By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor

There’s something in the popcorn.

Government agencies say consumers are safe, but workers exposed day in and day out to diacetyl, a butter-flavored chemical additive, are coming down with severe lung diseases at an alarming rate. That includes workers in the chemical factories that make the stuff, as well as workers in plants making microwave popcorn.

Lung diseases that are almost never found in patients under 40 years old, like bronchiolitis obliterans (chronic scarring of the airways), are turning up among workers exposed to diacetyl. Diacetyl workers are also being diagnosed with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema and severe lung impairment at far higher rates than normal.

Late last year, the Teamsters Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers appealed to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to do something about it. Both unions are affiliated with the Change to Win labor federation.

In June, 14 members of Congress, led by Democrat Lynn Woolsey of California, introduced a bill to speed things up. House Resolution 2693, the Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act, would require OSHA to issue rules limiting exposure, set up medical monitoring of exposed workers, and require protective equipment and safer procedures.

Diacetyl is used for aroma and taste in butter, some cheeses and in snack and bakery products. It occurs naturally in butter and in beer, but not in the concentrated form workers are exposed to. It’s another case of the saying “the dose makes the poison” — something safe at low levels becomes harmful when concentrated, and in this case inhaled.

In March 2004, a Missouri jury ordered International Flavors and Fragrances, Inc. and a subsidiary to pay $20 million to a former microwave popcorn worker whose lungs were so badly injured as to require a lung transplant.

The San Francisco-based Lieff Cabraser law firm is representing a growing list of diacetyl plaintiffs in lawsuits. [Lieff Cabraser also represents Wal-Mart workers in a class-action suit over off-the-clock work.]

Lieff Cabraser attorney Steve Cassidy said there are no diacetyl plaintiffs in Oregon or Washington yet. Oregon OSHA has been monitoring what’s been happening at the federal level, says spokesperson Kevin Weeks, but it’s not clear there are manufacturing plants in Oregon that are exposing workers to diacetyl on an ongoing basis. If a federal standard goes into effect, state agencies would be required within six months to adopt it or set their own standards at least as vigorous.

In this case, California OSHA has been out in front of federal OSHA on diacetyl. The California Assembly passed legislation to urge Cal-OSHA to make the regulation of diacetyl a high priority, and Cal-OSHA has begun screening flavoring industry workers before and after exposure to diacetyl.

But California Labor Federation legislative advocate Jeremy Smith is also concerned about the risk to other kinds of workers who are exposed, like bakery workers adding butter flavoring to icing.

Though the companies that make diacetyl are nonunion, Smith has been attending California OSHA meetings about diacetyl for a year, thanks to a state law that gives organized labor a seat at the table with industry when new safety rules are worked out. Occupational safety experts from UFCW and Teamsters headquarters have also been flying out to attend the meetings.

“Unfortunately, they’re not testing downstream users,” Smith said. “For example, go into a grocery store, to the bakery counter, where they're frosting a birthday cake. They’re probably around some level of diacetyl.”

“NIOSH [the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health] has been looking at it for 15 years,” Smith said, “and they can’t put their finger on permissible exposure level.”