by James Parks, Sep 5, 2007

The smell of buttery popcorn is infectious in an office or in the kitchen at home. But is it safe?

Health officials have known for years that workers’ lungs were poisoned by the fake butter flavor they mixed for use in microwave popcorn. But now, in the first case of its kind, a doctor has found a possible link between serious lung disease and consumption of microwave popcorn.

In July, Cecile Rose, chief occupational and environmental medicine physician at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, wrote to officials of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration  (OSHA), saying she recently had identified a patient:  

…with significant lung disease whose clinical findings are similar to those described in affected workers, but whose only inhalational exposure is as a heavy, daily consumer of butter flavored microwave popcorn.  

Click here to read the entire letter to the agencies. 

The patient, whom Rose would not identify, said he had been eating about two bags of popcorn a day for 10 to 12 years, according to the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal. 

Over the past seven years, hundreds of workers have developed the rare and sometimes fatal disease bronchiolitis obliterans—also known as “popcorn lung.” It has been tied to three deaths and serious illness in at least 200 people. So far, doctors have not found a way to reverse the symptoms. Lung transplants are the only hope patients have.

The disease quickly leads to breathing difficulties and is often misidentified by physicians unfamiliar with the disease, according to several medical journals. 

The sick workers were employed in factories where diacetyl, the primary ingredient in artificial butter flavor, was manufactured or applied to food.  

David Michaels, a public health expert at Georgetown University, published Rose’s letter yesterday on his blog, The Pump Handle. Last year, Michaels and more than 40 other public health experts from around the country, petitioned the FDA to withdraw diacetyl from its list of food additives “generally recognized as safe.”

You’d think the agencies, which are supposed to ensure the safety and health of the public, would jump into action to investigate and protect the public. But so far they have done nothing.

None of the agencies has called Rose seeking details, she told the Journal Sentinel. 

In his blog post, Michaels says the failure to respond is typical of the Bush administration’s push to end regulation of business: 

The warning should have resulted in some action by these agencies, but instead, they’ve done virtually nothing.

It appears that the Bush administration’s efforts to destroy the regulatory system are succeeding; the agencies seem unable to mount a response to information that a well-functioning regulatory system would immediately pursue. The agencies aren’t even trying to connect the dots. 

We reported in April that Eric Peoples, 35, told a House subcommittee what happens when OSHA ignores or is slow to respond to a hazard. The resident of Carthage, Mo., said he has bronchiolitis obliterans, which he said he developed while working at the microwave popcorn maker Jasper Popcorn.

After Peoples and eight other popcorn workers in Missouri came down with severe respiratory disease, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) began inspecting plants and determined the illnesses were caused by the chemical additive diacetyl. But OSHA, which is charged with overseeing workplace safety, did very little. It did not increase plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill, Michaels reported.

This kind of response is typical of the way the Bush administration responds to workplace safety issues, according to The New York Times.  

The administration vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees—often former officials of the industries they now oversee—have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers. 

That’s the big problem, says AFL-CIO Occupational Safety and  Health Director Peg Seminario: 

Under the Bush administration, voluntary efforts and partnerships with employers have been favored over mandatory standards and industrywide enforcement initiatives. With this approach, OSHA has abandoned its leadership role in safety and health, choosing to work with individual employers, rather than taking bold action to bring about broad and meaningful change in working conditions on an industrywide and national level. 

As a result, as a nation we are falling further and further behind in protecting workers from serious hazards that cause death, injury and disease. In 2007, the promise of a safe job for every American worker is far from being fulfilled. 

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), who chairs the Education and Labor Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, says public health agencies should take the threat of diacetyl more seriously:

The reported case of a consumer diagnosed with popcorn lung underscores the need for our public health agencies to take this hazard more seriously, not only for workers, but for consumers as well. While OSHA is dragging its feet over the numerous reports of workers who have died or suffered serious lung disease from exposure to diacetyl, this new case raises concerns that consumers may be at risk as well.

Even though the federal government has not acted, two major microwave popcorn producers—Weaver Popcorn Co. and ConAgra—announced they are eliminating diacetyl from their buttery flavoring. Even the industry’s trade group, the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association, issued a statement recommending that its members reduce “to the extent possible” the amount of diacetyl in butter flavorings.

Read the whole statement here.

Meanwhile, a study published in this week’s edition of the American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine shows a strong link between exposure to diacetyl and bronchiolitis obliterans in workers manufacturing the chemical. 

In the same issue, Kathleen Kreiss of NIOSH writes in an editorial that “collective evidence for diacetyl causing a respiratory hazard supports action to minimize exposure to diacetyl, even if contributions by other flavoring chemicals exist.”

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