Rich Lawrence

PHIL 3750

Pierre Lamarche

April 8, 2022

The Sorrow of Ghosts

Abstract

Labor produces the worker. Labor obviously produces the product and labor must also

produce itself, as more labor but labor also produces the worker, including the body of the

worker. The worker can never own the commodity that their labor produces. The worker must

always own their body that their labor has produced. Occupational medicine teaches that the

worker's labor puts its imprint on the worker's body. When it does, for what? For something the

worker can never own. Rich explores the relation of alienation between the production (labor),

the product (commodities) and the producer (the worker) in a narrative of his career as an OSHA

chemist for the US government. Rich worked outside of the official constrictures of the

laboratory and discovered that OSHA was throwing a third of the lead in the workers breathing

air samples in the trash, and had been doing so for thirty years. OSHA changed the lab procedure

to fix the problem. The workers' right to know the hazards of their workplace is derived. Rich

loudly insisted to the lab management that the workers who were misinformed, needed to be told

of their lead exposure. Rich is then arrested for assault. Other than death itself, forced

incarceration is the most extreme alienation. There is a veiled, understated thesis, that alienation

in extremis (separation from the labor, separation from the others, separation from the product,

and separation from the self), that this alienation can be cause for a realization of the absurd and

an existential reckoning. The missing lead did not go away, it is sleeping in the bones of those

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millions exposed and not told. The lead will reawaken and cause a final insult, the neurotoxin

will alienate the aging worker from their very memories. Rich wants the reader to understand

that when he describes his interaction with hundreds of workers, in the language of intentionality,

it represents millions of workers in a social relation. When he describes the actual concrete

events such as sudden death or dismemberment or poisoning as the philosophical embodiment of

the estrangement by the labor to the worker, this is understood at the same time as a social

condition. No doubt, it's both.

"The Sorrow of Ghosts

Another us, aboard old books.

- Others before US? The foam saw them.

The SAME foam? Or only ghost stories?

What are those OTHERS looking for among my nets? Their washed out cry:

"We, too," "We, too," - Who, THEM?

Who - US? The wind whips up the water.

That's life in a world where everything

repeats, where others "them too" …who drive

us mad - old beards, old melodies -

with their unending "the same foam"

(a worn-down grain of sand in their bladders).

Others before US - really? The SAME seas?

What do they know? The devil take them!

They are food for dead sharks, afloat

on dead seas, under dead stars." (1)

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 When I realized that millions of workers had been deceived as to the amount of lead they

had been exposed to, in the workplace, for thirty years, I knew I had to do something, say

something.

It's not a machination, it's just the nature of the beast. When I exclaimed (loudly) that

they had been under reporting the lead monitoring for years, rather than fess-up, they threw me

in jail.

Who are they? OSHA? Yes, I said, rather loudly, "Bill, knowing what you know, OSHA

can't do that!"

I was an Industrial Hygiene Chemist for the Federal OSHA laboratory. (2)

I'm first generation. Where I come from, we don't go to college. I graduated from Weber

University with a Bachelor degree in Chemistry. Tons of math and physics and chemistry but still

just a bachelor's but a B.A., so I got two years of German and an introduction to philosophy and

other humanities.

I nailed the interview and passed the FBI background check and was a Federal employee

of the US dept. Labor, OSHA. Mike Shulsky was my new supervisor. I really liked Mike. Even

still, I think about him and get emotional. He passed away at a very early age, of a respiratory

infection, while I worked there. It was a signpost on the impermanence of things. I did not

understand it and I did not learn until later.

At first, for several years I was a lab rat. I was a bench chemist doing routine analysis of

OSHA compliance samples coming in from all over the country. These were samples for all

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kinds of hazardous industrial chemicals. They involved legal cases, there was a chain of custody

and companies could be fined.

I was not a lab rat for long. There was a cadre of industrial hygienist compliance officers

also in the building. They were among the best in the workplace safety and health business with

Master's and PhD's and AIHA certified all. They were the ones that would get called when there

was a difficult problem in a workplace in the nation. Refinery explosions and major scaffolding

collapse, factory fire, etc. the kind of disasters one hears about. They would fly there and solve

the problem and write the citations, assisting the OSHA area office.

