PCBs may be linked to back problems and arthritis, according to recent studies. Research is currently underway in other areas of the Great Lakes on this issue, and articles recently appeared in New York state describing back problems in workers exposed to PCBs (see below).   Spinal disk degeneration and joint diseases may be closely associated with the neuropathies indicated in the previous health section. (See Peripheral Neuropathy and PCBs).

Study Result: (science journal abstract)
 

"In 1979, a mass poisoning involving 2,000 people occurred in central Taiwan from ingestion of cooking oil contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs). We studied the prevalence of medical conditions in the exposed individuals and in a neighborhood control group. Starting with a registry of the exposed individuals from 1983, we updated the addresses of exposed individuals and identified a control group matched for age, sex, and neighborhood in 1979. In 1993, individuals 30 years of age or older were interviewed by telephone. We obtained usable information from 795 exposed subjects and 693 control subjects. Lifetime prevalence of chloracne, abnormal nails, hyperkeratosis, skin allergy, goiter, headache, gum pigmentation, and broken teeth were observed more frequently in the PCB/PCDF-exposed men and women. The exposed women reported anemia 2.3 times more frequently than controls. The exposed men reported arthritis and herniated intervertebral disks 4.1 and 2.9 times, respectively, more frequently than controls. There was no difference in reported prevalences of other medical conditions. We conclude that Taiwanese people exposed to high levels of PCBs and PCDFs reported more frequent medical problems, including skin diseases, goiter, anemia, and joint and spine diseases."

Reference: Guo YL, Yu ML, Hsu CC, Rogan WJ. Chloracne, goiter, arthritis, and anemia after polychlorinated biphenyl poisoning: 14-year follow-Up of the Taiwan Yucheng cohort. Environ Health Perspect 1999 Sep;107(9):715-9. National Cheng Kung University Medical College, Tainan, Taiwan.

News Articles:

By THOM RANDALL, The Post-Star, Glens Falls, New York --- Sunday, May 13, 2001
randall@poststar.com

FORT EDWARD, NY -- Several workers who mucked around in PCB-contaminated sludge during Hudson River dredging projects 25 years ago have suffered spinal disc degeneration, a condition linked to PCB exposure, a leading public health researcher said last week.
 

The workers were exposed to sludge that government reports say contained high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, a class of persistent, bioaccumulating oily chemicals. PCBs were banned in the mid-1970s after they were associated with health and environmental problems. In a 1974-1975 dredging project and a 1977 follow-up effort, workers scooped up, loaded and hauled away tons of contaminated sludge, but wore virtually no protective gear to shield them from exposure. Dr. David Carpenter, professor of Environmental Health and Toxicology at the University at Albany, said that, regardless of the claims of General Electric, medical scientists have established that PCBs cause a wide variety of human health problems, including cancer. Several series of scientific studies, he said, have linked spinal degeneration with exposure to elevated levels of environmental PCBs, including several studies sponsored by the Canadian federal agency Health Canada. Those studies tracked the health of people living around the Great Lakes in areas with elevated levels of PCBs in the environment. "These Health Canada studies show a striking elevation in spinal disc disease associated with PCB exposure," Carpenter said.

Another study tracked people in Taiwan who were exposed to PCB-tainted cooking oil. Offspring of those exposed were 2.9 times more likely than a control group to develop spinal disc diseases, Carpenter said. 

Of nine men who worked on the local dredging project and whose physical conditions The Post-Star was able to learn, four reported that they suffer from deteriorating discs in their spines. 

Peter Roberson of Greenwich worked as a mechanic on the 1974-75 dredging job, repairing heavy equipment. He said he routinely came in contact with the river sludge. Roberson said he is now considered 50 percent disabled, and is not working, because of a variety of health problems including deteriorated discs in his back and neck. 

Mark Parisi, said he had limited contact with the sludge, having served as a highway flagman for the project most all of the time. He reported no serious health problems. 

Ed Ovitt, 62, of Greenfield Center, was a laborer in both the 1974-1975 dredging project and the 1977 follow-up effort. He said Thursday he has not experienced any chronic back problems, but he was diagnosed three years ago with diabetes.

Art Meade, a bulldozer operator in the early dredging project, died about 17 years ago, his widow Katrina Meade said. Meade was a heavy smoker and died of emphysema, she said, not recalling any back-related problems.

Ken Gaylord, 69, of Melrose, said this week he has experienced problems with spinal degeneration. He was diagnosed a year ago with two ruptured discs in his back and underwent an operation Sept. 6 in which bone was cut out and discs were fused, he said. "I always thought it was because of heavy lifting through the years," he said Wednesday. A crane operator in the 1974-1975 dredging project, Gaylord said he had a lot of contact with the dredged sludge. "I wallowed around in the stuff."

