Alcoa Australia admits cancer dangers
15 January 2000
Alcoa Australia publicly notified 3,000 former and present permanent workers in December that research results from Canada indicated that aluminium smelter workers face an increased risk of lung or bladder cancer if they had high exposure to coal tar pitch during their working lives. Alcoa has smelters at Point Henry, Geelong and Portland, both in Victoria, where coal tar pitch is combined with petroleum coke and baked at high temperatures to make anodes and cathodes used in smelting aluminium.
Eighteen permanent workers were not contacted, nor were those who worked for contractors. Trade unions estimate there could be 2,000 contractors potentially affected. The letter to employees admitted that the danger particularly applied to workers in anode forming, anode baking, anode rodding, potlining, pot starting and maintenance activities in the Electrode area. Besides breathing in the pitch, workers could have absorbed it through the skin or ingested it through the mouth as a result of eating or smoking.
The letter did not explain why the company had waited five years before informing workers of the results of the 1995 study of Alcan employees at the Arvida smelter in Quebec. It said Alcoa worldwide had voluntarily reduced its workplace exposure limits to "one quarter of those currently required by the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission (Worksafe Australia)". The NOHSC limit is 0.2 milligrams of coal tar pitch per cubic metre of air, and Alcoa has adopted a standard of 0.05 milligrams. The Australian Workers Union (AWU) wants the level reduced to 0.01 milligrams, as there are no totally safe levels for carcinogenic fumes.
The letter claimed that Alcoa's two smelters have lower exposure levels than the Canadian plant, which uses Soderberg technology. Yet no mention was made of the fact that before 1990, Alcoa used a much more dangerous form of coal tar pitch than the paste form now used. Modern pre-bake plants emit less than 0.01 kilograms of emissions per tonne of aluminium. Alcoa introduced this method because it produced a higher output of aluminium, not because it was safer.
Without admitting any liability, the Alcoa letter advised workers who had been exposed for more than a year to seek medical tests for bladder cancer. It acknowledged that no early detection test for lung cancer exists. Further, it claimed that for the past 20 years Point Henry workers had been made well aware of the risks of coal tar pitch "and have managed and handled the material accordingly with respiratory protection, use of protective clothing and barrier creams to minimise skin contact, and routine laundering of clothes."
One former Alcoa worker Bill Aitken told the Melbourne Age that the mouth masks and protective cream were an inadequate defence against the clouds of coal tar dust. "The cream sweated off within minutes and you had a mask but the rest of your face and head caught the dust. You were breathing it, you were eating it." He described the filthy conditions: "You came out black as the ace of spades at night. When you went on holiday you'd still be staining your best shirt for weeks." Exposure to the pitch rendered the workers susceptible to sunburn.
Alcoa's letter also referred to studies from Monash University in Victoria and the University of Western Australia, claiming that preliminary results from these studies reveal cancer rates in Alcoa workers no worse than in the general population. In fact the smelter workers covered in the Monash study were only those working since 1983, the year Victoria began to record all cancer cases, yet the Point Henry smelter operated from 1963. AWU national health officer Yossi Berger said the danger period for coal tar pitch was between 1960 and 1990, when there was considerably reduced regulation of fumes.
Alcoa did not mention paying for the tests and treatments that workers have to undergo. The unions have entered into negotiations with the company, and to date it has agreed to pay for the first round of medical tests. That is