I gravitated to them. I would be their chemist. Job openings came up and I applied. It was all by

the book. Before long I was being trained in Process Safety Management (3) (This is a chemical

engineering preventative management plan for big refineries, chemical plants, fertilizer,

munitions or propellants, does not include simple "tank farms") and also Hazardous Waste

Operations and Emergency Response. (4) and Accident investigation, Root Cause, Risk Hazard

Analysis and what was a kind of industrial espionage… how to spy for OSHA. This training was

at their OSHA school in Des Plaines, their Institute. (5)

The following instances, except one, involve fatalities:

The first time I did this kind of work was on the 1988 Shell plant explosion in Diamond,

Louisiana. I took notes while Kevin Cummins (6) conducted interviews. I learned from the best.

I did document review, operating procedures, and history of changes, employee training,

worklogs, maintenance schedules and records, for the cracking tower that failed. (7) The kind of

thing I was trained in.

Kevin was also called to assist in the Hercules propellant explosion in NJ in 1989 (8) and

I assisted him again and met more of the workers again face to face. The workers that we were

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trying to protect. In the lab I never saw them. They were just a number on the sample chain of

custody paperwork.

When the explosion and fire at the Rhône-Poulenc's plant in Institute, W. Va. occurred

(9), it was Ed Zimowski that did the interviewing. Did I say that I learned from the very best. I

watched the face of an employee as he wept. He had been the workmate of the deceased. Kevin

also worked out the chemistry of the explosion. The root cause was a too steep titration curve,

where the addition of only a little more reagent than usual resulted in a much greater reaction

than might be expected. And the reaction vessel exploded.

In-between these times I would continue with the routine sample analysis at the lab.

These would be nasty industrial chemicals. The organic analysis included carbon based

chemicals like pesticides, PCB's, solvents like toluene and benzene, jet fuel, a chemical class

called di-isocyantates, and various amines, formaldehyde and chemotherapy drugs from infusion

centers. Hazardous Inorganic chemicals included metals like lead, cadmium, arsenic, and

beryllium, and non-metals like asbestos and hydrogen sulfide for example. (10) (11) (12) I was

proficient in all the latest chromatographic and spectroscopic instrumentation.

I was there but always after the fact, a witness to the violence. In Allentown the violence

was that they were running a controversial and experimental reaction, at a large scale, and not

only that, it was just in a building in a strip mall. You would have never known, and the next day

there was a crater. The root-cause chemistry for the Concept Sciences Hydroxylamine Explosion

in Allentown, PA. (13) (14) was interesting, as was the explosion at the Ammonia plant near

Sioux City in 1994. (15) (16) The violence at Sioux City was a little strange but bear with me. It

was the violence of converting natural gas into pork bellies faster than possible. It was a huge

plant. It converted natural gas, actually methane, into ammonia, then the ammonia into both

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ammonium nitrate to fertilize the corn for feed and into urea which is added directly into the hog

feed. Natural gas into pork bellies, speed up the line! This was the only time I used my college

German language training professionally. I translated a journal article describing how if certain

metal-salt contaminants get into the ammonium nitrate crystal lattice, the activation energy is

lowered and they become sensitized to impact. They can explode. I won't go into the chemistry

of the Hydroxylamine explosion in hardbit Allentown here.

It wasn't that I had a penchant for explosions.

When Engels describes the violence against the working class he was describing their

living conditions but he might have well been writing about the violence of the working

conditions. I was witness to the violence.

"… when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably

meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that

by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under

conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain

in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these

thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder

just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against

which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the

murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of

omission than of commission. But murder it remains." (17)

The underlying intrinsic violence of the workplace, always present, though often

unaware and unspoken, is simply that if one does not work, one does not eat. A man starves to

death. If one has no work, one has no shelter. A man faces the "winter kill" sleeping outdoors in

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January. If one has no work, one has no access to medical care. A man dies from otherwise

readily treatable disease. There are social "safety nets" in this country but those charities are

intended for the survival of orphaned children and elderly widows, not the able-bodied.

