{"id":70032,"date":"2016-02-22T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=70032"},"modified":"2016-02-21T16:42:12","modified_gmt":"2016-02-21T16:42:12","slug":"science-for-sale-making-a-cancer-cluster-disappear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/02\/science-for-sale-making-a-cancer-cluster-disappear\/","title":{"rendered":"Science for Sale – Making a Cancer Cluster Disappear"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a record number of brain tumors at a chemical plant, industry launched a flawed study that obscured the extent of the problem.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The largest cluster of workplace-related brain tumors happened at this vinyl chloride plant now owned by Dow Chemical in Texas City, Texas. While government studies blamed chemicals at the plant for the tumors, industry studies have tended to exonerate any chemicals as the cause.
John Everett for the Center for Public Integrity<\/p><\/div>\n

10 Feb 2016<\/em> \u2014 It began with a headache; then came shaking of the hands. Leuvell Malone\u2019s wife noticed unusual behavior. He struggled to button his shirt straight and crashed the car into the hot-water heater in the garage. Finally, a seizure landed the 55-year-old chemical worker in the hospital.<\/p>\n

His doctor at first thought Malone might have suffered a stroke. But it turned out to be worse than that. The father of four had a rare and deadly brain tumor.<\/p>\n

During his 32 years of greasing machines at the sprawling Union Carbide plant south of Houston, Malone feared the chemicals he breathed might one day make him sick, his sons recall. So he reported his illness to the local office of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.<\/p>\n

That was in November 1978. Just a few days later, Bobby Hinson, one of Malone\u2019s co-workers, died of the same rare tumor, known as glioblastoma. He was 49 years old. OSHA inspectors went to the plant to find out how many other workers there had died of brain cancer.<\/p>\n

To their surprise, the plant\u2019s medical director already had compiled a list of 10 names. \u201cTo walk in the front door without tracing through the population and come up with 10 brain cancers is just startling,\u201d an OSHA investigator, Dr. Victor Alexander,\u00a0told a local reporter<\/a>. Malone would die just three months after he was diagnosed.<\/p>\n

More than 7,500 men had worked at the plant since it opened in 1941. Tracking those who had died was a daunting task. It took three years, but scientists at OSHA and their brethren at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, would discover 23 brain-tumor deaths there \u2014 double the normal rate. It was the largest cluster of work-related brain tumors ever reported, and it became national news, catching the attention of\u00a0The Washington Post<\/a>,\u00a0The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0and even Walter Cronkite.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Washington Post on February 19, 1979.<\/p><\/div>\n

The leading suspect was vinyl chloride, a chemical used to make polyvinyl chloride plastic. PVC is found in an endless array of products from plastic wrap to vinyl siding to children\u2019s toys. Industry studies already had found higher-than-expected rates of brain cancer at vinyl chloride plants, and in 1979, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, part of the World Health Organization,\u00a0took the unequivocal position<\/a>\u00a0that vinyl chloride caused brain tumors.<\/p>\n

Yet today, a generation later, the scientific literature largely exonerates vinyl chloride. A 2000 industry review of brain cancer deaths at vinyl chloride plants found that the chemical\u2019s link to brain cancer \u201cremains unclear.\u201d Citing that study and others, IARC in 2008 reversed itself.<\/p>\n

However, a Center for Public Integrity review of thousands of once-confidential documents shows that the industry study cited by IARC was flawed, if not rigged. Although that study was supposed to tally all brain cancer deaths of workers exposed to vinyl chloride, Union Carbide didn\u2019t include Malone\u2019s death. In fact, the company counted only one of the 23 brain-tumor deaths in Texas City.<\/p>\n

The Center\u2019s investigation found that because of the way industry officials designed the study, it left out workers known to have been exposed to vinyl chloride, including some who had died of brain tumors. Excluding even a few deaths caused by a rare disease can dramatically change the results of a study.<\/p>\n

