This article was reprinted from the April 19, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.
ROSLYN, Wash. - "No more dioxin" is a slogan not only for the environmental movement but for all people's organizations, perhaps especially for unions.
Dioxin is highly toxic and of no use to anyone. Dioxin is persistent; once released into the environment, it stays around a long, long time. When it moves up the food chain and we ingest it, it remains in our body fat. It can cause cancer or diabetes. It can affect both the male and the female reproductive systems. It's harm can be passed on to the next generation.
If it's bad stuff and of no use to anyone, who wants it?
A quick look at the sources of dioxin (see box below) gives us the answer. Corporations whose present manufacturing processes produce dioxin-and profits-don't want to change.
The dioxin from incinerators comes from burning products containing chlorine such a polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Manufacturers of these products claim they are so useful that the dioxin they produce in manufacturing and disposal is worth the risk.
When the limitations and pollution problems of landfills were recognized, incinerators were welcomed as the presumably less-polluting answer. Municipalities resist another major change in dealing with waste unless they can see a cost-effective alternative. "Waste management" companies sometimes also have a stake in keeping incinerators burning.
Isn't dioxin the business of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? It is indeed, but the EPA has a history which parallels that of the NLRB. The EPA came into being as a result of mass pressure from the environmental movement, just as the NLRB was the result of pressure from the labor movement.
No sooner was EPA in place than the pressure from corporations on the agency itself, on Congress and on successive administrations began to erode it, slow it down, undermine it, cut its funds and in every possible way render it ineffective. Quite similar to what happened to the NLRB.
The EPA prepared a health assessment of dioxin in 1985 based on concern about its cancer-causing effect. Industry forced a reassessment, hoping to get EPA to reduce its estimate of risk, and therefore raise the amount they would be allowed to continue emitting into the environment.
A second draft was released in 1991 and once again a reassessment was forced. Industry representatives may now wish they had accepted the original report. With every year new scientific information has emerged, some of it from EPA laboratories, on serious effects in addition to cancer.
The third EPA health assessment, released in 1994, put the cancer risk at present exposure levels at between one in 1,000 and one in 10,000, a high risk for a population to accept. What was new was the concern expressed about dioxin's effect on the suppression of the immune system, its reduction of testosterone (male hormone) levels which affects fertility and its reduction of glucose tolerance which increases the risk of diabetes. These effects were found to occur "at or near levels to which people in the general population are exposed."
If finally released this fall as scheduled, what kind of regulations it leads to will depend on whether public pressure can overcome corporate pressure. Zero dioxin is called for by a risk of harm so great, a margin of safety already so small. Yet EPA regulations are generally based on "acceptable risk." That means a balancing of risk against the cost of control, an acceptance of some level of risk.
People power is developing. Local groups fighting sources of dioxin in their own communities are proliferating. The Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW) functions as a national information and organizational resource for these local groups. Greenpeace and some other environmental organizations also have dioxin on their agendas.
Why is this not enough? Why should unions get involved when they already have too much to do?
Workers in and around dioxin emitting plants are among the most at risk from dioxin exposure. Most of what we know about dioxin comes from its effects on wildlife and on laboratory animals. There is very persuasive evidence of its relevance to humans; among the studies showing direct proof of human harm are those of workers in plants producing dioxin contaminated chemicals.
Workers in chemical manufacturing and in paper mills are being asked to choose between risk from dioxin exposure (the bosses claim there is really no risk at all) and losing their jobs because (so the bosses claim) production changes would be so expensive they would force the plant to shut down.
The PR hired guns of the Chlorine Chemical Council and the American Forests and Paper Association are poor sources of either scientific or economic information. Other, more reliable sources are available. Dying from Dioxin by Lois Marie Gibbs and CCHW summarizes the scientific information in an easy-to-read way.
The Center for the Biology of Natural Systems (CBNS) which identified the sources of dioxin in the Great Lakes region has gone on to evaluate the technological and economic feasibility of zeroing out dioxin from these sources. The information is relevant to similar sources in other parts of the country.
For the Great Lakes region, CBNS found that a gain of 24,600 jobs would be achieved by switching from solid waste incinerators to intense recycling. Job loss from other measures was comparatively small but nevertheless real. Modernizing production processes to eliminate dioxin might result in the loss of 80 jobs if paper mills adopted chlorine-free bleach, 300 jobs in cement kilns if they replaced hazardous waste as a fuel with coal and 750 jobs if iron sintering plants made material and disposal changes.
The fact that the job loss would be small compared to the job gain by a regional program to eliminate dioxin would be small comfort to the workers losing jobs. There must therefore be a strong union voice in the "Stop Dioxin" movement to insure:
Or, as proposed in the Labor Party program adopted at its first convention in June 1996:
Workers have a right to dioxin-free jobs and a right to know that the place they work and the work they do is not endangering their own families and the rest of the community. But if some workers lose their jobs in the course of the change, their right to another job must be protected.
Unions are finding allies in CCHW. Its guide to organizing (Part Two of Dying from Dioxin) makes this point:
"We should not expect workers in dioxin-producing industries to agree to sacrifice their jobs for the cause any more than we would expect other coalition members to sacrifice theirs. Our demands must include job protections for all affected workers. When we have the power to convince corporations to stop producing dioxin, we can use that power to protect workers' livelihoods as well."
Our history is littered with examples of production changes made with no concern for the loss of jobs that would result. New materials have been introduced with little or no knowledge of their health effects and kept in production even when they are known to be harmful. The struggle around dioxin, important in itself, also gives us an opportunity to change that pattern, to demand a production change because it is necessary for health reasons, and to do so with job protection as part of the change.
What better time than Earth Day to set forth toward this new pattern? Earth Day should be a day to advance toward a more livable earth, a healthy habitat for us humans and for the wild creatures who first suffered from dioxin and gave us warning.
Virginia Warner Brodine is chair of the Communist Party's Environmental Commission.
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