By Daniel A. Faulk – Hard Times, February 1983
Michael Welch lived in Humboldt County for the past eleven years. Since 1975, Welch worked in local lumber mills as a laborer, chipper tender, and apprentice millwright.
While working at McNamara and Peepe’s Arcata mill last year, Welch was asked to work with lumber being dipped into Pentachlorophenol—an anti-fungicidal agent used to prevent discoloration of milled fir.
According to Welch, the lumber to be treated is secured to a forklift using fabric straps which absorb pentachlorophenol when dipped into a treatment tank. After dipping, the workers unstrap the soaked wood and attach another load. Welch states, “It is impossible to unstrap or strap on a load of lumber without coming into contact with this chemical.” Indeed, gloves and aprons are usually provided to workers performing this function, but these, Welch states, “are generally inadequate protections.”
On the night Welch was requested to perform the strapping task, no gloves were available. And, when Welch questioned the safety of working on the dipping process without gloves, the manager told him that “this stuff is completely safe, you could take a bath in it.”
It is interesting to note that OSHA requires signs to be posted around dip tanks using this chemical, warning workers to be very careful in handling this poison. These signs were posted at McNamara and Peepe until a few months before Welch was asked to help with the dipping process—but Welch says the signs were removed “some months back, without explanation”.
Welch ended up refusing to do dip tank work, but other workers are not so cautious or assertive. Noting the high unemployment rate in the area, many workers feel such a refusal could cost them their jobs.
The workers who do work on the dip tank routinely get the chemical on their clothes, breathe the fumes from the uncovered dip tank and work with gloves that are drenched and leak.
An increasing amount of evidence, moreover, suggests that taking a bath in pentachlorophenol, or even breathing the fumes regularly, may be very hazardous to a mill worker’s health.
The U.S. Labor Department has found that pentachloro-phenol dust and vapors, even in very small doses, causes head-aches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and respiratory dysfunction.
Studies also indicate that the chemical is a mutagen (causes birth defects) and may cause cancer as well. One of the most dangerous parts of pentachlorophenol is dioxin, TCDD, which has been directly linked to numerous health hazards. Many Vietnam veterans are still suffering from their exposure to “Agent Orange” which was also polluted with TCDD.
Pentachlorophenol is not isolated in one Arcata mill. It is in widespread use throughout the timber industry.
Workers are exposed daily to the chemical’s dangers and many are developing sub-fatal, short-term reactions. These people may become long-term fatalities
Mike Welch observed at least one case of what he believes represented chronic, if not acute, exposure at McNamara and Peepe’s. One of Welch’s fellow workers who had been working at the dip tank for over a year complained to Welch of losing the feeling in his fingers.
Later, other complaints followed, which Welch recalls included “constantly irritates eyes, reoccurring feelings of dizziness and nausea. Despite these not so subtle indicators of potential poisoning, when Welch left the mill to move south, the dip tank worker was still working at the same job.
Needless to say, workers in Humboldt County are not the only timber workers exposed to anti-fungicides like pentachlorophenol. Surveys in both the U.S. and Canada indicate a significant incidence of toxic and even fatal reactions to these chemicals. In Canada, labor unions and labor organizers are lobbying to enclose the pentachlorophenol process and to ban the chemical completely. Here in Humboldt County, we should do the same.