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Butter Flavoring Cited In Lung Woes

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By SHARON COHEN, The Associated Press

Published: October 28, 2007

Each morning, Eric Peoples sits up in bed and starts his day with a cough. A deep, long, hacking cough.

He plants his feet on the bedroom floor and immediately feels as if someone is standing on his chest. That's a good day. When it gets really bad, it seems as though a giant creature is crushing his lungs, squeezing the breath out of him.

Eric Peoples has lived this way for several years. He got sick while mixing butter flavoring at a Missouri microwave popcorn plant, developing a ravaging lung disease that has tormented a small but alarming number of food workers across the nation.

Peoples sued. He won millions of dollars. Money isn't a worry now. His health is.

At 35, he has lost three-fourths of his lung capacity. He relies on oxygen when it's humid; one day, he may need a double lung transplant.

It's confounding to him that a pungent-smelling flavoring he poured in giant vats, a yellow puddinglike substance used to improve the taste of a common snack - popcorn - could change his life.

Chemical Seemed Innocuous

In a world filled with hazards, some workers obviously face perilous conditions: miners burrowing hundreds of feet in the earth, farmers spraying pesticides, meatpackers wielding long knives to carve up huge carcasses moving quickly down a line.

By that yardstick, mixing an additive that's used to flavor popcorn, candy, baked goods and other foods - it's also found naturally in small amounts in staples such as milk and butter - almost seems innocuous.

For several years, diacetyl, a chemical that gives foods a buttery taste, has been linked to a rare, irreversible lung disease. The result has been a public health debate that has stretched from Congress to courtrooms across the nation, leading to tens of millions of dollars in judgments.

Scientists, doctors, politicians, food companies, labor unions, lawyers and others have weighed in - some pointing angry fingers at the government - as hundreds of workers have claimed they have severe lung disease or other respiratory illnesses from inhaling diacetyl vapors.

And it may go beyond workers. It was recently disclosed that a man who ate at least two bags of buttery microwave popcorn daily for several years may have the same disease found in workers. His lung problems were linked to breathing the vapors.

Now some major microwave popcorn companies have eliminated or plan to drop the ingredient, while Congress - with the support of the flavoring industry - is looking to reduce the danger in the workplace. But the Bush administration, some business groups and others say there isn't enough scientific evidence to warrant immediate government limits.

Edwin Foulke Jr., a top federal official, testified this spring at a congressional hearing that diacetyl is a 'substance of suspicion,' but there's no clear evidence it's the one chemical that causes this disease.

But the doctor who was one of the first to detect the illness in workers says the science is solid and popcorn makers are right to drop diacetyl.

'I just wish this had been done earlier,' says Allen Parmet, a Kansas City public health physician. 'There are hundreds of people who are sick and who are hurt and it never should have happened.'

Lung Disease Becomes An Epidemic

Seven years ago, a lawyer asked Parmet to review the medical records of several workers with some unusual lung problems.

Within 20 minutes, Parmet says, he knew what it was: bronchiolitis obliterans, a devastating disease that destroys the small airways of the lungs, leaving victims coughing and gasping for air.

Parmet had seen it three times in 25 years. Now he was poring over documents indicating several people had the disease - all employees of the Gilster-Mary Lee microwave popcorn plant in Jasper, Mo.

'It was 'holy smokes!'' he says. 'I've got eight or nine cases here in a group of 200 people in a town of 1,000. Mentally, I've made this leap - that's an epidemic.'

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health dispatched investigators to the plant. By 2001, it had reported a link between butter flavorings and the disease, which became known as popcorn lung.

Three years later, the agency sent an alert to 4,000 companies with about 150,000 workers explaining steps that should be take as safety precautions, such as respirators and better ventilation systems.

Bronchiolitis obliterans can be confused for asthma or bronchitis. Sometimes, the disease progresses very quickly.

'In months you can go from being a healthy person to hardly being able to breathe, coughing all the time, not being able to do your job,' says Richard Kanwal, a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health medical officer who has investigated the illness since 2001. 'It's terrifying.'

Over the years, investigators have identified or reviewed medical records of dozens of cases in microwave popcorn plants in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Ohio and flavor-making plants in California, Indiana, New Jersey, Maryland and Ohio.

There have been three reports of deaths among workers.

How many people are ill is unclear.

Kanwal says some cases may have gone undetected many years ago - a few go back to the 1980s - and he has heard reports of sick workers at candy and potato chip plants but has not yet been able to investigate them.

'There could be dozens or hundreds more that we're not aware of,' he says.

There are, however, hundreds of claims filling the court dockets.

Missouri lawyer Ken McClain has more than 500 lawsuits pending against the companies that produce or use the butter flavoring. About $50 million has been awarded in verdicts that later were settled for confidential amounts. Another 100 cases have been settled that reportedly involve tens of millions of dollars.

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