Blatantly obvious is the acute workplace violence, such as those instances that I had

observed and recalled above. An arm or leg taken off by unguarded machinery. Horrible

mutilations and burns. Electrocutions, suffocations, crushing entombment from trenching

collapse. Lives snuffed out by violent energetic chemical reactions, e.g. explosions, what the

managers call "upsets." In the reports of the accidents that I have read and written, I hear the

ghosts of increased productivity. I hear "speed up that line!" and, "they took that guard off 'cause

it slowed 'em down." "He didn't wear gloves because he couldn't pick as fast." and "The reaction

rate was hastened and the pressure vessel blew up." "The schedule didn't allow the welder time

to check for flammable liquids," etc. When productivity is increased by speeding up the process,

the hazards remain the same but the frequency goes up, thus the risk. Remember,

hazard × frequency = risk. All work has hazards and dangerous work can be done safely if

proper controls such as ventilation, guarding, protective equipment and training are provided.

Those controls cost the owners money and time, they reduce the owners profits. The owners cut

corners on these kinds of capital investments and literally exchange the workers' lives and limbs

for a little more profit.

More insidious is chronic workplace violence. This is violence done on millions of

workers everyday in this land. This is where the worker is exposed to any of a number of

substances, poisons really, day after day on the job. There are laws, standards (OSHA's

Permissible Exposure Limits) intended to protect the worker but these are not state of the art

industrial hygiene. They are a bare minimum. They are mostly standards that were developed in

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the 1950's and adopted by OSHA and encoded into federal law (and stuck) in the '70's. There are

problems with the monitoring (sampling efficiency) of the workers' exposures to these

substances and there are gaps in the legally recognised routes of exposure.

"Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under

compulsion from society." (18)

It pushes me forward that Marx writes about "phossy jaw." It is now an extinct

occupational disease thanks to industrial hygiene medicine (societal compulsion). It is white

phosphorus poisoning. It is interesting to me that one of the routes of phosphorus poisoning is

through the skin, dermal absorption. Phossy jaw does not exist anymore, a different less toxic

form of phosphorus is now used to manufacture matches. And who uses matches? Still, there are

hundreds of industrial chemicals where skin is a route of exposure.

Marx describes the poisoning thus:

"The manufacture of lucifer matches dates from 1833, from the discovery of the method

of applying phosphorus to the match itself. Since 1845 this manufacture has rapidly developed in

England, and has extended especially amongst the thickly populated parts of London as well as

in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle and Glasgow. With it has

spread the form of lockjaw, which a Vienna physician in 1845 discovered to be a disease peculiar

to lucifer-matchmakers. Half the workers are children under thirteen, and young persons under

eighteen. The manufacture is on account of its unhealthiness and unpleasantness in such bad

odour that only the most miserable part of the labouring class, half-starved widows and so forth,

deliver up their children to it, “the ragged, half-starved, untaught children.” Of the witnesses that

Commissioner White examined (1863), 270 were under 18, 50 under 10, 10 only 8, and 5 only 6

years old. A range of the working-day from 12 to 14 or 15 hours, night-labour, irregular

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meal-times, meals for the most part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent with

phosphorus. Dante would have found the worst horrors of his Inferno surpassed in this

manufacture." (19)

Remember I told you there were gaps in the legally recognized routes of exposure.

Dermal exposure is one of those gaps. It turns out that the skin is more of a sponge than a barrier

for many chemicals. OSHA has no limits or levels regulating chemical exposure to the skin.

OSHA's exposure limits are all respiratory. There are vague housekeeping (surface

contamination) regulations that are interpreted as the wind blows, and PPE and training

regulations and requirements. This had caught the attention of myself and my mentor Dr Allan

Hines. We focused on a family of chemicals called di-isocyantates. You know them as

polyurethanes but that is after they've reacted and cured and hardened. Foam is made from it but

also, in a slightly different formulation, it is the spray paint coating for automobiles. We also

knew that OSHA's air sampling method for this chemical had efficiency problems. It still does.

(20) (21) The footnote explains the problem and what we were testing.

We got a budget and an OSHA area office interested. I wrote a sampling schema. We

flew to Connecticut, mostly. I owned my project, I believed it was mine. The paint shops that we

visited ranged from corporate auto dealerships to mom and pop auto painters, with chain

franchises between. In the first week, twenty-seven painters did I sample from their skin and

from the air around them. I loved my job. The skin samples were taken from possible skin

exposure areas after mixing the paint and spraying. The Media were swatches of a pure felt,

moistened with pure water and rubbing alcohol. I was developing a method and a protocol to

assess exposure. These, I took back to the lab. I was also investigating a colorimetric (color

changing) wipe commercial product. If I wiped across a surface and even small amounts of the

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di-isocyanates were present they would change from light yellow to deep red. A useful tool. The

government supports private business all the time, why not for the right reasons? I was assessing

the colorimetric wipe sampling efficiency. For my project. For my product.

