Harvard Tests Reveal Liver Poisoned By Widely Used Factory Chemicals

An injury to the liver that may lead to death from subsequent attacks of what otherwise would be relatively harmless diseases has been traced to fumes from certain widely used chemicals by Dr. Cecil K. Drinker, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, and his associates.

The chemicals responsible are complex compounds of chlorine and naphthalene, recognized for some time as the cause of skin diseases affecting industrial workers handling them. The higher the amount of chlorine present in the compound, the greater the damage, both to the skin and to the liver, Dr. Drinker has found.

The research, the first ever conducted on systematic effects of these fumes, was undertaken after three apparently healthy workmen handling the chemicals contracted jaundice which rapidly turned into yellow atrophy of the liver.

Recovery Difficult

The most dangerous aspect of the fumes, Dr. Drinker emphasized, is that the worker is apparently in good health and shows absolutely no clinical symptoms, although his liver is becoming possible prey for disease. This organ is the only one affected by the fumes but acording to the experiments, recovery from this weakening is very slow even if the worker is no longer exposed to the fumes and can avoid liver complications.

Industry has no substitute that would permit elimination of the dangerous chemicals but Dr. Drinker's tests show that if the concentration of their fumes in the air is kept below a certain point, there is no danger.

"Fortunately," he said, "it is easy to ventilate processes of manufacture which require these substances and to reduce air contamination practically to the vanishing point. Such treatment of the problem at once removes both the possibility of systematic poisoning and the annoyances that rise from cases of acne."

The experiments, conducted over a period of almost a year, were made with white rates which are exposed to carefully regulated amounts of four mixtures of the chemical fumes, each containing varying amounts of chlor- ine

Exposures were for 16 hours a day, six day's a week and the concentrations used, Dr. Drinker said, were fairly representative of industrial experience as shown by tests in some 30 factories.

Liver Always Suffers

The have animals were perfectly normal even after considerable exposure, Dr. Danker reported, but autopsy examinations showed that all the mixtures, except the least chlorinated, had attacked the liver. The least chlorinated, was also found to affect the liver to some extend but only under extreme conditions which workmen would never experience.

Companies his results with isolated human cases, Dr. Drinker reasoned that the worker: who succumbed might have suffered unnoticeable liver changes from the fumes which made them easy victims of relatively innocuous diseases. To check this he took rats which had been exposed to the fumes and which had supposedly suffered liver injuries and administered a treatment known to attack that organ.

Results Conclusive

The result were conclusive. The least chlorinated mixture had no bar effects, as was expected, but raia exposed to more complex compounds developed serious liver ailments with a high percentage of details.

From the research Dr. Drinker has been able to set standards of air purity which can be maintained by ventilation and which will ensure freedom of the workers from possible injury. The simple compound, trichlornapthalene can be present up to 10 milksops per cubic meter of air without ill effects. The more complex compounds, tetrachlornaphthalene, pentachlornap thalene, hexachloranapthalene and chlorinated biphenyl, can be present at safely only to the extend of half a milligram per cubic meter.

The research was sponsored by the Halowax Corporation of New York, a division of the Bakelite Corporation