Asked hypothetically what it would mean if deaths were left out, James J. Collins, the former director of epidemiology at Dow Chemical, which merged with Union Carbide in 2001, said, \u201cThat wouldn\u2019t make very good science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richard Lemen, a former U.S. assistant surgeon general and NIOSH deputy director, put it more bluntly: \u201cI think that borders on criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vinyl chloride episode shows what can happen when scientific research is left to companies with a huge stake in its outcome. After launching a flurry of vinyl chloride studies in the late 1970s, OSHA and NIOSH abruptly stopped under the anti-regulatory climate instilled by the Reagan administration. The chemical industry, meanwhile, continued to update its studies and use them to defend against lawsuits by people blaming their brain cancers on vinyl chloride. The result was biased research that changed the scientific consensus. The final update of the largest vinyl chloride study is expected to be published this year.<\/p>\n

The dominance of industry-funded research for specific chemicals has become more common as funding for biological research from the National Institutes of Health has become scarcer \u2014\u00a0declining<\/a>\u00a023 percent, adjusted for inflation, since 2003, according to the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. In contrast, industry has shown a willingness to spend lavishly on research used in litigation.<\/p>\n

The means regulators and courts sometimes must rely on scientific research paid for by companies with a huge financial stake in its outcome.<\/p>\n

In a brief statement to the Center, the\u00a0American Chemistry Council<\/a>, the trade and lobby group that paid for the industry study, noted that the IARC determination that there is no association between vinyl chloride and brain cancer \u201cwas based on inconsistent findings among the available studies, lack of an exposure-response relationship, and small numbers of reported cases in most of the studies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Otto Wong, the now-retired author of one of the study updates, expressed concern after hearing the Center\u2019s findings. If industry officials knew in advance that they were excluding the deaths of workers who may have been exposed, they should have designed the study differently, Wong said.<\/p>\n

Ongoing environmental hazard<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite stricter regulations on vinyl chloride in the workplace since 1975, the question of its health effects remains relevant. PVC plants in places such as Calvert City, Kentucky, and Plaquemine, Louisiana, still emit vinyl chloride into the air. In 2014, companies reported releasing more than 500,000 pounds of it, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is expected to decide this year whether to set stricter emission limits for vinyl chloride and other chemicals discharged by PVC plants.<\/p>\n

There have also been notable cases of vinyl chloride contamination. In 2012, a train derailment in Paulsboro, New Jersey, released heavy concentrations of the chemical into Mantua Creek, sending 250 people to the emergency room and stoking fears of long-term health effects. \u201cI\u2019m going to be worried for the rest of my life,\u201d said Alice Breeman, a mother of three who was caught in the release and sued Conrail, CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway. CSX and Norfolk Southern have since been dismissed as defendants.<\/p>\n

In 2014, residents of McCullom Lake, Illinois, settled an eight-year-old lawsuit in which they claimed exposure to vinyl chloride that bled into groundwater from a nearby chemical plant, now owned by Dow, had caused a cluster of 33 brain tumors. The village has just over 1,000 residents. Dow admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement, whose terms are confidential.<\/p>\n

Today, all legal disputes and regulatory actions on vinyl chloride must rely heavily on industry studies given the dearth of independent research. An industry-sponsored update in 2000 \u2014 the largest and most-cited vinyl chloride study \u2014 reported 36 brain cancer deaths at 37 vinyl chloride plants among workers employed from 1942 to 1972. Despite the small number of cancers, that rate was 42 percent higher than what would have been expected in the general population.<\/p>\n

By the slimmest of margins, however, the number of deaths failed to meet a standard known as statistical significance \u2013 at least a 95-percent certainty that the high rate of brain cancer was not simply a fluke. Even one more death could have altered that conclusion.<\/p>\n

The Center was able to scrutinize how that study was designed and conducted after obtaining nearly 200,000 internal industry documents from lawyer William Baggett Jr. He spent nine years on a lawsuit filed by Elaine Ross, whose husband, Dan, worked at a vinyl-chloride plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and died from brain cancer in 1990 at the age of 46. The case was settled 15 years ago for several million dollars, Baggett said, adding that the exact terms were confidential.<\/p>\n

