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NEWS & LETTERS, July 2002
Velsicol workers fight toxic poisoningMemphis, Tenn.—I started working for Velsicol Chemical
Company in January 1990 as a utility worker and worked up to a maintenance
mechanic. On May 24, 1994, my supervisor, the shift supervisor and the
department supervisor met me in the department that makes heptachlor and
pentadiene and wanted me to take aluminum insulation off an eight-foot-long
vessel that housed chlorine gas. It was actually an OSHA violation to have me touch the
vessel because it was still in operation and they knew that it was a leak. But
they don't like to lose the downtime by shutting down production. It takes
almost a day for production to come back up. I started taking the insulation off and the supervisor
said he smelled chlorine. Even though I couldn't smell it, I knew I had been
chlorinated. It happens all the time at Velsicol. When we get chlorinated they
tell us to get peppermint and oxygen. I was gasping for air. I tried some
peppermint out of the candy machine, but as I got outside I couldn't move. I was
coughing and sweating profusely. A worker drove me to the nurse's station, where they
tried to figure out how to use the oxygen. The nurse was gone for the day. She
got back and mixed a breathing solution that didn't do anything for me. My wife said I was gasping all night. My physician told
me the chlorine shocked my body into an asthmatic state, and I didn't have
enough oxygen in my blood. From that point on I experienced a snowball effect. I asked the president of the union, OCAW (now PACE)
Local 3-357, what to do about my chest. We went to the nurse, who drove me to my
primary physician. The doctor told the plant nurse that the environment at
Velsicol was killing me, and she took me off work as of that day. But when we
got back to the plant, the personnel manager chastised the nurse until she
cried. Velsicol never wanted me to file for worker's
compensation. They would call the house and tell my wife they would take care of
things. I was denied worker's comp because Velsicol said the accident never
happened—I have the incident report and the statement of the emergency room
doctor. One witness told me that Velsicol wanted him to lie. He told the union
local, but the union refused to take a position on my case. I was denied benefits on the long-term disability
insurance that I was paying for because they say I'm still employable. If I
couldn't have gone to the VA hospital, there would've been no way for me to
receive medical care. I get a shot every week and it takes three days to get
back around. Whenever it gets hot I feel like I'm suffocating. Inhaling carbon tetrachloride when making heptachlor and
chlordane did something to me, but it wasn't considered a big deal. My breathing
had gone down every year from 1990 to 1994 on a pulmonary function test, but
their doctor never said anything. It's happening to all the workers. One guy who I'd never
known to be sick said he was hoarse one day. I never saw him again. He died.
There are workers there that I know that are sick, and people are dying in the
community (See June N&L). Velsicol never tells workers about the community
meetings because they don't want the public to know what they've done to the
workers. So why would they be concerned with the people outside that gate? I would like to see justice for me as well as for the
people that work inside the plant, and those who live around it.
—Rodney McCray |
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