Environmental Toxins in the Workplace

A recent outbreak of a rare neurological disease at a Minnesota pork processing plant brings to light several major health concerns: safety in the workplace, the increase in autoimmune diseases, and the dangers of vaccines. The article below discusses how the State of Minnesota Health Department is concerned that exposure to raw pork may be linked to the development of an autoimmune disease called CIPD in an unusually high number of workers at the facility. A form of CIPD has also been identified as a proven risk associated with the swine flu vaccine administered to about 43 million Americans in 1976.

Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system fails to operate properly and it attacks healthy tissue instead of infectious agents, as it is designed to. More and more research is pointing to environmental issues as one of the primary causes of autoimmune diseases. This story bears watching to see what unfolds as the investigation continues. Future discoveries may continue to prove that there are many factors in the places we live and work that are potentially toxic to our bodies. This reinforces the fact that the best thing any of us can do to ensure our wellness is to make healthy lifestyle choices that strengthen and bolster our immune system so that it can successfully defend us against disease. For more about the immune system see the OAW Immune System Calculator at: http://www.glyconutrients-center.org/immune-calculator.php

The Question at Austin Pork Plant: Why?
By Jon Tevlin, Josephine Marcotty and Matthew McKinney / StarTribune startribune.com

The wages and overtime Susan Kruse made working for 15 years for Quality Pork Processors helped her support her son, Travis, a ninth-grader. She can hear the evening shift-change whistle from inside the small house she's renovating a block away from the plant.

But last December, Kruse, 36, started having cramps in her legs, followed by muscle stiffness, soreness and pain that's left her unable to work and forces her to use a walker to get around.

Kruse was among the first of the 11 employees at the Austin plant to be diagnosed with a rare disease called chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), which typically strikes only two out of every 100,000 people.

"It started with a charley horse in my calf that wouldn't go away," Kruse said in an interview at her home Tuesday night. "Then my hands and feet got sore and cold and numb. I had perfect health before."She can't do a lot of the things she used to," Travis Kruse said. "Before, she could lift heavy boxes and stuff, but now she gets tired after she walks a little."

Plant owner Kelly Wadding said Tuesday that investigators told him they probably won't know "for some time" what caused the illnesses.

Officials from the Minnesota Department of Health, which disclosed the illnesses Monday, are conducting the investigation. Health Department staffers arrived in Austin on Tuesday. Another team is researching the disease.

"We're trying to get a sense of whether the incidence has changed in recent years," said Ruth Lynfield, the state's epidemiologist, adding that there could be clusters of cases elsewhere in the country that have not been recognized.

The investigation is expected to take months.

Connecting the dots

The Austin cases were connected because of a fortunate confluence of events, Lynfield said. Occupational health nurses at the plant were the first to recognize that they were seeing an unusual number of people with odd neurological symptoms. They began calling doctors in the area, asking if they knew what might be causing them.

They very quickly connected with doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester who happen to be among the nation's experts in CIDP, she said.

Kruse spent Tuesday at Mayo completing another battery of tests. Every other week, she spends five hours receiving an intravenous drug that doctors hope will curtail her symptoms, which include muscle weakness, pain and tingling sensations.

Though she's taking online accounting classes, doctors have told Kruse she may never work again. Her disability insurance payments recently ended, and she's living on Social Security.

Kruse had been puzzled about the illness until last week, when someone from the Health Department called her and asked questions. Then she ran into a co-worker at Mayo who had the same illness.

But it wasn't until Monday's Health Department news conference acknowledging that 11 workers were ill that she realized the link to her job.

The air compressor angle

Kruse worked in the "day kill area," where her job was to carve meat out of the back of butchered pigs' heads with a small knife. Her work area was next to the place where compressed-air hoses were used to remove brain material.

The cause of CIDP is unknown and could include any number of factors, including infectious microbes, toxins or something from the pigs that triggers the body's immune system to attack healthy tissue, according to experts.

CIDP is the chronic form of another disease, Guillain-Barré syndrome, which develops much more rapidly and has a number of known triggers. It first received public attention in 1976 when linked to the swine flu vaccine.

It does not appear to be spread by person-to-person contact, Lynfield said.

Health officials were concerned enough about exposure to raw pig meat to recommend that the plant shut down the air compressor system used to extract brain tissue from the skulls.

Symptoms first emerged around the same time the plant began using the high-powered air system. Some health experts think exposure to blood and pulverized tissue might have caused the autoimmune response.

But the compressed-air system almost certainly is not the problem, said mechanical engineer Frank Moskowitz, a compressed-air expert based in Phoenix. "Compressed air itself absolutely cannot introduce anything bad," he said. He said pressurization kills any living organism in the air.

Air systems have made workers ill in the past because they unintentionally drew in carbon monoxide from a truck idling near the intake ports for the compressed air, Moskowitz said. But that wouldn't cause the serious illnesses seen at the food plant.

Using compressed air is fairly common in the food industry, said Frank Busta, the director emeritus of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense at the University of Minnesota. The technology is used to inflate milk cartons, move food powders through a plant and make bread.

'Vital to our economy'

In Austin, a city of 23,500 where bronze hogs grace the entrance of the Spam Museum and hog farms and smokestacks of processing plants dominate the landscape, many expressed sympathy for those who are ill but remained confident that the industry that powers the town will not be affected.

At the Austin Chamber of Commerce, Sandy Forstner, executive director, underscored the importance of the hog industry in Austin, where Hormel and Quality Pork Processors employ about 3,600 people.

"There are lot of people on their payrolls," Forstner said. "That facility is vital to our economy. Everybody has to be cautious, but we also have to find out what it is without overreacting."

Kruse said she liked her job and is sorry she can no longer do it.

"It's depressing," she said of her increased weakness and decreased mobility -- and of her uncertain future. "I hope that my arms aren't so weak that I can't at least get a desk job."

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22105971/