“The Cancer Factory: Industrial Chemicals, Corporate Deception, and the Hidden Deaths of America’s Workers” comes out this month and explores dozens of cases of bladder cancer among Goodyear Tire workers. The company has three manufacturing plants in Canada. One is in Napanee, Ontario, another in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and one in Valleyfield, Quebec.
The tragedy of Niagara Falls
“I think the book mentions 78 cases of bladder cancer, but a retiree told me the other day it’s in the 80s now,” Morris says. These cases began appearing in the 1970s and continued until the late 1990s.
What makes this tragedy even more appalling is that the cause of the cancer was not a mystery. A specific chemical, ortho-toluidine, used in an antioxidant for tires, was to blame. Shockingly, studies dating back to the mid-20th century have already shown the carcinogenic effects of this chemical, yet it continues to be used.
The company monitored the air for traces of the chemical and the levels were well below acceptable exposure limits. But Morris says the workers weren’t breathing it. “Exposures were mainly through skin absorption,” he explains. Workers were unknowingly absorbing this dangerous chemical through their skin while working in T-shirts.
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