Edward Valentine also suffered from deteriorating discs, which eventually spread through his backbone, said his son, Michael Valentine. Edward's backbone started deteriorating in the early 1990s, and got progressively worse, Michael said. Michael Valentine, now 47 and a planner for Saratoga County, said he also is dealing with a spine problem. About three years ago, he said, he was X-rayed and was diagnosed with a deteriorating disc. Michael now suffers the symptoms that his father experienced beginning several years before his death -- occasional numbness and tingling in his limbs, and acute, recurring headaches. "Sometimes, it just hurts like hell," he said.

Doug Shaw, a foreman on the job in 1974 and 1975, said he had plenty of contact with contaminated sludge on a daily basis during the dredging project. Now 54, he has suffered from severe arthritis of the spine, he said, a condition that was diagnosed when he was 40 years old. His mobility is limited, and pain and numbness come and go in his spine and hip, he said. "Doctors tell me there's no cure," he said.

By THOM RANDALL, The Post-Star, Glens Falls, New York
randall@poststar.com

"The muck was all over the machines, and we'd get it all over us. But none of the workers knew what they were dealing with. Maybe the state or an agency knew, but we never heard that PCBs were there." --- Peter Roberson of Greenwich, one of the workers on the Hudson River dredging projects in the mid-1970s

FORT EDWARD, NY -- Michael Valentine walked along the shore of Rogers Island on Tuesday, gazing across the Hudson River where he had helped his father and dozens of other construction workers about 25 years ago scooping up and hauling away more than a million tons of PCB-laden sludge.

The large-scale dredging project used earthmovers and cranes with clamshell buckets operating in the river. The workers who were running the machines, and wading into the polluted river themselves, didn't know that they were working directly in muck that was highly contaminated, Valentine said.

Michael's father Edward Valentine -- the dredging project manager -- died in September of a rare blood disease. Michael Valentine remembers doctors saying the illness that sapped the life out of this strong, active man could have been caused by exposure to PCBs in the river.

The Post-Star interviewed half-a-dozen workers last week who had direct contact with the contaminated sludge, working without protective suits and without taking other precautions that would now be required. The workers said this week about half of their original group have died, most of them from cancer. Those surviving reported a variety of ailments, including deterioration of the spine, which a prominent medical researcher said has a strong statistical link to PCB exposure.

"We didn't wear any protective suits or respirators to do our work, we just wore regular work shoes, jeans and T-shirts and didn't even wear gloves," Michael Valentine said. "None of us knew what PCBs were or what they did, and it really ticks me off that the information wasn't publicized back then."

About 900,000 cubic yards of polluted sludge was dredged out of the river in the mid-'70s and either pushed up on shore or hauled in open dump trucks and dumped off West Road in Moreau. The dredging operation was undertaken with the purpose of clearing the river channel.

For about 30 years before those dredging projects, General Electric had been dumping polychlorinated biphenyls in the Hudson River from its capacitor manufacturing plants upriver in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls. Last December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommended a new large-scale dredging project, to scoop out and suck up 2.65 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment from "hot spots" along 40 miles of the river from Fort Edward to Troy. General Electric, facing the estimated $460 million cost of such a project, has spent between $10 million and $15 million in ads fighting it.

A final decision on the EPA proposal is expected in mid-August. This dredging project would be conducted more cautiously than the projects in the '70s. Much of the contamination would be sucked out of the river and treated to remove PCBs, and silt filtration curtains would be used in the water to block the spread of pollution, according to EPA plans.

In 1974, Edward Valentine was the Hudson River dredging project manager for D.A. Collins of Mechanicville, which ran the two clean-up efforts in the Hudson River during the mid-1970s under a contract with the state. Just months before Valentine died last September, he and his wife Beverly filed a $6 million lawsuit, set forth in a four-page claim now on file in the Saratoga County clerk's office.

The lawsuit claims GE was negligent in discharging PCBs into the river, creating a health hazard, and that GE failed to warn Valentine and D.A. Collins of the risks of working in PCB-contaminated sludge. The lawsuit seeks restitution for Beverly and repayment of medical bills.

Scientists across the globe have contended that PCBs bioaccumulate in the food chain, persist for decades or centuries in the environment, cause reproductive deformities and developmental problems in humans and animals, and cause cancer and lesions in some wildlife.

GE spokesman Mark Behan offers a different view. "Twenty years of human health research has shown no association between exposure to PCBs and deaths from cancer or any other serious disease," he said. Behan said it is GE's policy not to discuss lawsuits. He added that it was the state, and not GE, that ordered the dredging in the mid-1970s.

