Corporate policies on reproductive hazards hit For the first time ever, workers from different industries gathered in Washington, D.C., to share and discuss their experiences in confronting reproductive hazards in the workplace. The conference was sponsored by the Coalition for the Reproductive Rights of Workers (CRROW). The coalition, formed in 1979, includes major labor unions and political and social activist organizations concerned with defending the employment rights and reproductive freedom of workers who are exposed to toxic chemicals and similar industrial hazards. In her keynote address, Congresswoman Barbara Mikulski (D.-Md.) declared the issue to be "one of the most important moral questions of our time." In a feisty and fervent speech punctuated with bursts of sardonic humor, she assailed employers who exclude women—but not men—from hazardous jobs under the pretext of protecting the fetus. "Employers apparently believe that only women are participants in the reproductive process," she gibed. Corporate policy makers are not really motivated by a "concern for the unborn," she says, but rather by a self-serving desire to protect themselves from possible economic losses, such as might be incurred through lawsuits filed by injured women workers. Mikulski reaffirmed her belief that "no worker, male or female, should ever have to choose between a good job and good health [or] between layoffs and sterilization." That was a reference to the case of five women workers at American Cyanamid's Willow Island, W.Va., plant, who disclosed in early 1979 that
they had been forced to undergo sterilization in order to keep their jobs in the plant's lead pigment section. One of those women, Lola Rymer, a member of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers International Union, explained the circumstances of her sterilization during the conference's panel discussion. A similar incident took place at an Allied Chemical plant in Danville, III, notes Frank D. Martino, president of the International Chemical Workers Union. The company decided to exclude all women from the plant to prevent their exposure to a certain fluorocarbon that the company said might harm the fetus. According to Martino, Allied did not survey the literature to determine whether the fluorocarbon also posed health hazards to male workers. Two of the women had themselves sterilized in order to retain their jobs. Later, the company reversed itself and offered to reinstate the women, announcing that the fluorocarbon was not harmful to the fetus after all. This episode, Martino said, illustrates how companies "make major
Human X chromosome fragments cloned
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine have used gene-splicing techniques to clone fragments of the human X chromosome for the first time. The future availability of these cloned fragments, the researchers say, will provide a means of exploring the organization of the human X chromosome, and lead to a clearer understanding of the chemical regulation of genes and chromosomes. Eventually, such knowledge could result in better diagnosis of some important hereditary diseases. Molecular biologist Stanley F. Wolf and coworkers Cristina E. Mareni and Barbara R. Migeon extracted DNA from human cells rich in X chromosomes. After fragmenting the DNA with restriction enzyme, they inserted DNA pieces into a growing strain of the bacterium Escherichia coli, which then began producing copies of genes on the X chromosome [Cell, 21, 95 (1980)]. The isolated cloned fragments constitute only a minuscule fraction of the entire X chromosome, Wolf notes. But the experiment is a step toward their long-term goal of constructing an entire X chromosome Mikulski: important moral questions from cloned fragments.
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C&EN Sept. 1, 1980
political decisions by manipulating and distorting facts to suit their narrow economic interests. At best, companies left to their own devices will make mistakes and then apologize." Martino also brought up the case of Oryzalin, a herbicide that was manufactured for Eli Lilly & Co. at a GAF Corp. plant in Rensselaer, N.Y. Oryzalin has been blamed for causing birth defects and early death among infants of male workers at the plant. Nick Crudo, one of the affected workers, fought back tears as he told the conferees about his five-year-old son, who already has had two major open-heart operations because of a heart defect. The Oryzalin story, said Martino, is "a classic example of corporate coverup, uncovered . . . by the workers acting on their own suspicion." The solution to the problem of reproductive hazards, all the speakers agreed, is not to remove the worker, but to clean up the workplace. Following the panel discussion, workshops were held to address such issues as recognizing, documenting, and eliminating workplace hazards, and fighting discriminatory employer policies. D Wolf is particularly interested in fathoming one of the unsolved puzzles of human biology: why one of the two X chromosomes present in every cell of a normal human female mysteriously "turns off and remains genetically inactive. Understanding how this molecular mechanism works is a goal of their research. According to Wolf, more than 150 diseases, such as hemophilia and muscular dystrophy, are believed to arise from defects in the X chromosome. Once an entire X chromosome is cloned, he predicts, it will be possible to associate specific DNA sequences with genetic diseases. It then would be possible to identify parents who are at risk of passing a genetic disease on to their children. •
Ethanol output won't reach DOE's goals U.S. government goals for production of fuel ethanol are not realistic, according to William A. Rains, executive vice president of Roger Williams Technical & Economic Services, Princeton, N.J. Rains told the American Section of the Societe de Chemie Industrielle in New York City that his study suggests actual U.S. production potential of fuel ethanol is 4 billion to 5
