This article is part of the collection of writings of Marshall (Mike) Westfall, retired autoworker from General Motors in Flint, Michigan (1964-1994) and activist critic of the auto industry restructuring that led to devastating job losses. It originally appeared online in The Westfall Papers. [ http://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id127.html, accessed 12/14/2011

Westfall, Marshall (Mike)

English

This article is part of the collection of writings of Marshall (Mike) Westfall, retired autoworker from General Motors in Flint, Michigan (1964-1994) and activist critic of the auto industry restructuring that led to devastating job losses. It originally appeared online in The Westfall Papers. [ http://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id127.html, accessed 12/14/2011]Toxic_Time_Bomb__Legacy_Cost_Of_The_Auto_Industry.pdf: 791 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

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Toxic Time Bomb: The True Legacy Cost of the Auto Industry

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Toxic Time Bomb: The True Legacy Cost of the Auto Industry 
Michael Westfall 
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Toxic Time Bomb: The True Legacy Cost of the Auto Industry 
Abstract 
This article is part of the collection of writings of Mike (Marshall) Westfall, retired autoworker from 
General Motors in Flint, Michigan (1964-1994) and activist critic of the auto industry restructuring that led 
to devastating job losses. It originally appeared online in The Westfall Papers. [ 
http://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id127.html, accessed 12/14/2011] 
This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/westfall/4 
TOXIC TIME BOMB / LEGACY COST OF THE AUTO INDUSTRY
http://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id127.html[11/2/2011 10:24:35 AM]
                            
                                  Mike Westfall
                                  4-2009
 TOXIC TIME BOMB / THE TRUE LEGACY COST OF THE AUTO INDUSTRY
America’s deep recession has exacerbated issues within problematic industries, and there are those looking
for a scapegoat. One of the most focused upon industries today is the auto industry. The scapegoats are the
defenseless hard pressed auto retirees who have dedicated a lifetime of difficult work putting America on
wheels.
 
Who is really paying the legacy costs of this ill run industry? Are these retirees to blame, or are they the
actual victims?
 
We have all heard the media reports that our domestic auto retirees’ healthcare benefits are a primary reason
for the downward slide of the domestic auto industry. Could it just be that these stressed retirees have been
unfairly labeled as expendable legacy costs? It appears that the retirees’ life and death healthcare benefits
have been slotted for reduction or extinction by the companies, America’s elected government officials and
even their own top union leadership.
 
Working in American auto plants is unlike working for a bank, a grocery store, an office, Communications
Company, utility or most other safe industries. The potential for close and continuous exposure in these auto
factories to dangerous toxic elements is far different than these other jobs. That is why past UAW leaders
over the last fifty years negotiated healthcare benefits for workers and retirees.
 
The auto industry includes many essential manufacturing and parts factories that supply them. Industrial
towns and cities have depended upon these factories for the jobs and the tax base to support local
governments and the services they provide. Concurrently, the workers in these factories have trusted their
employers, unions and government health and safety agencies to protect them from toxic chemicals, pollution
and similar hazards of a lethal work environment.
Has this trust been deserved?
 
Many times serious health issues, which occur from decades of workplace exposure to unhealthy work
environments, do not surface until workers are retired. In the 1980’s I was the chairman of the UAW caucus
in power at the largest GM truck assembly plant in the world. One of our union benefits representatives, who
had written language for the national automotive agreements, would say in sarcastic gallows humor that he
could tell what department a worker worked in by their death certificate. Each department had its particular
set of potential health issues.
 
Autoworkers have been potentially exposed for long periods of time to a vast chemical-soup mixture of health
hazards unique to building automobiles. These include breathing paint vapors and solvents, the production
and plating of die cast parts, welding fumes, foundry work, pattern maker carcinogen exposure, asbestos
exposure, cutting fluids and many other potentially serious health dangers where identifiable toxic chemicals
and/or carcinogens were present. Brake shoes, and clutch plates were regularly made from asbestos. In the
automotive factories the heat pipes and water pipes were wrapped in deadly asbestos.
 
Asbestos fibers can lodge in the lining of the abdominal cavity, heart or lungs. They can cause asbestosis, a
dreadful lung scarring, and also increases the risk of many different cancers including lung, colon, esophagus
and stomach.
Asbestos related cancers have a long latency period; so many workers may not be diagnosed until decades
after exposure and retirement. Before the 1980’s, factory exposure to asbestos was especially high, and
many of those workers at risk are now retired.
 
In 2006 the Baltimore Sun reported that a scientist at the Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA)
was warned that he would be suspended if he would not remove “asbestos” warnings from a certificate about
the use of asbestos in automotive brake linings. In the article, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), said that the attempt
to change the OSHA document is what the auto industry and brake industry is doing to defend itself against
lawsuits from people who died from occupational exposure to asbestos.
 
