Scores of lawsuits by sick workers uncover previously secret documents detailing campaign to undercut science and ‘protect member company interests’
Bloated and bed-ridden, his skin browned by blood transfusions, John Thompson succumbed to leukemia on November 11, 2009.
A carpenter by trade, Thompson, then 70, had spent much of his life building infrastructure for the petrochemical industry in his native Texas — synthetic rubber plants in Port Neches, chemical facilities in Orange. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, he often encountered benzene, stored on job sites in 55-gallon drums, which he used as a cleaning solvent. He dipped hammers and cutters into buckets full of the sweet-smelling liquid; to expunge tar, he soaked gloves and boots in it.
The Center for Public Integrity, Columbia University and the City University of New York are making public some 20,000 pages of benzene documents — the inaugural collection in Exposed: Decades of denial on poisons, an archive of previously secret oil and chemical industry memoranda, emails, letters, presentations and meeting minutes.
Hundreds of thousands of additional documents on different chemicals will be added in 2015 and beyond.
Provide strong scientific support for a lack of a risk of leukemia … at current ambient benzene concentrations to the general population.
Establish … current occupational exposure limits do not create a significant risk.
perception needs to be that this is <u>not</u> being done to protect against litigation
use a consulting attorney to address these issues of perceived motivation