News articles from the era and EPA reports describe how removal of a historic dam allowed a huge amount of polluted sludge to flow downstream. A timber and rock dam, which since 1817 spanned the Hudson River near the Irving Tissue Mill in Fort Edward, was dismantled in late 1973 by its owner, Niagara Mohawk, with the approval of federal and state agencies.

River of toxins

It was the dam's removal, and a subsequent spring flood, that washed thousands of tons of sludge tainted with high concentrations of lead, PCBs, and other industrial metals and chemicals downstream, according to government reports. Tons of wood debris, sewage, cinders from furnaces in upstream mills, sand and industrial waste flowed downstream, choking the waterway that for centuries had served as the vital lifeline to North Country communities.

The state responded by ordering a dredging project in 1974, which lasted several seasons. A follow-up dredging effort was conducted in 1977.

Retired D.A. Collins crane operator Ken Gaylord, now 69, worked for two seasons in the earlier project. Gaylord, a resident of Melrose, recalled Tuesday how sloppy the work was. He scooped up riverbottom sediment, and used it to build a roadway in the river several feet above the water for the crane to sit on, he said. The crane operators worked from one end of Rogers Island to the other, scooping up debris and sludge, throwing it behind them in huge piles, he said.

Other workers would load it into dump trucks, which would drive off with inky liquid spilling out the back as they headed toward the disposal site on West River Road in Moreau.

"A lot of that ... would leak right out of the trucks' tailgates," he said.

"We got that stuff all over us," he said. "I'd get it on my hands changing cables, then you'd just dunk your hands in the river and eat lunch. It would get all over your clothes. You'd get covered with this muck every day. Then after my shift was done, I'd run a power broom over the road between Rogers' Island and the dumpsite, and it would make a dust cloud. I ate a lot of that dust." Back in those days, workers weren't aware of any risks associated with exposure to the sediment or its dust, Gaylord said.

Things have changed. By the early '90s, workers were wearing full-body protective suits and respirators to remove dirt on the banks of the Hudson River containing low levels of PCBs.

Today, environmental dredging projects aim to stir up as little muck as possible, sucking sediment from the river bottom to the shore for treatment and disposal. Measures are taken to prevent dust or airborne contaminates. Equipment is cleaned and wash water is purified. Residue from treatment processes is handled as toxic waste.

It was far different in the mid-1970s, when the oily, rotting wood chips, cinders and sludge from upstream mills, contaminated with toxic PCBs and heavy metals, were pulled out of the river and dumped, and workers handled the contaminated sediment without any warning from government agencies, employers, or manufacturers, Mike Valentine said.

Some workers waded knee-deep in the polluted muck, and others were up to their elbows in it, he said.

No warnings

Marion Trieste, a spokeswoman for Scenic Hudson, said companies like GE knew as long ago as the 1930s that PCBs were an environmental hazard and posed risks. She provided reprints of old articles from the Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology, which cite "systemic poisoning," deaths, liver atrophy, and skin irritations associated with exposure to PCBs and other chlorinated hydrocarbons and petrochemicals. By 1969, PCBs were widely recognized as a dangerous chemical and efforts began to replace them in industrial processes with more benign substances.

But the Hudson River workers weren't warned of any risks, said Peter Roberson of Greenwich. He worked as a mechanic on the dredging job, repairing cranes, bulldozers and other heavy equipment.

"Sometimes I would have to lie on the ground to repair machines," he said. "The muck was all over the machines, and we'd get it all over us. But none of the workers knew what they were dealing with. Maybe the state or an agency knew, but we never heard that PCBs were there."

Roberson and the other workers said that metal on the equipment would deteriorate quickly and tires would rot, and so would their shoes. River workers were puzzled by these effects, which they had not noticed on similar jobs, former D.A. Collins workers said last week.

Roberson is now considered 50 percent disabled, with a variety of health problems including deteriorated discs in his back and neck. 

Edward Valentine also suffered from deteriorating discs, which eventually spread through his backbone, along with numbness and tingling in his limbs. His body eventually lost its ability to produce normal blood components, a condition called myelodysplagia.

Michael Valentine, now a planner for Saratoga County, said Tuesday he also was dealing with deteriorating disks, and beginning to experience recurring numbness in his limbs. Several years ago, he and his wife lost a child before birth -- its internal organs were formed outside of its body, he said. Some scientists and environmentalists have linked similar developmental defects to exposure to PCBs.

"It's kind of freaky," Valentine said about his aching back and recurring headaches, symptoms that his father had experienced beginning a few years before his death. "I keep wondering whether these symptoms are coincidences, or are they related to PCB exposure?"

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