This series of articles is presented with the permission of the author, Cindy Duehring (per phone conversation on 10/4/95). For considerably more extensive documentation on the hazards of toxic carpeting and on other environmental/health hazards, please contact:

Cindy Duehring
Director of Research
Environmental Access Research Network
P.O. Box 108 Minot, North Dakota 58702-1089
(701) 837-0161

As the Medical Evidence Mounts by Cindy Duehring

"This isn't a profession for a young man to go into," says David Buechler, a Sawyer, North Dakota carpet installer who has been laying carpet for twenty-fie years.  "I don't know any other carpet layers whose health isn't affected by the job in some way."

Buechler experiences a number of adverse symptoms when he works with carpet.  "The fibers and the chemicals affect your lungs and your sinuses," he says.  "Every time I lay carpet I sound like I have a cold by the end of the day.  I get hoarse, shortness of breath, and my sinuses clog up.  I get sinus infections on a regular basis.  Also, my doctors attribute the arthritis I developed to inhaling the fumes from the carpet glues."

He adds, "Cancer, especially lung cancer, is a big concern.  I know of about eight carpet layers in my area that were laying carpet when I started out, who have all died of lung cancer.  They never made it to retirement."

Insurance companies are aware of the risks, according to Buechler.  "It's hard to get life insurance if you're a carpet installer, he states.  "And they require a really tough physical for medical insurance if they find out you lay carpet. I have also been told that if I hire a young guy to work for me I need to get a release signed so that if he's laying carpet and comes down with cancer years down the road, I won't be held responsible."

Some of Buechler's customers have had adverse health effects from carpet.  He now regularly cautions new customers to stay away during installation, to keep off the carpet for several days during the initial high offgas period, and to ensure the house is continuously ventilated.  He voices concern that some carpets appear to be more toxic than others, and he advises people not to take any chances if their carpet causes chronic health problems.  He would rather see 
someone remove their carpet than have serious long-term consequences.  Buechler says he has found that some people who react to one carpet may not react to another.

To reduce the todal amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that people are exposed to from carpet systems, "we are going almost one hundred percent away from the glue down carpet," says Buechler.  "We tack it down because the glues offgas a lot of toxic solvents and add to the toxicity that is already present from the latex backing.  Rubber padding can be a toxicity problem, too."  He tells of a time when a young neighbor girl laid on a roll of rubber padding while watching cartoons on TV:  "She fell asleep and when she woke up, all she had was slits for eyes because her face was so puffed up.  I wouldn't have recognized her if I hadn't known who she was.  And she was only on that rubber padding for just one hour."

Buechler no longer uses a van to haul carpet to his work sites because he says fumes in the enclosed space were affecting him.  On some days, "by the time I'd get to the job, I'd have such a headache I could hardly function," he says.  "Now I have a pickup with a cab.  I keep the carpet in the back away from me and I feel much better."

One of the most dangerous aspects of carpet laying is the seaming process, according to Buechler, who explains, "The warnings I get along with the carpet say do not breathe the fumes and do not burn or get near flames and so on.  But you have to during the seaming process.  You really get exposed to some nasty fumes because you use a hot seaming iron to melt the vinyl and plastic material.  It's about like throwing a record in the oven and letting it melt up. 
Think about what inhaling those fumes could do to a person."

After twenty-six years of exposure to fumes from carpet laying, gluing, and seaming, Gerald Schmidt of Grand Forks, North Dakota, was finally forced to quit when his symptoms reached disabling proportions.  He started laying carpet as an apprentice in 1966 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, then went into business on his own in 1968.  Schmidt has noticed a change in the toxicity of carpet over the years.  "I've had a carpet warehouse for eighteen years," he says. 
"When we first bought the warehouse, we used to have jute backed carpet with the burlap on the back.  Back then we had a terrible problem with mice building nests in the carpet rolls and we had to keep mouse traps out all the time.  Now I haven't had a mouse in there in twelve to thirteen years.  There's no live bugs in there anymore either.  Not even ants.  The only animals we've found in the warehouse were a couple of dead squirrels.  It's the same warehouse. 
Nothing has changed but the carpet."

After installing carpet for many years, he gradually developed a variety of neurological and respiratory symptoms including numbness, tingling, dizziness, ringing in the ears, shortness of breath, joint pain, forgetfulness, fatigue, irritability, and tremors.

I never dreamed my life would turn out this way," says Schmidt.  "I loved my work.  It was a good job.  All I ever wanted was to do an honest days' work in a steady job to put a roof over my head, feed my family, and put aside a little -- just enough to retire on some day.  I never counted on this.  Now I'm in terrible pain and I shake so much that I can hardly function.  I drop stuff, I can't hang on to things, I forget what I go to get.  I'm weak and I get really tired. 
I can't sleep well.  My temper and my mood swings are really bad."

Schmidt was evaluated at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and by neuropsychiatrist Richard Nelson, M.D., in Billings, Montana.  Both evaluations found evidence of peripheral neuropathy.  Blood tests at Mayo Clinic revealed high levels of arsenic.  Arsenical pesticides are registered for use in carpets.(1)  Further testing showed elevated benzene, a neurotoxic solvent found in carpet.(2)  His blood work also showed various immune abnormalities consistent with the patterns being found in chemical injury. (3,4)  Schmidt has elevated TA1 cells, decreased B lymphocytes, autoimmunity (meaining that the body's immune system has mistakenly identified its own tissues or cellular components as foreign and has directed antibodies against them).  He has autoantibodies to smooth muscle, central nervous system, and peripheral nerve myelin.  Neurometric testing including electroencephalogram (EEG) P300 latency assessment evidenced cognitive impairment.