In his 1993 book, WHO WILL TELL THE PEOPLE published by Simon and Schuster, author William Greider
TOXIC TIME BOMB / LEGACY COST OF THE AUTO INDUSTRY
http://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id127.html[11/2/2011 10:24:35 AM]
talks of a worried group of autoworkers from GM’s Lordstown division called WATCH (Workers Against Toxic
Chemical Hazards).
They were concerned about toxic chemical hazards at their GM factory and became alarmed at how many
coworkers in their plant were dieing prematurely. They began checking and found that between January 1987
and July 1988 seventy-five of their coworkers had died of cancer, leukemia, kidney disease and heart
diseases. Their mission was to warn the UAW, GM and the government of their findings.
 
Another autoworker cancer alarm was sounded in Detroit in 1979 when autoworkers raised concern about
suspected excess cancer among woodworking patternmakers. The Journal of Occupational Medicine backed
this up and reported that epidemiological studies have cited an increased risk of colorectal cancer among
automobile pattern and model makers.
 
A tremendous amount of metal is used in the production of automobiles, and another area of serious
autoworker health anxiety has been the deadly cutting fluids used in metal manufacturing. They can contain
carcinogenic chemicals and have been linked to serious pulmonary illnesses.
A 2005 study done on autoworkers that work with metalworking fluids conducted under the University of
Massachusetts by Dr. Ellen Eisen concluded that these workers may have a risk of developing prostrate cancer
with a latency period of around 25 years. This could put most of them into retirement.
These unique auto industry health issues are far from limited to General Motors or any of our other domestic
auto factories. A recent April 14, 2009 article in the Wiltshire Times in the UK reported that former
autoworkers have developed the asbestos related “Swindon Disease”. The article said that the cancer killer
mesothelioma was dubbed the “Swindon Disease” (the name of the town in the UK), because of the sheer
number of lives it has claimed in the town over the years. The article said “Asbestos was used for welding on
cars until the mid 1960s and used in other parts of the factory, including on steam pipes and in the boiler
room.”
There have also been very serious concerns expressed about automobile plastic operations and there have
been confirmation from other related industries that the resulting vapors and solvents used in plastics are
linked to lymphatic leukemia.
The EPA has listed indoor air pollution as one of the top five environmental risks to public health. In January
of 2006, the Ecology Center, based in Michigan, released an alarming paper titled “Toxic at Any Speed:
Chemicals in Cars and the Need for safe Alternatives” which discussed the dangerous health hazards
contained in automobile interiors.  Some of the chemicals in these interiors include polybrominated diphenyl
ethers and phthalates, which are used to soften the plastics in automobile interiors. The study explained how
these chemicals are linked to liver toxicity, impaired learning, birth defects, premature births and many other
serious health issues. The Ecology Center said autos are chemical reactors releasing toxins before you even
turn the engine on. They urged automakers to stop using these dangerous chemicals.
 
Most drivers are only in their vehicles for short periods of time compared to the autoworkers on the assembly
lines who work around these trim materials 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, year after year, and they
cannot roll their window down to get away. The up close and personal glues, solvents, carpet fumes,
headliner fibers and door panel vapors from thousands of ripe new cars going down the assembly line every
week, in addition to all the other factory toxicities, are all inhaled into these workers lungs.
 
Mike Bennett is the retired UAW local president of both Saturn in Springhill, Tennessee and UAW Local 326 in
Flint, Michigan, which represented GM’s now closed Flint Ternstedt Plant. The Flint GM Ternstedt factory did
die-casting. Cancer was the priority worker issue at this plant. Bennett said this General Motors’ factory had
rates of lung cancer up to three times normal and that the UAW International Union and the corporation both
ignored their responsibility to the young widows of the workers who died.
 
Bennett went on to state that behind the Ternstedt plant were huge settling ponds where plating fluids, die
cast waste water and chemicals full of toxic poisonous waste and heavy metal contaminants were pumped.
He said that many people in the surrounding area had wells for drinking water.
Bennett said, in addition to these chemical lakes of toxic material, the plant emitted tons of toxic material
from the furnaces and exhaust stacks and that the prevailing winds carried that material into the homes of
everyone in the area.
He said, General Motors doesn’t want to take any responsibility for the mismanagement or clean up of this
material, so they will ignore it. It was the workers in this plant that had to work around this dangerous toxic
waste.
Auto retirees have spent their working careers exposed to potentially dangerous toxic chemicals and
substances.
TOXIC TIME BOMB / LEGACY COST OF THE AUTO INDUSTRY
http://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id127.html[11/2/2011 10:24:35 AM]
 
It has long been a community concern about the toxic waste that these factories emit, but consider for a
moment how much more potent these toxic chemicals, solvents and substances have been at ground zero for
the retirees who spent decades working with and closely around them. Some of these substances that auto
retirees have had to contend with are Trimethylbenzene, which can impair blood coagulation, Glyco Ethers,
which are paint solvents and prolonged exposure can cause liver and kidney damage, anemia, tremors and
damage to their neurological system, Manganese and Manganese Compounds, which is used in batteries and
other industrial products and overexposure can cause emotional disturbances or a disease of the brain called
manganism, Formaldehyde, which the EPA classifies as a probable human carcinogen and Zylene, which can
cause confusion, dizziness and even death with prolonged exposure. These are just an exemplary few of the
dangerous toxic chemicals and substances that auto retirees may have been exposed to.
 
