http://www.pulmonaryreviews.com/feb02/food.html

Do you get the point yet? Care to modifiy your statements?

[Psalm 73]

Now that's the most hilarious disgusting thing I've heard all day ; )

[detsaoT]

In all fairness to the poster you are criticizing, you said:

How did you come up with 1 in 100k? You seem to have simply pulled that number out of your butt out of thin air.

...and this is the quote from the article...

She went to doctors in Carthage, St. Louis, Denver. Asthma, they said. Maybe bronchitis. And finally, bronchiolitis obliterans, a disease only 1 in 100,000 people get.

This situation very well may be very serious (and it is certainly tragic for those afflicted), but if the cases only account for 1% of the total employed population of this category of work, then I would tend to side with the suspicions that "Born To Conserve" had. This very well could be yet another case of lawyers trying to strike gold via the courts (JUST like asbestos, alar, DDT, et. al.).

FReegards,

:) ttt

[Eagle Eye]

You are correct, I missed it. Please accept my apologies all around for that.

However, anything that has a 1/100k rate and then there are 30 in 1300, you have a serious problem.

[Eagle Eye]

This very well could be yet another case of lawyers trying to strike gold via the courts (JUST like asbestos, alar, DDT, et. al.).

I've played on both sides of this issue. The numbers and severity of illness justifies an investigation. The investigations have replicated injury to lung tissues. Although the New England Journal of Medicine is not infallible, it is a distinguished peer reveiwed journal that has a fine reputation.

Anytime something that occurs 1 in 100k in the general population occurs 2300 in 100k in a specific population you have a problem.

And, btw, asbestosis IS a real problem, not to be confused with the complete abatement procedures sham.

[cibco]

"...investigators found that workers at the plant had 3.3 times the rate of lung obstruction seen in the general population. Curiously, non-smokers at the plant developed lung obstruction at 10.8 times the normal rate."

I found this statement rather curious... was that a greater rate than smokers?

[rface]

good catch! You could restate this in actual numbers

...for every 10.8 cases of Lung Obstruction found in non-Smokers...
There were 3.3 cases of Lung Obstruction found in the Smoking population

Clearly, being a smoker gives a 300% advantage from contracting Lung Obstruction when working with this butter flavor stuff.

[3catsanadog]

If this butter is affecting the workers, I would think that the smell would also affect those who buy and cook the stuff in their microwaves.