Risks are hazards times probability (or frequency). In the workplace, the sum of the risks

alienate the producer from their production. When a worker exchanges their labor and is hurt by

their labor and separated from that labor, the labor is estranged, Entfremdung. In the project, I

would dedicate my labor to mitigate this. Essence in the life and meaning in the labor,

Occupational medicine is not all technology. The spray-painters call the disease "Paint-sick."

When they get this, they can no longer work in this trade. In every sense, separated from their

labor. The illness presents as respiratory anaphylaxis. Even the lowest exposure is life

threatening. It is an acquired allergenic disease and will be with the former painter for a lifetime.

The mechanism for the respiratory allergic response is discovered to be skin-mediated. (22) A

previous exposure on the skin was necessary to trigger a subsequent respiratory anaphylaxis, and

no more skilled-trade and perhaps death. So I would push against that. OSHA has no skin

exposure standards but I will do something.

My consciousness intends to its object. The object in this case is another conscious being,

the painter. I extend my body and my consciousness to interact with the other. This is sensuous

Praxis, the intimate social interaction. With care, I take his hand. I look into his eyes of water as I

scrub the Fabrik across his skin. His palms, his forearms. In this moment, I am reaching out to

take a sample, retrieving it for further analysis and thought, in a double way. He had not worn a

hood, when spray painting the auto, only a beanie. I rub the nape of his neck and collect another

skin exposure sample. I feel a connection with him, that I have his back.

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"We have seen how on the assumption of commun-ism (positively annulled private property)

man produces man – himself and the other man; how the object, being the direct manifestation of

his individuality, is simultaneously his own existence for the other man, the existence of the

other man, and that existence for him." (23)

So we have seen how I "assumed" ownership of my product, my project (a form of

"positively annulled private property") to further the others and myself. For me, the others that I

personally interacted with included over a hundred painters, some here locally (coordinated

through RMCOEH University of Utah) and New Jersey and many in Connecticut (in my work at

OSHA and with the Yale school of occupational medicine). Dr. Hines loved Connecticut. I will

return to the iso-cyanates later.

Expropriation of the means of production as a form of "positively annulled private

property," and what happened next. It had to do with the inorganic hazardous metals lead,

cadmium, arsenic and beryllium we were analyzing outside of the lab, in the "field." It was

because I had convinced OSHA's best industrial hygienists, the Health Response Team, to buy

for us a rather expensive portable "lab," with which I could work as I wanted, on my projects. I

goddamn love freedom.

When I say lead, I really mean several nasty chemical exposures. Marx describes the

occupational lead exposure disease in his time in the pottery districts. Even today, pottery glazing

still contains lead.

"Dr. Greenhow states that the average duration of life in the pottery districts of

Stoke-on-Trent, and Wolstanton is extraordinarily short. Although in the district of Stoke, only

36.6% and in Wolstanton only 30.4% of the adult male population above 20 are employed in the

potteries, among the men of that age in the first district more than half, in the second, nearly 2/5

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of the whole deaths are the result of pulmonary diseases among the potters. Dr. Boothroyd, a

medical practitioner at Hanley, says: “Each successive generation of potters is more dwarfed and

less robust than the preceding one.”" (24)

As I reflect, it was more that I had control of a means of production for my work. As a

chemist, the means for my production is the laboratory with all of the analytical instruments etc.

The process and methodology is exactly repeated, never varied. Remember, the samples that

come into OSHA's lab are from compliance inspections, are forensic samples that have legal

weight and represent possible citations and fines. This is all managed very well. But it is a place,

it is a building, centralized and with a bureaucratic slowness.

In my work with Dr. Ed Zimowski (25) and with Carl Elskamp, (26) I had obtained a

portable instrument, about the size of a hoagie sandwich. This was a handheld XRF (x-ray

fluorescence analyzer, for the metals, lead, cadmium, arsenic etc. (27) (28) We determined that

the instrument could produce results comparable (as good as) to those produced by the laboratory

instrument. Sample analysis could be performed at the worker's workplace and the worker could

know what and how much they were exposed to in minutes and thus realize their right.