Vinyl chloride first\u00a0gained notoriety<\/a>\u00a0in 1974, when it was revealed that four workers at a B.F. Goodrich plant in Louisville had died of angiosarcoma of the liver, a cancer so rare that typically no more than 25 cases per year are reported in the United States. The most recent tally of liver angiosarcomas among people exposed to vinyl chloride is 197 worldwide, including 50 in the U.S.<\/p>\n

The evidence of carcinogenicity in the Louisville case was so overwhelming that the plastics industry couldn\u2019t deny it. Still, the industry pushed back against new regulations, saying they could cost the nation up to 2.2 million jobs and cripple the plastics industry.<\/p>\n

OSHA nonetheless went ahead in 1974 with a workplace limit for vinyl chloride that was 500 times stricter than the one in place when the Louisville cluster became public knowledge. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the chemical from use in cosmetics and hair spray. Industry predictions of severe losses never came true. The regulations were met.<\/p>\n

Built-in weaknesses<\/strong><\/p>\n

The vinyl chloride studies most often cited today \u2014 including a major study soon to be published \u2014 in fact are updates of a study first done in 1974. After companies learned of workers suffering from angiosarcoma, they quietly decided to find out what other cancers vinyl chloride might be causing.<\/p>\n

The industry study was flawed from the start. The weaknesses built in to it only became worse as decisions were made on how to update it.<\/p>\n

In June 1973, the industry\u2019s trade group, then known as the Manufacturing Chemists\u2019 Association, hired the consulting firm Tabershaw-Cooper Associates to tabulate cancers at vinyl-chloride plants. The first challenge was to compile a list of workers exposed. Rather than let scientists at Tabershaw-Cooper ultimately decide which workers should be put on the list, the chemical companies assigned the task to their own plant managers. At Union Carbide, managers decided to include only people working directly with vinyl chloride, based on some written records but also on supervisors\u2019 distant memories.<\/p>\n

Until the mid-1970s, exposure data was crude to non-existent. The managers\u00a0reasoned<\/a>\u00a0that workers\u2019 recollections of the potency of odors \u2014 categorized as high, medium or low \u2014 would be one way to estimate exposures. Jim Tarr, who worked as an air pollution regulator in Texas at the time, said such a method \u201cdoesn\u2019t even reach the level of being junk science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tarr, now an environmental consultant in Southern California, said it\u2019s ridiculous to expect anyone to remember distinct odors years after the fact. In fact, vinyl chloride can be smelled only at levels far higher than even the old regulations allowed.<\/p>\n

Tabershaw-Cooper\u2019s\u00a0final report<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 without revealing the methods used \u2014 said that measuring exposures at the plants \u201cproved generally to be impossible.\u201d It acknowledged that managers\u2019 techniques for determining levels of exposure were \u201csubjective\u201d and had \u201cquestionable validity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with this problematic data, Tabershaw-Cooper reported in 1974 that there were more brain tumors than expected at vinyl chloride plants. A\u00a0follow-up<\/a>\u00a0completed in 1978 reported that brain cancers at vinyl-chloride plants were occurring at twice the normal rate.<\/p>\n

There was evidence from the start that Union Carbide workers in Texas City who died of brain cancer had been exposed to vinyl chloride. When news of the first 10 brain cancers at the plant broke in 1979, Union Carbide\u2019s Gulf Coast medical director, Dr. David Glenn, acknowledged as much while also trying to deflect blame from the chemical.<\/p>\n

“Although the press has strongly indicated that vinyl chloride may have been the culprit, only about one-half of our [brain cancer] cases had any known exposure to this chemical,\u201d he said in a\u00a0statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet none of those workers was included in the study updates that have formed the bedrock of today\u2019s scientific consensus. The only brain cancer death from Texas City included in these updates was that of Luther Ott, a 57-year-old production worker who wasn\u2019t even diagnosed until a month after the medical director\u2019s statement. Ott died in February 1980.<\/p>\n

