Killing You Softly - Part II

The Carcinogens Within.

You are probably sitting on it right now. In your office chair, on your sofa, or in an easy chair in a coffee bar. It’s in your bed, your car, running shoes, bicycle helmet, and hockey gear. It is in your children’s toys, in planes and buses, under your carpet, in your mouse pad, even in your bra. All these products and many more contain polyurethane foam. Polyurethane foam is everywhere.

A staggering 1.7 billion pounds of flexible polyurethane foam is produced every year in the US alone. The Polyurethane Foam Association’s website describes early recipes for polyurethane foam as a “witch’s brew”: a concoction of petroleum-based raw materials first developed by Otto Bayer at Bayer Chemical in Germany in the 1930’s, with later developments by Monsanto. It remains a witch’s brew.

Polyurethane foam is a by-product of the same process used to make petroleum. It involves two main ingredients: polyols and diisocyanates. Polyol is a substance created through a chemical reaction using methyloxirane (also called propylene oxide). Toluene diisocyanate (TDI) is the most common isocyanate employed in polyurethane manufacturing, and is considered the ‘workhorse’ of flexible foam production. Both methyloxirane and TDI have been formally identified as carcinogens by the State of California since the late 1980’s. In September 2008, the Canadian government announced that they would be added to the List of Toxic Substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Propylene oxide and TDI are also among 216 chemicals that have been proven to cause mammary tumors. However, none of these chemicals have ever been regulated for their potential to induce breast cancer.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers polyurethane foam fabrication facilities potential major sources of several hazardous air pollutants including methylene chloride, toluene diisocyanate (TDI), and hydrogen cyanide. They state that “exposure to these substances has been demonstrated to cause adverse health effects such as irritation of the lung, eye, and mucous membranes, effects on the central nervous system, and cancer.” They note that chronic inhalation exposure to TDI has resulted in significant decreases in lung function, asthma-like reactions, and bronchial constriction in workers. Isocyanates are a leading cause of occupational asthma.

Exposure to diisocyanates, however, is not limited to factory workers. In 1997, the State Health Director of North Carolina forced the closure of a polyurethane manufacturing plant in the states’ Randolph County, when local residents tested positive for TDI exposure and reported a range of symptoms including headaches, eye and nose irritation, coughing, irregular heartbeats. Ambient air testing over a period of three months, found daily high concentrations of methylene chloride and TDI beyond the plant’s fence. During the investigation period, the State Health Director issued four orders to ‘abate a public nuisance,” with the last order in September 1997 permanently closing the plant. The facility was the only industrial source of air emissions in the community, and clearly the only source of TDI.

In their 1996 Alert, Preventing Asthma and Death from Diisocyanate Exposure, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) highlighted a number of examples of isocyanate-induced asthma, respiratory disease, and death. Once again, victims were not limited to those with occupational exposure. In one case, two police officers developed an asthma-like illness after a single exposure to TDI when attending to a tank car that had overturned on the highway. After briefly directing traffic at the scene, both officers required medical care for severe symptoms—burning eyes, throat irritation, cough, chest tightness, and difficulty breathing. Both officers also developed a chronic bronchospastic disorder that even at the time the NIOSH report was released, more than 7 years later, still persisted.

Isocyanate exposure has also been found at non-industrial worksites such as public schools. In 1994, a university study documented asthma in 13 of 85 staff members from a middle school, and as many as 34 cases were suspected. NIOSH investigators later determined that large quantities of polyurethane foams and isocyanate coating materials had recently been applied to the school roof on several occasions. Later air sampling, during a test pour of the materials, indicated the release of isocyanates during the roofing process.

The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has yet to establish exposure limits or carcinogenicity for polyurethane foam. This does not mean, however, that consumers are not exposed to hazardous air pollutants when using materials that contain polyurethane. Once upon a time, household dust was just a nuisance. Today, however, house dust represents a time capsule of all the chemicals that enter people’s homes. This includes particles created from the break down of polyurethane foam. From sofas and chairs, to shoes and carpet underlay, sources of polyurethane dust are plentiful. Organotin compounds are one of the chemical groups found in household dust that have been linked to polyurethane foam. Highly poisonous, even in small amounts, these compounds can disrupt hormonal and reproductive systems, and are toxic to the immune system. Early life exposure has been shown to disrupt brain development.

Since most people spend a majority of their time indoors, there is ample opportunity for frequent and prolonged exposure to the dust and its load of contaminants. And if the dust doesn’t get you, research also indicates that toluene, a known neurotoxin, off gases from polyurethane foam products.

Polyurethane foams do not go away easily either. While the materials can be recycled, to process the foam from furniture and mattresses alone would require a costly build-up of collection and separation infrastructure, and the products made from this waste have limited applications. This recycling also only perpetuates the continued use of hazardous and carcinogenic chemicals. According to an extensive report by the Helsinki University of Technology Department of Mechanical Engineering, product recycling is hardly feasible. And while incineration and energy recovery do not present large problems, by far the most widely and extensively used route for scrapped polyurethane foam is the landfill.” Like many plastics, however, polyurethane does not biodegrade in a landfill, so not only does polyurethane foam plague people in its production and usage, even in death it continues to haunt us. Len Laycock

Coming Soon, Part III. The Soy Foam Scam.