Pandemic! CEO's denial of Self-Induced Psychological Illness Syndrome (SIPIS)

[Guest guest]

(07-06) 04:00 PDT Trona, San Bernardino County -- It was the dead

birds that set Rita off.

Her husband, Steve, had been ill for years, with oozing sores on his

skin, shortness of breath and mental confusion. She suspected that it

all was tied to a Mojave Desert chemical plant where they both had

worked.

The company, now named Searles Valley Minerals, fiercely denied that

working there made Steve gravely ill, and by 2000, Rita 's

hunt for answers had turned up little, despite all her letters and

calls to regulators.

That was before she learned of the largely unpublicized deaths of

thousands of migratory birds that landed on a lake created by the

plant's discharges at its desolate site northeast of Los Angeles.

" When I was a girl, I read about miners dying in the coal mines, and

it is a known fact, if the birds are dying, there is something wrong

in the mine, " Rita said. " At that plant, the birds were a first

warning there was a hazard there, something wasn't safe. "

Soon, would begin an assault against the plant in a campaign

reminiscent of those waged by crusaders Silkwood and

Brockovich, whose battles against corporate giants in the 1970s and

1990s became subjects of Hollywood films.

Sometimes crude, always relentless, would investigate the

plant's operations stretching back for decades. She would pore over

thousands of documents and pester regulators. She would hear

harrowing stories of sick workers and persuade some of them to file

claims against the plant alleging health problems caused by exposure

to toxic substances.

This is the story of Rita 's decadelong journey, from the

exhilarating high of her husband's eventual court victory over the

company to a devastating low that she did not see coming.

For its part, the company assails the 50-year-old , who lost a

1995 sexual harassment lawsuit against the plant, as someone entirely

lacking in credibility. The company says she has waged a baseless

campaign, spewing false allegations about the plant that no

regulatory agency has seen fit to act on.

Today, the state says the company's injury claim and illness rates

are lower than the industry average, and air, water and toxic-

substances regulators say the company's record has improved

considerably in recent years.

The company says there is no cancer cluster in the area and no

prevalence of illness evident among its workers. It adds that a

review of Steve 's records " did not support the finding that our

facility was somehow linked to chemical toxicity in Mr. . " In

extensive answers the company provided in response to dozens of

Chronicle questions, it maintained that it has an excellent safety

program, that it has spent millions reducing its emissions and

tackling its bird problem, and that there is nothing about the

plant's operations that should be considered harmful for workers or

neighboring residents.

" ly, the wild assertions that reflect on our local community and

the background and regulatory framework of our operations are

shameful, " Searles Valley Minerals' executive director, Arzell Hale,

told The Chronicle.

In her campaign, Rita has undeniably hurt herself with her

outbursts. She speaks of " toothless, useless-as-tits-on-a-boar

regulators " and wants plant executives arrested for murder.

So far, she has failed to persuade any agency to file environmental

or labor-safety charges against the plant. But some experts, asked by

The Chronicle to review her allegations, say she raises some valid

concerns that merit investigation.

In the past two decades, the companies owning the plant have paid out

more than $2 million to state and federal agencies to settle air,

waste, wildlife and water-related problems, including a turbine

modification that for more than a decade sent 40-plus tons of smog-

forming nitrogen oxide into the air each year. The plant is also one

of the state's biggest industrial air polluters, ranking in 2006

among the top 10 emitters of lung-damaging particulate matter and

nitrogen oxide.

remains unconvinced the plant has changed its ways.

" People work to provide for their families and bam! They get sick, "

said. " That is my bitch with the damned state - that we are

kept too ignorant about the hazards coming from these corporations.

It's criminal. "

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Fleeing a bad marriage, Rita arrived in the Searles Valley in 1989.

She left behind a painful period in her life that culminated with

several months in prison for her conviction in a case involving

possession of marijuana for sale.

In Trona, she lived with her sister, right next to the plant site,

where mining operations have been conducted by a string of companies

for more than a century. In 1993, at a local Mexican restaurant, Rita

was introduced to Steve , a fellow worker she had never met

because they were based in different parts of the sprawling plant.

They were soon married.

Though Trona sits 170 miles northeast of Los Angeles, it feels as if

it were thousands of miles from anywhere: It faces a windswept vista

of sand and stark mountains that border the barren, rock-strewn

valley.