Chemical industry officials knew before they hired Otto Wong to do an update that none of the 10 brain cancer deaths in Texas City had been included in previous studies, even though Glenn said half of the workers had been exposed to vinyl chloride.<\/p>\n

One week after Glenn\u2019s statement, Union Carbide\u2019s corporate medical director, Dr. Mike Utidjian, told an industry task force that none of the 10 Texas City victims had a\u00a0\u201cclear cut\u201d<\/a>\u00a0exposure. Nor were any included in previous studies.<\/p>\n

Wong said it would have made more sense to start the study over rather than update a flawed one.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the scientific point of view, a better approach would be to do a new study,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That would entail reanalyzing which workers were exposed and which weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

In fact, by March 1981, scientists at Union Carbide had\u00a0determined<\/a>\u00a0that at least four of the workers who died of brain cancer had been exposed to vinyl chloride. The biostatistician who wrote that memo, Rob Schnatter, declined to comment for this story.<\/p>\n

Schnatter did not keep the\u00a0four dead\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0workers a secret. He and another Union Carbide scientist acknowledged them in an\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0published in 1983.<\/p>\n

Schnatter wanted to amend which workers were in the industry study. In 1982 he sent a memo to his colleagues at Union Carbide, one of whom wrote a\u00a0handwritten response<\/a>\u00a0: \u201cNo, we are not adding people to the cohort.\u201d<\/p>\n

This reflected a critical decision that all but guaranteed the study\u2019s outcome. According to the protocol, workers included in the original study could be dropped from updates if new information showed they hadn\u2019t been exposed to vinyl chloride. But the reverse wasn\u2019t true. Workers not initially included in the study couldn\u2019t be added even if it turned out that they had been exposed, according to a\u00a0Union Carbide memo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1974, Tabershaw-Cooper was given a list of\u00a0431 exposed workers<\/a>\u00a0from Texas City. But when the study was updated a decade later, the\u00a0number of exposed workers<\/a>\u00a0had dropped to 289 names.<\/p>\n

Susan Austin, a Union Carbide epidemiologist at the time, complained in an\u00a0internal memo<\/a>\u00a0that the odd rules for reclassifying whether workers were exposed \u201ccould lead to substantial bias.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collins, the former Dow epidemiologist, said it should been nearly impossible to cheat on this type of study. When scientists are deciding which workers were exposed to a chemical, they usually don\u2019t know which ones have died. Therefore, they can\u2019t skew the outcome by excluding dead workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no way to fudge the data,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n

But in this situation, Union Carbide did know which workers had died. It also knew it was excluding workers who had been exposed to vinyl chloride. The Center found no evidence that Union Carbide removed workers with brain cancer who had been in the original 1974 study. But the documents show that when the study was updated, at least three brain-cancer victims Union Carbide knew had been exposed were not included.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like they did leave them out by their own admission,\u201d said former NIOSH official Lemen, who at one time served as a consultant for lawyer Baggett.<\/p>\n

Kenneth Mundt, the lead author of the most recent update of the vinyl chloride study and a principal at the consulting firm Ramboll Environ, at first promised to answer questions from the Center. But weeks later, Mundt said that the study\u2019s sponsor, the American Chemistry Council, wouldn\u2019t allow him to talk because of pending litigation.<\/p>\n

A Dow spokesperson said, \u201cIf Texas City workers met the eligibility criteria \u2026 then they would have been included in the industry-wide study, regardless of the cause of death \u2026. Not all Texas City workers had opportunity for exposure to vinyl chloride.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Leuvell<\/a>

