Cancer In A Can: What The Chemical Industry

Kept Secret About Vinyl Chloride in Hair Spray

"[B]eauty operators applying hair spray on a daily, routine basis might actually be
a better population to examine [for health effects of vinyl chloride] than chemical
plant operators."
- Union Carbide memo, 1972 (view entire document)

"A company selling vinyl chloride as an aerosol propellant . . . has essentially

unlimited liability to the entire U.S. population."
- Union Carbide memo, 1973 (view entire document)

Working in a beauty parlor is not normally considered a dangerous occupation.

When beauticians and barbers think of environmentally hazardous jobs, coal miners
and refinery workers probably top the list. What most beauty salon workers (and
their patrons) don't know is that aerosol hair sprays are chemical cocktails of
solvents, glues, polymers and propellants, many of them toxic. Until it was banned
in 1974, the chemical industry's aerosol propellant of choice was vinyl chloride
monomer (VCM), a potent carcinogenic gas that caused cancer in an untold number
of factory workers.

Starting in 1958, the vinyl chloride industry began marketing VCM as a safer
alternative to CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons i.e. freon, now banned as ozone
depleters). (view entire document) For almost two decades, cosmetics companies were
sold unknown quantities of vinyl chloride monomer for use as an aerosol hair spray
propellant.

Questions about the human health effects of VCM in hair spray were raised as early
as 1964, and chemical companies knew definitively by 1971 that VCM exposure
causes tumors. But they didn't make that fact public until early 1974, when their
belated revelation almost immediately triggered federal bans on VCM in cosmetics,
drugs and pesticides.

According to internal chemical industry documents, when VCM makers were finally
forced to acknowledge to themselves that vinyl chloride was unsafe, they said
nothing publicly to "can fillers" or beauticians, but simply stopped promoting it as a
propellant and raised the price to discourage its use. The documents show clearly
that chemical companies did so not out of concern for public health, but because
the "unlimited potential for product liability claims" outweighed "the limited
commercial value of the aerosol propellant market." (view entire document)

Aerosol Age, a trade magazine, reported as early as April 1964 that vinyl chloride
levels in the air of beauty parlors where hair spray was used could exceed levels
later found to cause cancer in laboratory animals. (view entire document) By 1969,
according to a memo from an executive at B.F. Goodrich, one of the makers of
VCM: "People in the cosmetics trade have [become] concerned about the possible
toxicity of these propellants." (view entire document)

With good reason. The B.F. Goodrich memo presents calculations showing the
concentration of vinyl chloride in a "typical small hair dressers' room." They
estimate that if a beauty operator, using hair spray propelled by VCM, styled 20
customers in an eight-hour day, the average level of VCM in the air would be 250
parts per million (ppm) and could spike as high as 1,400 ppm. (view entire document)

At the time, the "safe" threshold for industrial exposures was considered to be 500
ppm, but by the early 1970s, top medical officials and executives for VCM
manufacturers believed the chemical was carcinogenic at far lower levels. In 1974,
workplace standards for VCM were dropped to 1 part per million. The B.F. Goodrich
memo, after reviewing this evidence, concludes: "Beauty operators may be
exposed to concentrations of [VCM] equal to or greater than the level" for chemical
plant employees. (view entire document)

A Union Carbide memo dated November 23, 1971, clearly acknowledges that a
study had found that VCM exposure causes tumors. (view entire document) A year
later, the company acknowledged internally that beauty operators were at greater
cancer risk than chemical workers. (view entire document) And yet over a year later
MCA, the predecessor of the Chemical Manufacturers Association was still advising
VCM manufacturers to publicly make "no reference . . . to the question of
carcinogens." (view entire document)

Industry documents provide a detailed, though still incomplete, record of how the
chemical companies deliberately withheld critical public health data, secretly
schemed to limit their liability to lawsuits and finally tried to make their problem go
away quietly.

According to minutes of a January 30, 1973 meeting, the Manufacturing Chemists

Association's vinyl chloride research team, with representatives from Dow, PPG,
B.F. Goodrich, Ethyl Corporation, Union Carbide, and other major companies, met
to discuss what position the MCA should convey to its member companies regarding
the continued use of vinyl chloride as an aerosol propellant. Their primary concern
was to avoid "undue and premature attention on the industrial hygiene aspects of
the problem," and they dealt with it by taking no position. (view entire document)

Not only was the MCA avoiding public discussion of VCM use in aerosols, they were
also hiding the evidence that VCM causes cancer. At that same meeting in January
1973, they discussed a proposed industry sponsored VCM research project to be
carried out by Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories: "It was the consensus of those
present that... it would be appropriate to release such information [about the
research project] to the press. There will be no reference to the European studies
and the nature of the project is to be referred to as a chronic inhalation study
without reference to the question of carcinogenesis." (view entire document)

In the months following the meeting, internal memos from various chemical companies in attendance
provide additional details of the discussion. Again and again, the chemical makers returned to a
comparison of liability vs. profitability. They weighed the clear risks of cancer to tens of thousands of
women against their bottom line, and the bottom line won.

(view entire document)

 (view entire document)

(view entire document)

Vinyl chloride makers had a problem. Since 1958 they had marketed VCM as a safe
alternative to CFCs. How could they get out of the VCM business without raising
suspicion about its safety? In an internal Allied Chemical Company memo, based
upon a conversation with a Dow employee and the chair of the Vinyl Chloride
Research Coordinators committee states that Dow "would like to get out of the sale
of VCM as aerosol propellant but doesn't know quite how to do it. Thinking behind
this was not explored but suspect that fear is of spot-lighting the health concern."
(view entire document)

In a document dated March 13, 1973, VCM maker Allied Chemical received startlingly frank advice on
this dilemma. After a brief review of the uses, hazards, history, legal exposures, and possible
developments of the VCM aerosol propellant issue, the document concludes with the "Options open to
Allied Chemical."

(view entire document)

All evidence suggests that Allied Chemical chose "c.1.," a passive withdrawal from
the market. The company simply stopped selling VCM as an aerosol propellant, only
making "personal visits to substantial fillers" to discreetly advise its biggest
customers why they were cutting them off. (view entire document)

Allied, and some other VCM manufacturers, also did something very strange for a
profit-driven company: They deliberately raised the price of VCM to discourage
sales. "All indications [were] that the use of VC [as an aerosol propellant were]
ended for financial reasons." (view entire document) At the time, observant public
health scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
wondered: "Why did they do that unless they suspected something wrong?"
(Today's Health, September 1974, pp. 71-72) (view entire document) NIOSH found out
ten months later.

In January 1974, B.F. Goodrich disclosed the results of studies linking VCM
exposure to cancer in rats. This information led to a recall of 100,000 bottles of
Clairol products, an FDA ban on VCM use in drugs and cosmetics (view entire
document), a similar ban by EPA for pesticides (view entire document), and a ban by the
Consumer Protection Safety Commission (CPSC). (view entire document)

By then, of course, the chemical industry had allowed years and years of VCM
usage with the full knowledge that it posed a risk of cancer to tens of thousands of
women working as beauticians. How many of them developed cancer as a result?
We still don't know.

More than 25 years later, many beauty products, from nail polish to shampoo, still
contain chemicals that either lack rigorous, independent health testing for safety or
are allowed in beauty products despite known hazards to human health. EWG's
January 2001 Beauty Secrets report tells the story of one such chemical in
cosmetics.