Exposed: Deadly legacy of rayon mills inWales
A new book claims that chemical carbon disulfide used at textile factories was linked to increased heart attack risk. Owen Hughes reports...
THE “deadly history” of carbon disulfide use in Courtaulds’ Flintshire factories is exposed in a new book by an American doctor investigating the toxic chemical.
North Wales was once at the heart of the rayon industry in the UK with thousands employed at Courtaulds’ sites at Flint and Holywell.
Now Dr Paul D Blanc, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California, has revealed his findings from “detective work” exploring how carbon disulfide is linked to severe illness, including mental derangement, heart attack and stroke.
His book Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon, claims the plants were a “death sentence” for many workers.
Dr Blanc said: “This highly toxic chemical has been the lifeblood of the viscose industry from the start.
“It also has meant a death sentence for many of its workers.”
Dr Blanc meticulously researched company, medical, and government records around the globe, and included extensive coverage of Courtaulds’ three rayon mills in North Wales.
He also took note of the online postings of retired employees and their families, including the remembrance that women could perm their hair simply by being on the job due to high levels of sulphur fumes in the workroom atmosphere.
In the 1950s Richard Schilling, a research physician specialising in occupational disease, started a study looking at the link between carbon disulfide exposure and heart disease among workers at the three Flintshire plants at Greenfield (Holywell), Castle (Flint), and Aber (Flint).
Supported by factory physician John Tiller and Dr Jerry Morris, a renowned Scottish epidemiologist with the Medical Research Council, they studied health records to compare the proportion of deaths from cardiac arrest among exposed workers to the general population.
Their initial findings uncovered major disparities between the death rates of rayon workers and the rest of the population.
They needed access to employment records to study this further, but it is claimed Courtaulds withheld this information for a number of years before finally releasing them.
In 1968 the paper by Tiller, Schilling and Morris appeared in the British Medical Journal.
It found among rayon-spinning operatives, aged 45-64, the rate of coronary heart disease was just under twice that expected.
A similar study in Finland in 1970 confirmed the finding of increased risk of heart attack from carbon disulfide.
Dr Blanc said: “From the first publication of the Tiller, Schilling and Morris report, the rayon industry saw the link between carbon disulfide and heart disease as a serious matter.
“Its response was not to support calls for stricter standards, however, but rather to show that any potential problem had already gone away.”
Despite various studies around the globe, coronary disease in rayon workers has never been officially prescribed as a work-related condition in the UK.
In spite of Tiller’s report for the British Department of Health and Social Security, his own boss, Dr W R Henwood, told the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council in 1978 that a “two to three times increase in incidence, especially when based on mortality statistics, comes nowhere near satisfying the requirements for prescription”.
They agreed with that argument with the Advisory Council refusing to classify it as a work-related condition, which would have led to claims for compensation.
By then the sector was in demise in north Wales and between 1977 and 1989 the mills closed their doors.
But Dr Blanc believes the health impacts may continue to linger.
Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon is published by Yale University Press, London.