Leuvell Malone Jr. shows the only memento he has from his father, who died in 1979 from brain cancer. Malone worked at the Union Carbide vinyl chloride plant in Texas City, where 22 other workers died of the same rare cancer. But the company determined that he wasn’t exposed to the chemical. \u201cHe was all over the plant,\u201d Malone Jr. said. \u201cHe had to be exposed.\u201d
John Everett for the Center for Public Integrity<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018Unusual\u2019 decisions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Documents show that more than three exposed workers might have been excluded from the updates. That\u2019s because of a decision made in the early 1970s not to include people who were not stationed full-time in departments having direct contact with vinyl chloride. OSHA and NIOSH scientists noted that many of the brain cancer victims held jobs that would have brought them in contact with chemicals throughout the plant. They listed seven in maintenance, two in shipping and three in construction.<\/p>\n

Leuvell Malone Sr. worked in maintenance. His son, Leuvell Malone Jr., said he had no idea Union Carbide claimed his father hadn\u2019t been exposed to vinyl chloride.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was all over the plant. He did all of the oiling for all of the machinery,\u201d Malone said. \u201cHe had to be exposed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Leuvell<\/a>

Leuvell Malone’s obituary in the Galveston Daily News on March 8, 1979.<\/p><\/div>\n

The government study seems to back up Malone\u2019s claim. NIOSH reported in its study that \u201cmaintenance men moved throughout the plant and were exposed to many different agents in an irregular manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richard Waxweiler, a former NIOSH epidemiologist involved in the investigation of the Texas City cancer cluster, said in a recent interview that he didn\u2019t know Union Carbide had excluded so many brain-tumor deaths from the industry study. He called it \u201cunusual\u201d that maintenance workers like Malone were left out.<\/p>\n

Internal Union Carbide documents<\/a>\u00a0show that the company didn\u2019t dismiss the possibility that 10 other workers who died of brain cancer also may have been exposed to vinyl chloride.<\/p>\n

In fact, exposures may have been far more widespread. In the plant\u2019s own report to the Texas Air Control Board, which regulated air emissions at the time, Union Carbide said it released 940 tons of vinyl chloride into the air in 1975. That was after the company had implemented new pollution-control measures.<\/p>\n

The Air Control Board calculated that in 1974, the Texas City plant released 3,000 tons of vinyl chloride \u2014 12 times the emissions from all U.S. plants combined in 2014.<\/p>\n

Collins said the emissions data don\u2019t prove that everyone at the plant was exposed to vinyl chloride. But Tarr, who calculated the numbers at the time for the state of Texas, disagrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no question whatsoever that everyone who worked in that plant was exposed to vinyl chloride,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was only a question of, what was the amount of that exposure and what was the duration of that exposure?\u201d<\/p>\n

Union Carbide\u00a0strategized<\/a>\u00a0for nearly two years on how to limit the threat from government studies of the Texas City cancer cluster. One Union Carbide\u00a0lawyer<\/a>\u00a0advised internally that the more brain cancer deaths there were, the easier it would be for widows like Leuvell Malone\u2019s wife, Ada, to win lawsuits.<\/p>\n

The company decided to do its own analysis simultaneously,\u00a0reasoning<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cIndependent investigations of the same set of data frequently yield differing results.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company also decided to hold a press conference to announce its results first, telling NIOSH just two days in advance. The story was front-page news.<\/p>\n

“Our exhaustive studies neither indicate that any deaths due to brain cancer have been caused by occupational exposure, nor do they suggest any changes to our existing employee health programs or production procedures,\u201d plant manager Damon Engle said in a\u00a0press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Union Carbide said only 12 employees had died of malignant brain tumors. Although earlier press reports had been higher, medical specialists at the company\u00a0were quoted<\/a>\u00a0as saying that nine of the brain cancers \u201cwere winnowed out of the final statistical findings.\u201d<\/p>\n

NIOSH was\u00a0blindsided<\/a>\u00a0by Union Carbide\u2019s tactics. When the agency released its own findings two weeks later, media attention already had waned. NIOSH had counted 23 brain-tumor deaths, a rate that was double the national average. And it blamed the deaths on chemicals at the plant.<\/p>\n