What attracted miners in the 19th century were the minerals deposited

in the valley over millions of years. Today, Trona has only about

1,885 residents, and many structures are boarded up. Bits and pieces

of people's lives - machine parts, broken cars, a toppled ornamental

fountain - are strewn about in many front yards.

Searles Valley has a shimmering lake spread out over 2 square miles.

The lake exists only because of discharges from the plant.

In a nonstop loop, the plant pumps millions of gallons of brine - a

highly saline mixture of water and minerals - into the plant from a

groundwater basin underlying the valley. After targeted minerals are

extracted, spent brine is pumped to the lake surface or into the

basin below.

The company employs 640 workers and produces almost 2 million tons of

products annually, including soda ash, boron minerals and sodium

sulfate. Its products show up in everyday items such as glass,

detergent and carbonated drinks.

Rita was hired at the plant in January 1990. She operated machinery

and sometimes worked on a spill cleanup crew. Steve operated

equipment, shoveled up spills, cleaned out chutes and did testing in

the laboratory.

Daily, the couple said, they got splashed with " product " - which they

said could be anything from a fine dust to a coarse, wet material,

all coming from processed chemicals. " The equipment leaked, spewing

product and brine, " Rita said. " The brine would get on my face.

I would breathe it in, and sometimes it would burn my damn nose and

my eyeballs. "

After had worked at the plant for almost 3 1/2 years, she said,

the company terminated her in 1995 while she was off work because of

an on-the-job back injury. The company denies it fired her, saying

that rather than expect her to work while she was in pain,

it " removed her from duty " and provided her with occupational

training funding through its insurance company.

By 1998, when he had put in 19 years on the job, Steve said he

was too sick to work - suffering from oozing sores, exhaustion, full-

body nerve spasms, painful tingling in his limbs and shortness of

breath.

Rita was angry over what she saw as the company's refusal to

pay for all her husband's needed medical treatments, including tests

to pinpoint what was wrong with his nervous system. She wanted

answers about why Steve was ill.

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At first, Rita 's detective work moved slowly. But her search

accelerated in 2000, when the state Fish and Game Department began

looking into bird deaths at the lake. Initially, it appeared that the

deaths were tied to an oil spill from the plant, but Fish and Game

noticed that some of the dying birds didn't seem to have oil on them.

The agency investigated and concluded that the primary cause of death

was the high salt content of the lake, though the company cited other

factors, such as the dehydration of migrating birds.

" Salt toxicosis kills these birds within hours or days, " said Steve

Hampton, the department's resource economist. " When the birds drink

the brine, the high salt levels impact the birds' neurological and

other systems. The levels of other contaminants that might be out

there in the lake are unlikely to kill the birds this quickly. "

The state tested the birds for some toxic substances, but not others.

said the state should have tested for every possible chemical

in the brine.

There would be no lake for the birds to land on if the plant did not

pump brine onto what otherwise would be a mostly dry lakebed. But

such pumping has gone on for more than 90 years. The company says its

return of depleted brine to the lake is the only way it can comply

with a U.S. Interior Department requirement aimed at conserving the

resource.

The company also asserts that although it has devoted " extensive

resources to determining " why the birds die, " we have not secured a

definitive statement to answer that question. " It says some birds

apparently die because they are old or succumb to predators or

illness.

Since 2000, when Fish and Game began tracking dead or dying birds at

the lake, the department says about 4,000 birds have died there -

mostly ducks, grebes and loons.

To , the bird deaths underscored her gnawing question: What

chemicals are in the brine that plant employees have worked with for

decades, and how do the chemicals, when mixed together, affect human

health?

Marty, chief of the air toxicology and epidemiology branch of

the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said

that even if the state has identified high salt levels as the cause

of the birds' deaths, such a finding is a separate issue from the

question of what potential health problems the brine's contents might

pose for workers.

In 2001, Fish and Game expressed concern about the arsenic in the

brine in a letter to the state Lahontan Regional Water Quality

Control Board, which regulates waste discharges from more than 1,400

public and nonpublic entities in eastern California. The letter

stated that arsenic and several other substances in the brine " should

be expressly addressed " by the board's regulatory actions,

particularly because those substances are hard to clean up " when

accumulated over time. "

Arsenic was not put in the brine by the company. " Through geologic

time, arsenic - a naturally occurring element in the earth's crust -

was carried by water down to Searles Lake. The arsenic in the brine

today is there because it dissolved from the sediments where it had

been deposited as a result of the evaporation of the water in the

lake, " said Carl Hauge, the former chief hydro-geologist for the

state's Department of Water Resources.