To express his concerns, Schmidt called the Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) and told them, "Hey, we've got a big problem out here, and it's not just me.  I know of other carpet layers who are disabled from the chemicals in carpets." According to Schmidt, the CRI's response was simply a denial of the problem, and claims that they had never heard of any problems from other carpet layers.  "I was outraged," says Schmidt.  "I told them, we've given all the working years of our lives to the carpet industry.  We've supported you all the way and we've sold your product.  And now when we've been made ill by it, where are you?  You've abandoned us carpet layers and have just left us in limbo out here, unable to work, unable to pay our bills.  I've got children to feed, and as long as you and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) won't own up to the problem and acknowledge 
that chemicals in carpeting are disabling some people -- espeicially the carpet layers who are getting sick -- then workers' compensation won't even pay my medical bills for the neurological and immunological testing I had to do to prove I've got real damage."

Motivated by the CRI's denials, Gerald Schmidt sent a copy of all his medical testing reports, including the letters from his doctors, to the CRI by certified mail and sent copies to Congressman Mike Synar [K-OK] and Vice President Al Gore.  "I just wanted to have proof that I told them so they can't deny that they've received complaints from carpet layers," states Schmidt.

Since then, has the CRI changed its tune?  When asked if they had heard of any health problems from carpet layers or whether any carpet layers had complained, CRI Director of Public Relations, Kathryn Wise stated, "No.  We're not aware of any." (5)

"Why are they turning their back on us?" asks Ron Braithwaite, a carpet installer from Perth Road Village, Ontario, Canada.  "I contacted the United States CRI about a year ago and told them I was having health problems from carpet.  They told me I was the only one. 
Canada's carpet institute said the same thing.  So I said, 'Okay, I'm the only one.'"  He later spoke with other carpet layers in Canada who were experiencing adverse health effects from the carpet and found they were being told the same thing.  "So as long as they're telling us that, then we think we're the only ones with the problem and that it's not affecting anybody else," he says.

Thirty-nine-year-old Braithwaite started laying carpet when he was ten years old, helping his father who was also a carpet layer.  He says, "My dad died of lung cancer when he was fifty-eight.  Another carpet layer who was a good friend of his died the same way.  There are a lot of carpet layers in our area that died of cancer and developed other serious health problems when they were relatively young."

Over the years Braithwaite developed a number of symptoms which gradually worsened to the point where he is now disabled.  Neurological testing, including a SPECT scan (single photon emission computed tomography) conducted in the nuclear medicine department of Ottawa General Hospital, verified damage to his brain, especially to his posterior parietal lobes.  His doctors are convinced that the solvents and other chemicals in the carpets and glues Ron was working with are the cause.  He experiences severe concentration problems, dizziness, memory loss, ringing in his ears, erratic heartbeats, shortness of breath, erratic sleeping patterns recurring nosebleeds, weakness, coordination problems, sharp pains, irritability, gastrointestinal problems, numbness and sensations of pins and needles in his lower arms and hands.  He has found that his symptoms worsen when he is around the low levels of petrochemicals commonly found in many public buildings, which limits him still further.

Braithwaite wants his health back.  But that is not all he wants.  "I want to know the names of all the chemicals I have been working with for the past twenty plus years.  I should have a legal right to know what has been poisoning me," he says.  "I want to know why I was never given any warnings about any of this all the years I laid carpet.  And I want to know how to tell my two young children that their daddy is too sick to go to their school play or go on the swing with them, or help build a snowman.  I want to know how to tell my children why mommy and daddy seem to be arguing all the time because their daddy can't provide for his family the way he did for years, and because we are worried about the future of our children."

Ron Braithwaite and his wife Donna remortgaged their home to open a local corner store.  Donna Braithwaite often works eight-hour weeks at their store in an effort to support their family.  As Ron struggles to cope with his disability, he spends his time gathering information regarding the health effects of chemicals in carpets, and plant to start a support group.  He wonders, "How many other families, including vulnerable little children, have to be made 
seriously ill by carpet before the CRI honestly admits to the problem and stops putting out products that place people at risk?"

Nothing has been proven to date that links carpet and ill health effects," says the CRI's Kathryn Wise. (5)

"This type of denial is just exactly what the tobacco industry has done for years and to a large degree is still doing," attorney Kevin McIvers of Santa Barbara, California, states.  "It is based on a type of technical scientific nonsensical argument where they take the position in court -- and in my mind this takes tremendous nerve for them to say this -- that there is no scientific evidence that smoking cigarettes causes cancer.  And then of course folks like us say 'Well 
then, why do people die of cancer three or four times as often w hen they smoke cigarettes than when they don't?'

You would think that finding is pretty scientific, but what they are talking about is the technical argument.  There is no one who can completely explain exactly what chemicals in cigarette smoke causes what precise biomolecular changes that actually mutate the cell and lead to that downward path to cancer.  So because of that, they say there is no evidence that it makes you sick, and that's nuts.  Just because you don't understand the mechanism doesn't mean it's not 
happening.  People get around these products and they become dreadfully ill.  But that is not enough for the tobacco industry and the CRI."   For rest of story