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Caltrans employees, California Highway Patrol officers, postal delivery workers and others who earn their living on the road are subjected to sometimes intensive doses of numerous chemicals that can have a severe impact on their health. Even though a state study recently found that almost one in five Californians is sensitive or allergic to everyday chemicals, immediate reactions may not be a problem to most who work on the road; workers who are sensitive to chemicals usually are quickly weeded out. Yet long-term and subtle health complications can result from typical exposures in their occupational environment.
Despite the health problem associated with the toxic soup inundating California's roads, the first and, apparently only study of the cause of deaths among these workers in California was a 1986 investigation by a University of California researcher. Dr. Neil Maizlish's look into the death records of Caltrans workers found high rates of cancer, but the only result was that Caltrans contested the findings and later rebuffed researchers' efforts to conduct a follow-up study. Twelve years later, Caltrans workers and the public are still in the dark about whether or not there may be a problem that warrants more in-depth investigation.
The records that Dr. Maizlish studied in 1986 revealed that cancers of the brain were elevated 68% above the national average, and blood cancers were 62% higher. Skin cancer was twice the expected rate and colon cancers were higher than expected. Caltrans employees also had elevated rates of suicides and single-car accidents - both of which indicate health problems. But the agency claimed that cancer deaths were concentrated among office workers, noting that landscape employees had shown virtually no increases in cancer deaths. But Caltrans didn't acknowledge that a major shortcoming of the investigation was that work histories were given only for the last job held at the agency, not for earlier work experience which may have placed these workers on the road.
When Professor Jay Beaumont and the National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health went to Caltrans two years ago and recommended a more in-depth follow-up study, the agency quickly rebuffed their offer. According to one senior official who spoke in response to CATs' inquiries about the Maizlish report, Caltrans rejected a second study because it had been "so much trouble to settle everything down again after the last one".
Maizlish, who is a public health expert currently consulting with the Pan American Health Organization in Venezuela, recently described what it is that established methods of scientific inquiry demand of the controversy about health hazards of Caltrans' work force.
"Qualified independent scientists operating in an open environment need to conduct a follow-up study that targets all the concerns," he wrote. "This includes pesticide use, solvents, asphalt fumes, materials testing laboratory practices, construction zone safety and the health issues the original study suggested." Beaumont added "We don't know what we'd find, if anything, but it's important to look at the health outcomes of these workers."
Workers Catch the Drift
Caltrans again displayed insensitivity toward potential worker health problems after a 1994 investigation by the Department of Pesticide Regulation found significant levels of chemical residues on the clothes of its herbicide applicators.
As a result of the study, a few changes were made to herbicide application practices. Where workers once routinely held a spray hose out the window of the truck or even while standing on its bed, today most herbicides sprayed from a truck are disbursed through a boom. But landscape workers who had been found to be the most contaminated with herbicide residues are still applying the chemicals manually. Despite the physical evidence that state investigators had turned up, neither Caltrans nor the Department of Health Services undertook subsequent studies to see if the situation had improved or if workers were still being contaminated with drift.
The labor union for Caltrans workers even filed a grievance against Caltrans following the Maizlish report because the agency dragged its feet for more than half a year before informing its workers of the study results - and only told them after the press found out about the story. Unfortunately, changes in union representation caused a loss in continuity, and eventually concern for the issue of worker exposure to roadside herbicides and other toxic chemicals faded as an area of concern.
Top Cops
Another group possibly at risk is the 6,700 California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers who spend much of their working lives walking, standing and driving around roadsides. Although they are sister agencies, Caltrans does not inform CHP about its herbicide use. No notifications are posted on drenched roadsides where highway cops pass out tickets and deal with accidents or abandoned vehicles.
Warnings are not even posted for the very chemicals which, when used in agricultural fields, require workers to be strictly barred from entry for up to twenty-four hours, yet CHP officers regularly enter and work in similarly treated areas. The CHP has not conducted studies to ascertain whether reproductive problems, Parkinson's disease, cancer or other health effects associated with exposures to chemical herbicides are elevated among its workers.
A decade ago, the CHP learned that its workers were being exposed to high levels of lead - a potent reproductive toxin - from dust discharged each time a bullet is shot for practice at the target range. This threat to health was discovered only because one officer was able to track down the source of his inability to conceive a child. Thousands of officers had already unwittingly been contaminated by lead and many had subsequently suffered health effects, yet the agency had never been alert to this possibility and its workers had suffered as a result.
How long will it take for Caltrans, the CHP and other employers of road workers to investigate the health consequences related to herbicides - and actions that can be taken to avoid them - when these chemicals are used on our public roads?
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