Lahontan's top officer, Harold Singer, said the chemicals in the

spent brine pumped back to the lake " are below hazardous waste

levels, except for naturally occurring arsenic. " He added that the

board " allows the arsenic discharge under an exemption provided for

in state law " for such a naturally occurring element.

Singer says that because the plant doesn't increase the level of

arsenic already pre-existing in the brine, " there is no regulatory

purpose to setting arsenic limits because they aren't changing the

naturally occurring level in the brine. "

In 1978, more than two decades before Fish and Game raised its

concern with the water board, the federal government had adopted a

revised standard for arsenic in the workplace, citing the cancer risk

it posed for workers.

In 1985, the plant owner, then Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp., issued an

employee safety handbook that made no mention of arsenic in the

brine. The handbook reassured workers that company products producing

airborne dust " are all water soluble " and " even heavy airborne

concentrations are not known to have a harmful effect on your health

now or at any time in the future. "

A year later, a Lahontan board engineer wrote a memo to his boss

recounting his conversation with the Kerr-McGee plant's environmental

coordinator. The memo suggests that at that point, the company's

environmental coordinator knew about arsenic's contribution to the

lake's toxicity.

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To this day, the company argues that there is no need to alert

workers about arsenic because skin exposure is not viewed as a hazard

and because " the brine does not pose an exposure (risk) for workers

as it cannot be ingested. " It also maintains that brine " cannot

evaporate into the air where it can be inhaled. "

Ten ex-workers told The Chronicle, however, that sometimes brine got

splashed in their mouths. Many also said that both wet brine and

dried product from the brine got on their skin and clothes. The

company counters that any of the foul-tasting brine entering a

worker's mouth would be spit out immediately, and that the small

amount involved would not pose a risk. The company adds that dermal

contamination isn't a problem, either, because the skin acts as a

barrier.

Based on the figure provided by the company on the amount of arsenic

in the brine, the level is 10,000 times greater than the federal

limit for arsenic in drinking water, which is 10 parts per billion.

But the company says that because no one drinks the brine, its

arsenic level " does not suggest a toxic exposure simply because it

exceeds drinking water standards. "

The company points to a 1985 state probe that sampled the plant's air

and brine and concluded there was no evidence of overexposure to

airborne arsenic or any pattern of arsenic-related illnesses evident

at the plant. Searles Valley Minerals also says it sharply cut its

arsenic emissions into the atmosphere - by 90 percent from 1989 to

1996 alone. The company says its reduction of several pollutants'

emission levels in recent years helped cut the nearby community's

possible cancer risk from such emissions to an extremely low level.

For Marty, of the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard

Assessment, one central question is workers' possible inhalation of

contaminants in the brine.

Marty said that if dry brine regularly gets on workers and is often

blown about in the air by desert winds, " the question is how much

arsenic and other chemicals from the brine are getting inhaled by the

workers, and how much take-home exposure is occurring when these

workers go home and change their clothes and track the stuff around. "

Though the plant does have some showers, the company says there

are " no formal employee change or central shower areas, and we are

not required to provide them as there is nothing in our work

environment that would require those facilities. "

On the issue of worker exposure inside the plant, , a

senior toxicologist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,

said: " It comes down to whom you believe.

" If the workers do have routine and repeated contact with brine that

has elevated concentrations of arsenic, either through inhalation or

ingestion, then a lot of us in the scientific community would have

concern about the long-term impacts of that contact, "

said. " But if the company runs a clean shop and exposure to arsenic

in brine is well controlled and workers have access to personal

protective equipment and the protection of state labor regulations,

then it would be difficult to make a connection between any illnesses

that are currently observed and historical exposure to arsenic. "

As Rita sees it, anyone talking about the arsenic in the

brine " can say it's 'naturally occurring' all they want to, but if

they don't let you know how potent it is, then they killed your ass

intentionally because it's admitted it's one of the most toxic

substances known to man. "

Experts consulted by The Chronicle say that arsenic is no chemical to

be underestimated. They add that arsenic contamination typically

occurs through ingestion or inhalation.

