'Cheated out of a Healthy Life'

By Tom Verdin
(From the Port Huron, Michigan, Times Herald, Sept. 2, 1991)

Shelli Hanton could see the signs starting slowly, the coughing, the wheezing.  Her then-boyfriend, Dean Lavery, would come home from work at the auto-trim plant a bit out of breath, tight in the chest, throat scratchy, as if he had swallowed a Brillo pad, sniffing like he had allergies.

Why was that, she wondered.  He had always been in excellent shape.  He jogged between five and seven miles four times a week; he practiced karate; he swam.  He had never smoked.

"He was a health nut," said Shelli, 27.

Slowly, it got worse.  The breathing became heavier. so heavy that Dean, who could once run 10 miles at a steady pace, collapsed one December trying to pull the couple's two young children on a sled.

And then it got ugly.

"I saw him wake up every morning with a bloody nose," Shelli said.  "Sometimes it would be clotted and sometimes he whole face would just be full of blood.  If he blew his nose, he would just blow blood right out of it, every time."

That was in late 1987.  In 1988, the couple had enough.  What was happening to him?

Lavery, now 29, went to a doctor.  What he discovered has changed the course of his life, and maybe even shortened it.

A doctor at Michigan State University labeled his ailment "occupational asthma."  Another physician concluded that Lavery suffered from allergic bronchitis and allergic asthma.

That second doctor was careful to say that Lavery's condition was not caused by his workplace, where the air swirled with fiberglass dust and the formaldehyde it is coated with.  But, he said it certainly was aggravated by it.

Two weeks ago, a recurrence of heavy coughing sent Lavery to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.  X-rays revealed a black patch on his lungs.

"I'll find out in a week or so what that means," he said.  "I'm scared.  I just hope it's not cancer."

Lavery began working in 1982 for United Technologies Automotive in Port Huron, one of hundreds of employees turning out the company's main product, automotive headliners. 

A few years later, the company began using fiberglass in its manufacturing process.  The employees had scattered concerns.  They knew fiberglass shards could irritate their skin.  They also had heard that fiberglass might harm their lungs.

"When we switched to fiberglass, the company brought (experts) in," Lavery said.,  "They showed us movies, told us it was completely harmless, that it couldn't hurt us at all.  They told us our bodies had natural defenses like sneezing.  Three hundred people believed them."

Dean Lavery doesn't believe them any more.  He calls the two United Technologies plants "modern-day gas chambers."

"A lot of times it would hit you really hard.  It would cut off your air.  Your eyes would hurt really bad and tear up, and toward the end for me it got to where I wanted to pass out."

Since that first visit to the doctor in early 1988, he has tried to come back to work.  The company bought him a charcoal-filtered mask prescribed by his doctor, he said, but them turned around and refused to let him wear it.

"They said it had to pass 11 (OSHA) inspections," Lavery said.

He said the company also would not retrain him for jobs that would remove him from the fiberglass and the formaldehyde dust.

The result is that his comebacks lasted only weeks or months.  Lavery has been away from work more than he ahs been on the job since his health began to fade three years ago.

Since then, his doctor, W.P. Richards of Bloomfield Hills, has said that Lavery's "continued exposure to such noxious fumes will most likely result in permanent scarring of lung tissue (fibrosis and emphysema)."

And he recommended Lavery not work in the manufacturing of fiberglass products.

"(But) who's going to hire me with bad lungs?" Lavery asked.

United Technologies would not comment on Lavery's case, which has become the subject of a lawsuit filed last week in St. Clair Count Circuit Court.  Lavery wants $30,000 in back wages; the company has offered $7,800.

"With respect to Mr. Lavery's allegations, we can't comment because it's pending litigation," company spokeswoman Anne Knisely explained.

But she said the Port Huron companies, responding to employee requests, have tested the air in their plants several times.   Their tests and those taken by the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration indicated air quality is well within national safety guidelines, she said.

"We're so far below the limits--- for formaldehyde and fiberglass... it's almost off the map," said Knisely, manager of advertising and environmental communications.

She said the company provides gloves and skin creams to protect workers from skin rashes.  Goggles and paper dust masks also are provided.

Lavery, however, was told by his doctor that paper masks are not deterrent because they are too thin.  If you can smell the formaldehyde, you're breathing in the fiberglass, Lavery said.

The company tells its employees the major risk from fiberglass is skin irritation, not lung cancer, Knisely said.

But an emerging body of scientific evidence suggests the risk from consistent exposure to fiberglass shards may be far greater than simply "irritation to the skin."

The glass shards are suspected to be as damaging to lungs as asbestos fibers.

Studies reviewed by the U.S. government has shown " a statistically significant increase" in respiratory-tract cancer among fiberglass production workers.  Their lung cancer rate is 25 percent above normal after 30 years of employment, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

And the U.S. Labor Department now requires all glass-fiber products, including insulation, to carry labels warning of a possible cancer hazard by inhalation.

"Published experimental evidence demonstrates that fibrous glass has the same potential for inducting cancer as asbestos fibers of the same dimension," said NIOSH, the research arm of the National Occupational Safety and Health Administration, in a 1988 memo.

Lavery said other workers at United Technologies have had lung problems, nose bleeds, asthma, allergies and other ailments, but won't come forward because they are afraid for their jobs.

"(United Technologies) has said, 'There's nothing wrong with you.  It can't hurt you,'" Lavery said. "United Technologies was a gas chamber, and I think in time they're going to find that out."

United Technologies would not say what conclusions its own doctors have reached about Lavery's condition.  Lavery, however, said the company's doctors have concluded that there is nothing wrong with him.

"They say I suffer from 'chronic anxiety,'" he said.

His mother questions that.  "I don't think (it's anxiety)," Clara Lavery said.  "He was a good workers.  He would be sick with the flu or something, and he would still go in.  He wouldn't miss a day.  I really think that it's done some damage to him.  I'm sure of it."

Lavery has been living with his parents since last May, when he was fired for "failure to return to work from (a) medical leave after one year," according to his letter of dismissal.

His mother fears for his health.  This is not the same son who was always healthy, exercising and working hard.  He breathes heavily, and she said his coughing seems to be getting louder, deeper.

"Just knowing him and knowing how he doesn't ever complain... I'm really afraid that it's had a bad effect on him," she said.  "I just hope it hasn't gone too far."

Dean Lavery says it already has gone far enough.  He owes $2,500 in medical bills and he can't work in the construction trades, which he enjoys, because now even normal dust and wood smoke aggravate the allergies.

And he partly blames the pressures of the medical leaves and loss of income for his separation from Shelli.

"(The company) messed me up for life.  I feel I can do work, but there's a lot of work I can't do," he said.

"I don't feel right.  My voice has changed, by breathing isn't the same.  Life in a bubble -- a lot of people laugh at that, but that's kind of the way I feel because there's a lot of things I can't be around.

Shelli also sides with her former boyfriend.

"Most of the people who work (at United Technologies) have families, and what are they going to do when they die off?" she asked.  "I think they should give him full-time medical benefits.  I don't think he should pay for all those problems on his own, and I think they should train him for a job so he's not working in all that dust.

"I think he really as been cheated out of a healthy life."