Play all audios:
Mr. McGuire: Ben, I want to say one word to you, just one word. Ben: Yes sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Ben: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Plastics. Ben: Exactly how do you mean that? Mr.
McGuire: There is a great future in plastics. — from _The Graduate_ The most terrifying thing is the cleanliness of the operation; no belching smokestacks, no grime, no sludge dumped in the
river, no mess. The factory is located on a peaceful country road less than a mile from Lake Erie in Avon Lake, Ohio. The lawns are freshly mowed. There are even flowers in well-manicured
beds. On the front lawn there is a modest sign with the corporate logo: B.F. Goodrich. From the road, you can see a modern building — the B.F. Goodrich Development Center — which smacks of
better living through chemistry. Behind the technical center is the factory itself, a jumble of vats and pipes and tanks, emitting small, benign puffs of white smoke. The very model of
corporate good citizenship, it would seem. Inside the factory, they transform vinyl chloride gas, which is a petroleum byproduct, into a powder which is the second most common form of
plastic, polyvinyl chloride. It is a miracle powder, and when they opened the factory just after World War II, the officials of B.F. Goodrich must have been proud. Here was a substance that
could (and would) change the world. It was cheap to manufacture and it could be put to a mind-boggling array of uses. In fact, the most distinctive characteristic of the miracle powder was
the many things it could become. It could be hard or soft. It was fire resistant. It was durable. It could become upholstery that looked like leather or a clear sheet, like transparent
plastic wrap, that looked like glass and crumpled like paper. It became phonograph records, shower curtains, credit cards, nipples for baby bottles, coating for wires, artificial turf,
cellophane tape … the list is endless. It is virtually impossible to go a day without coming into contact with some form of polyvinyl chloride. EDITOR’S PICKS But there was another property
of polyvinyl chloride that turned out to be even more remarkable than its myriad of uses: the vinyl chloride gas, which is the base for the miracle powder, induces a rare form of liver
cancer that is guaranteed to produce a quick and painful death. Recently, it killed one of the workers at the B.F. Goodrich plant in Avon Lake, a man named Charlie Arthur. Now Charlie Arthur
was not the first person to die of liver cancer caused by vinyl chloride, and he certainly won’t be the last. His case was not much different than the others on record; his life was not
much different than the other workers’ at Avon Lake. He was 47 years old, a good employee, a devoted husband and father. He lived in a small ranch house on a quiet street. He was never
arrested, never caused much of a stir of any kind. In fact, there is little that distinguishes Charlie Arthur’s life from millions of others … which makes his death all the more frightening.
Vinyl chloride isn’t the only chemical that causes cancer. No one knows how many chemicals cause cancer. Experts can’t even agree on how many chemicals exist. Almost every major corporation
has scientists who sit in laboratories, playing with different combinations of atoms, occasionally coming up with a new combination — a new chemical. It happens virtually every day.
Estimates range from nine new chemicals a week (468 a year) to several thousand a year. And if 1000 new chemicals are developed each year, scientists say it’s a safe bet that at least a half
dozen will cause cancer. In 1835, a Frenchman named Regnault was playing around in his lab and discovered vinyl chloride. It wasn’t until 37 years later that a German named Baumann exposed
some vinyl chloride to the sun and found that it formed a white powder. It wasn’t until 1926 that Dr. Waldo Semon, a scientist working for B.F. Goodrich, figured out that the powder could be
used commercially … and a completely new substance, polyvinyl chloride, was introduced into our environment. There was no reason to suspect, at that point, that when vinyl chloride came in
contact with living cells it could cause those cells to go berserk and become cancerous. Since the incubation period for cancer generally runs from 15 to 30 years, it was a long time before
the evidence started coming in. Only now are people beginning to question the fact that chemicals are routinely considered innocent by government and industry until proven guilty. RELATED
CONTENT