" Arsenic is a very powerful carcinogen, " said arsenic expert

Froines, director of UCLA's Center for Occupational and Environmental

Health. " There is significant risk of cancer from arsenic down to the

part per trillion level, and further investigations of possible

arsenic exposures at the plant are very much in order. "

One expert also noted that even though the plant has achieved a sharp

drop in its arsenic emissions, the arsenic in the brine remains a

concern. Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and

the Environment at the University at Albany in New York,

said: " Arsenic is listed by the Agency for Toxic Substances and

Disease Registry as the No. 1 dangerous contaminant, and this

reported level of arsenic in the brine is very high.

" Any arsenic exposure increases the risk of cancer, " Carpenter

said. " Having a brine with a high level of arsenic in the mouth, even

if spit out quickly, and on clothes certainly increases the risk of

cancer and other diseases associated with arsenic exposure. "

The EPA's added that tests done now cannot reflect levels of

arsenic exposure that occurred a decade or more ago. He

said: " Following exposure, there is a latency period before symptoms

develop - it can be 10, 15 or 20 years later. "

Arsenic isn't the only matter at the plant that has received

attention. In 2002, the Lahontan board approved a settlement with the

company under which the plant - while admitting no liability or

fault - paid the state $250,000 and agreed to complete other

environmental projects that the state estimated cost $1.75 million.

The settlement cited company waste discharge " that may have

contributed to detrimental responses in birds, " violations exceeding

discharge limits on petroleum hydrocarbons, and illegal discharges of

spent brine from pipe breaks. At the time, Lahontan's executive

officer, Harold Singer, said the settlement was one of the

largest " in many, many years. "

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In 2003, Steve got sicker. His weight plummeted from 215 to 155

in only a few months. " Steve didn't want to live anymore - he was

ready to put a gun to his head and kill himself, " Rita said.

The company was refusing to pay for doctors who are experts in caring

for chemical workers, she said. The company said it would pay for any

of the s' medical bills approved by the workers' compensation

system.

Angry at the company, Rita returned to Trona in 2003 to hunt

for the cause of Steve's illness. As the daughter of a construction

worker who grew up in a small North Carolina town, felt at ease

with workers and their families.

Going door to door in Trona, got people to write down their

families' illnesses and deaths. One woman, the wife of an ex-plant

worker, wrote that she had lost three sons - 20, 41 and 44. She added

that two died of cancer and one of a heart attack. said the

woman told her that her sons had worked in the plant. It is

impossible to know whether their plant work contributed to their

deaths, and the woman wouldn't talk to The Chronicle.

But some who had worked in the plant did.

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In 2004, at Kristy's Family Restaurant in Ridgecrest, sat down

with Avery to hear his story.

A tall man with gray hair and a wide grin, Avery was hired at the

plant in 1978, when the company was owned by Kerr-McGee. He worked

there for 17 years, mainly in shipping.

Some days, he said, he would go home looking like a snowman with

product all over him.

In 1994, when he had pneumonia, Avery's doctors told him that

although he was 38, he had the lungs of a man who was 78.

In January 1996, Avery said the company terminated him and falsely

claimed he had not shown a desire to return to work after being out

ill. The company said it received a letter from Avery stating he

would like to return to work eventually, but it said Avery himself

acknowledged he was not physically able to work at that time.

Avery, now 51, told the Chronicle that in the 1980s, he was on a crew

assigned to spray pesticide - he doesn't remember which pesticide -

onto pallets used to ship product overseas. " This pesticide I used

was full strength out of the five-gallon bucket. It was later learned

that this insecticide should have been applied with rubber boots,

disposable gloves, disposable coveralls and a special respirator the

company didn't even own. "

Asked about Avery's account, the company quoted a longtime shipping

department manager who " does not recall any form of pesticides being

applied to our pallets " before 2004, when spraying began being

required in some cases and the plant bought pretreated pallets. But a

co-worker of Avery's at the time, Don Huggins, confirmed Avery's

story.

Avery also said that in the company's lunchrooms, it was often so

windy that he could taste " chemical dust from plant operations " as he

ate his sandwich.

Philip Harber, the chief of occupational and environmental medicine

at UCLA who was Avery's doctor, said, " Based on what Mr. Avery

described and the properties of what was involved, it appears likely

his occupational exposure contributed significantly to his lung

problem. " Citing respiratory, internal and spine injuries, Avery

eventually won a $657,000 settlement after negotiations between his

lawyer and the insurance company administering the plant's workers'

compensation claims.