\"Only<\/a>

Only one of 23 brain-cancer deaths at Union Carbide’s plant in Texas City was included in an industry-sponsored study of workers at vinyl chloride plants.
John Everett for the Center for Public Integrity<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018It still hurts\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The chemical industry has used its most recent studies in lawsuits to argue that vinyl chloride doesn\u2019t cause brain tumors.<\/p>\n

Frank and Joanne Branham grew up in the small village of McCullom Lake, Illinois, about 60 miles northwest of Chicago, and loved it there. When they got married, they built a home right on the lake. But there was one problem: the odor from a nearby chemical plant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were times when we couldn\u2019t have our windows open in the summer,\u201d Joanne recalls. \u201cThe smell was so bad that it would hurt your eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1998, they moved to Arizona. Six years later, Franklin Branham started having seizures. Finally, his\u00a0doctor diagnosed glioblastoma, the same rare brain cancer that had killed Leuvell Malone. Branham had only three months to live.<\/p>\n

Joanne still breaks down talking about the day Franklin died. \u201cIt\u2019s been 11 years, but it still hurts,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Not long after her husband\u2019s death, Joanne visited McCullom Lake and talked to her former next-door neighbor, Bryan Freund. She discovered that Freund had the same type of cancer. Freund\u2019s next-door neighbor, Kurt Weisenberger, had it, too.<\/p>\n

Joanne said it was obvious to all of them that the cause was environmental.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t take a scientist,\u201d she said. \u201cThat just doesn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

They hired an attorney and filed a lawsuit claiming that a nearby plant had dumped toxic chemicals into a lagoon. They alleged that they were poisoned by vinyl chloride and other volatile chemicals.<\/p>\n

Eventually, 33 people around McCullom Lake developed brain tumors.<\/p>\n

Freund, one of only two brain cancer survivors from the town, has been dealing with his illness for more than a decade and said he is constantly exhausted. One year ago, he had surgery \u201cto remove a whole bunch of my brain. They\u2019ve taken out so much I cannot believe it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s now back on chemotherapy.<\/p>\n

The current owner of the plant, Dow Chemical,\u00a0denies that people in the community were exposed to vinyl chloride, though it settled the case with the brain cancer victims about a year ago. During the litigation, the company hired expert witnesses who cited the Mundt study to prove that the brain tumors couldn\u2019t have been caused by vinyl chloride.<\/p>\n

One such expert, Peter Valberg of\u00a0Gradient Corp<\/a>., wrote that the families in McCullom Lake were citing early studies linking vinyl chloride to brain cancer but failed to cite more recent reviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese in-depth summaries and updates of worker cohorts do not support a causal link between VC exposure and brain cancer,\u201d Valberg wrote.<\/p>\n

Aaron Freiwald, the lawyer for the McCullom Lake families, said the scientific consensus today doesn\u2019t account for the fact that workers were excluded from industry brain cancer studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe established that even one accounted-for brain cancer would completely shift the data,\u201d Freiwald said. \u201cIf there are at least three additional cases, it seems pretty clear that the literature on vinyl chloride and brain cancer as it is has to be rewritten.\u201d<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

David Heath – <\/em>Senior Reporter<\/em>, The Center for Public Integrity<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is an independent not-for-profit organisation. Established in April 2010, the Bureau is the first of its kind in the UK, where philanthropically funded journalism is rare. Our\u00a0team of journalists<\/a>\u00a0bolsters original news by producing high-quality investigations for press and broadcast media with the aim of educating the public and the media on both the realities of today\u2019s world and the value of honest reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

Please support our work – share this article.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 publicintegrity.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a record number of brain tumors at a chemical plant, industry launched a flawed study that obscured the extent of the problem. The largest cluster of workplace-related brain tumors happened at a vinyl chloride plant now owned by Dow Chemical in Texas City, Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}