In 1994 an occupational disease panel posted a paper by Donald C. Cole, titled “Cancer in the Auto Industry”.
The paper covered GM, Ford and Chrysler. It discussed the consideration of compensation for those
autoworkers whose cancers may have been attributable to past exposures in the auto industry. This stark and
revealing paper covered male autoworker cancer risk studies relative to plant and occupation. Some of these
occupation / cancer entries included; Assembly plants : lymphomas, trachea, lung, stomach, pancreas,
Hodgkin’s. Ball Bearing production: pancreas, stomach. Die casting & electro-plating: lympho-reticulo
sarcomas, stomach. Engine plants: liver, bladder. Engine & Foundry plants:stomach, prostrate. Foundry:
pancreas, leukemia, lung. Stamping: leukemia, lung, stomach. Maintenance: pancreas. Mechanics/ Repairmen:
stomach, bladder, lymphopoietic, lung. Millwright: rectum, lung. Pattern makers: colon, brain, colorectal,
stomach. Spray Painters: colon. Tool & Die makers: digestive, lymphopoetic. Welders: lung, pancreas,
stomach.
 
The discussion phase of the paper did a review on the wide variety of mentioned auto plant cancers, which
indicated multiple exposures and potentially potent carcinogens. The paper stated that there are a number of
occupations and exposures that remain to be explored.
 
Auto retirees owned and paid for their healthcare benefits by wage diversions while working. They were not a
gift. Past union leaders negotiated these benefits because they knew of their tremendous life and death
importance. These benefits are part of the collective bargaining agreement between the UAW and the auto
companies and therefore legally binding. The government has no constitutional right to steal these benefits
from retirees.
 
The Voluntary Employee Benefits Association programs, (VEBA) are unfair ways for corporations to divest of
their retiree healthcare obligations. Retirees have no vote in the process. Since the auto retirees own their
healthcare benefits, the top UAW officials went to court to be able to negotiate and weaken them. Top UAW
officials and the auto companies then replaced the autoworkers’ retiree healthcare benefit program in 2005
with a VEBA, which totally altered and downgraded the defined retiree healthcare benefits program. It also
reallocated the supervision of the healthcare benefits to top UAW leaders.
 
Now UAW retirees are faced with a company which no longer has direct responsibility for their healthcare, a
seriously under funded healthcare VEBA administrated by the top union officials who have betrayed their
trust, and they are hammered daily by politicians and the national media who unfairly condemn them as
expendable legacy costs.
Top UAW officials have refused to vest retiree healthcare benefits over the years when they could have and
should have and also turned their backs on keeping up the retirees’ pensions with inflation increases. Auto
retirees have fallen further and further behind. This will deny auto retirees the ability to pay for their own
health care benefits from their meager pensions.
 
The dual standard and dissimilarity between the top union officials’ pensions and common auto retirees’
pensions could not be sharper, because the top union officials who agreed to the negotiating of the retirees’
VEBA will retire on safeguarded generous pensions paid for by union dues.
 
The assault against auto retirees, by the very powers that should be protecting them, is a betrayal and a
cultural tragedy. It is easy to make an honest case that auto retirees’ healthcare benefits are being
collectively stolen from them, when they need them the most. It is interesting that many of the duplicitous
governmental politicians who have been using their political pulpits to crush the autoworkers’ retiree
healthcare benefits were the same politicians campaigning for healthcare for all Americans in the elections just
a few short months ago. These are the politicians running our nation today.
TOXIC TIME BOMB / LEGACY COST OF THE AUTO INDUSTRY
http://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id127.html[11/2/2011 10:24:35 AM]
 
In conclusion corporate, union and governmental politicians have all covered up the legitimate needs of these
retirees and it really is class warfare. None of those clamoring to steal the auto retirees’ healthcare were
exposed to the toxic hazards that the retirees were exposed to.
 
In this piece, I have only touched on a few of the many health issues facing autoworkers and retirees. There
are many more. This corporate toxic time bomb has the very real possibility of impacting many American
communities going forward.
 
So who is really paying the ultimate legacy cost in the auto industry?
 
The true legacy costs are not what the auto companies owe for healthcare to their
besieged retirees.  Labeling retired autoworkers as expendable legacy costs is false, and
it is immoral. The true horrific legacy costs are those borne by America’s unappreciated
auto retirees.
Mike Westfall
westfallpapers@yahoo.com


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