BP Amoco settles suits tied to US workers' cancers

["Ron L. Kathren" <rkathren@tricity.wsu.edu>]

Sandy --

By way of comment:  The possibility of brain tumors in Pu workers was raised
by some epidemiologic studies, but in a paper published in Health Physics
not too long ago, Baruch Gold and I observed that in a group of 260 deceased
USTUR registrants (all Pu workers), all brain tumor deaths occurred in
workers from only a single site,  Since all the cohort had a similar
radiation exposure history irrespective of work site,  we concluded that
radiation was not the cause of these brain tumors but rather something else
likely associated with that one specific site.

Although we did not speculate as to cause,  it is my strong suspicion that
solvents may have been implicated in those brain tumor cases (glioblastomas
and astrocytomas).  There is epidemiologic evidence to support this
suspicion in  that studies of refinery workers have shown an excess of brain
tumors which I think was related to exposure to straight chain aliphatic
compounds.  n-hexane is, of course, a straight chain aliphatic.

Ron Kathren


----- Original Message -----
From: Sandy Perle <sandyfl@earthlink.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 11:12 AM
Subject: BP Amoco settles suits tied to US workers' cancers


> I'd bet on the hexane and NOT low level ionizing radiation as the
> cause....
>
> BP Amoco settles suits tied to US workers' cancers
>
> CHICAGO, March 15 (Reuters) - BP Amoco PLC on Wednesday settled five
> lawsuits related to rare brain cancers developed by former employees,
> which a company investigation suggested were work-related, according
> to lawyers involved in the case.
>
> Terms of the settlements were not disclosed.
>
> A sixth lawsuit was also expected to be resolved, although still
> unsettled is litigation related to cancers developed by at least a
> dozen employees who worked at the company's Naperville, Illinois,
> chemical research facility during the 1970s and 1980s.
>
> Five of the six men who developed gliomas have died, and the sixth is
> very ill.
>
> Attorney Marios Karayannis represented the estate of his late father,
> Nicholas, and some of the other plaintiffs who settled their suits,
> an assistant said.
>
> In response to the apparent cancer outbreak, the company hired
> experts from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Alabama-
> Birmingham to investigate.
>
> In August, the researchers involved in the three-year study said they
> could not conclusively trace the cancers -- some of them relatively
> rare and deadly brain tumours called gliomas -- to conditions at the
> facility. But they said consistent patterns pointed to handling of
> two types of agents -- low-level ionising radiation and a solvent
> called n-hexane.
>
> The six people diagnosed with gliomas were all chemical researchers,
> five of whom worked in the same wing of a building at the sprawling
> complex.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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