The company notes that Avery's settlement was reached in the workers'

compensation system, which compensates injured workers without regard

to fault. Avery also recently filed a new claim with the Workers'

Compensation Appeals Board, alleging he suffered " extreme cumulative

chemical and toxin exposure " in his years at the plant.

The claim, which seeks a financial award for " serious and willful

misconduct " by the company, alleges that chemicals from " leaking

pipes, lines, pumps and valves would fall upon " Avery as he worked at

the plant.

The company said it has no record of Avery voicing concerns about

toxic exposure previously. Avery says it was only recently that he

had his blood tested and learned that his body had high levels of

chemicals not normally found in the general population.

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The San Bernardino County district attorney's office told Rita

in 2004 that it was rejecting her request to prosecute the company.

The office concluded there was insufficient evidence of environmental

or other crimes.

Some state Fish and Game Department personnel had a different

opinion. Two retired warden supervisors told The Chronicle that they

advocated the company be prosecuted for bird deaths.

Mark Caywood, a retired patrol lieutenant, said state Fish and Game

management " inferred that pushing the issue or prosecuting the

company would result in the closing of the plant. But the game

wardens knowledgeable about pollution who worked out there say it's a

crime - the company is killing birds. "

Donna , the other retired patrol lieutenant, said: " There was no

doubt there was a violation. There was no doubt that we had dead

birds and the company was the cause of the deaths. " But, she

added, " There were a lot of politics involved in the County of San

Bernardino, and the politics in the county were they couldn't afford

to lose that tax base of the plant because that was money in the

county's pocket. "

and Caywood said they were taken off the case, and a

prosecution never happened. " We had freezers full of dead birds, "

said. " It makes you sick to your stomach when these ducks have

a convulsion and die in your arms. "

Fish and Game's spokesman, Steve Martarano, said and Caywood

were moved to other projects after the investigation was over, and it

was not a transfer to silence them. He added that the department

settled the case by requiring the plant to do several things,

including rescuing and rehabilitating birds and creating a new

wetlands for birds in the Owens Valley, about 55 miles north of

Searles Lake.

" The department believes the number of birds protected or saved by

the new wetlands area at Owens Valley will fully offset the number of

birds dying at Searles Lake, " Martarano said.

Bill Sellers, an investigator for the county district attorney's

office, said he did not find evidence supporting 's claims of

criminal conduct by the plant. According to , Sellers told her

that workers have to prove an injury was caused by the chemicals.

said she responded: " Excuse me, do people walk around with

laboratories attached to their damned asses? "

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One evening in January 2005, Rita was at home watching a " CSI "

show on television when she heard a character mention a toxicological

investigation into someone's death. Immediately, she knew she had a

new tool in her own investigation.

She wanted to have her husband's fat tissue tested for a precise

picture of his contamination levels. She started hunting for experts

who could tell her where her husband could get these tests. Later,

almost as an afterthought, she got tested, too.

That's when the mystery deepened. Rita , who had fought for so

many years to learn why her husband was ill, found out she was

contaminated herself - with one of the most toxic compounds on the

planet.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Rita first called The Chronicle wanting to tell her story in

2002. She told an editorial assistant who answered the phone that her

husband, a former chemical plant worker, was very sick after working

at a plant in the San Bernardino County town of Trona in the Mojave

Desert. She said thousands of birds had died near the plant - then

named IMC Chemicals Inc. The details were sketchy.

The notes taken by the editorial assistant were passed on to

Chronicle reporter Sward. Over the next few years, Sward

listened to tell bits and pieces of her story over the phone,

and more than a year ago, Sward began pursuing the story.

During her investigation, Sward interviewed more than 100 people -

plant supervisors, former and current plant workers, some of their

families, regulators, scientists, professors and Trona residents. She

traveled twice to Trona. She asked the company dozens of questions

about its operations. The company, now named Searles Valley Minerals,

responded with hundreds of pages of detailed answers.

Today

Rita , a former employee of a chemical plant in the Mojave

desert, wages a campaign to learn why her husband, who also worked

there, had become so ill.

Monday

After struggling for years to understand her husband's ailments, Rita

receives alarming news about her own health.

Chronicle research librarians Kathleen and Lois Jermyn

contributed to this report. E-mail Sward at

ssward@....