Chromium Evidence Buried, Report Says

According to OSHA, the 1 microgram limit would result in two to nine excess deaths in every 1,000 exposed workers over a 45-year lifetime of work. That is more than the one-death-per-1,000 standard the agency aims for but is reasonable, it said, in light of the high costs and technological challenges involved.

OSHA calculated that a less stringent limit of 5 micrograms per cubic meter would result in 10 to 45 excess deaths per 1,000 workers.

When OSHA released its proposal, it asked industry to provide any new data that might bring more precision to its calculations. It especially asked for data relating to the relatively low exposures common in modern factories, so the agency would not have to extrapolate from the very high exposure levels in earlier studies.

No data arrived. But they did exist.

They were in the hands of the Industrial Health Foundation, a nonprofit organization that for years served as the legal agent for the Chromium Coalition, a loose-knit group of representatives of about a dozen companies.

Michaels and Peter Lurie of Public Citizen learned of their existence last spring after the foundation filed for bankruptcy and the Chromium Coalition made a legal claim to three boxes of its records. Working through lawyers, the two managed to get copies of some.

Among them are the 1996 minutes of Chromium Coalition meetings describing a decision to hire scientists to create and analyze data that would "challenge" OSHA's nascent effort to impose low exposure limits.

"Although this route is expensive and success is not guaranteed, the longer we wait the more difficult the task becomes," one document concludes.

Most surprising was a 153-page report summarizing an industry-sponsored study of workers in chromium plants in the United States and Germany. The study was the most thorough ever to include workers exposed to low levels -- just what OSHA had asked for. But its results had never been released.

The report concluded that exposures ranging from 1.2 to 5.8 micrograms resulted in a fivefold increase in deaths from lung cancer.

"Here you have an agency repeatedly asking for data of this kind, and nothing is forthcoming," Lurie said.

The contract scientists who led the study had gone on to divide the data into two sets and changed the way they grouped the workers. As a result, one study -- published in 2004 -- found no increased risk, and the other -- soon to be published -- found an increased risk only in those with very high exposures.