The right to know is not located in the product or in the other producers or in the

production. The right to know is seated in the producer, in the self. When the workers sold their

labor and accepted the risk they did not sell in the least the right to know what evil poisons they

were exposed to. This right, like all rights, dwells in the self and is not labor or consent to labor.

And like other rights, it has been clawed back, returned to the workers (although it was always

actually theirs) by direct action, collective bargaining and legislation. When this right is denied it

is a form of alienation of the self from the self, the worker, the producer.

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 I had the means for my production under my control. I worked in the lab and out of the

lab, at workplaces across the nation. Even at this time, in the time-line, I was working out the

details for a template for creating a surface sampling method. It's not for any one chemical. It

was how to develop and assess a surface sample method for lab analysis for any chemical,

organic or inorganic. (29) That was for the laboratory. And also the Evaluation Guidelines with

Testing and Reporting Protocols for OSHA On-site Air and Surface Sampling Methods. This was

not for the lab. This was for field assays. On the site. Today, one cannot find this on OSHA's

website. It has been "reserved." But I have a copy. (30)

Outside of the laboratory, at the beryllium foundry (31) near Toledo, with Dr. Zimowski,

I performed extensive surface samples for beryllium. Later analysis at the lab revealed

significant amounts of beryllium was in the dust under the floor mats at the entrance to the

breakroom hall. There was a bustle of janitorial labor. I didn't check their training records but at

least they were suited up, like me, with respirators, working in it, but this, just outside of the

lunchroom. You see, management could not allow enough time for a full clean up - change out,

this is where the worker enters a dirty side, undresses, showers and enters a clean side and

dresses, before breaks and lunch, so the break room was on the dirty side. Berylliosis is a nasty

way to end up. On the clean side of the change-out room, I took samples from lockers, floor

mats, and the soles of the workers' shoes. Lab analysis found nothing on the cleanside. I wanted

to take samples from the floor mats and pedals in the workers' vehicles in the parking lot. Maybe

find out if something nasty is going home with the workers. Ed told me not to push it.

Why there is a right to know the risk. When I sell my labor and consent to the risk, I must

first know what the risk is in order to consent. Thus the right comes first.

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 This Noumenal thing, we can not see it or attain it with the senses. Yet by elimination…

Because we were developing field analysis, for OSHA's industrial hygienists, we had a budget

for instruments and travel. Carl Elskamp and I arranged with various OSHA area offices to

obtain lead exposure samples from worksites around the nation. Air samples and surface

samples. It was again in Ohio, but not Toledo, it was just somewhere along a freeway (32), that

we made a very peculiar discovery. It concerns the air sampling for lead exposure. I had done

some previous work with the portable XRF at an immense lead battery plant in Georgia earlier

and I would go back in the next month to confirm if the peculiar discovery was also true with

molten lead fume. In Ohio, the workers were blasting the lead paint off of the freeway

overpasses, so it was from the lead contaminated paint dust air samples that Carl and I made this

discovery. Because we did our own sampling, and they were not compliance samples (not

official and could not be used against a company) we could experiment with them, take the

samples how we wanted and analyze them outside of the lab. We were in charge of our labor and

the means of production and the product thereof. So expropriation of the means of production is

a little strong, I didn't steal it, it was more like I took it for a joy ride to see how she drove, and

no that is not what I got in trouble over. I was doing my job and the managers were back at the

lab, or sleeping in their beds. We were up late at night in the hotel room with a lab on the desk.

We took samples from the breathing zones of workers of course but also we set up some area

samples set in a location to get high amounts of dust. We were trying to see how the XRF would

respond to a high sample.

At this point you need to know a little about the sampling device. Here is a picture. (33)

There is a calibrated sampling pump attached and everything but without going into details, the

technique is from the fifties. It's a short wide clear plastic cylinder, the 37mm cassette sampler.

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It's not complicated. It only makes for the most common sense. When the lead fume or dust is

pulled into the cassette by the pump, it "bounces" around in there. Much of it collects on the

filter as intended but a significant amount also collects on the plastic walls on the inside of the

cassette sampler. I'm going to venture that it is an electro-static effect, but I don't know.

And this is what happened when we were not hurried, when we looked at our work, when it was

ours:

There is only a whisper difference between what cannot be seen and what can only just be seen.

Thus they are at the same level, in the same light.

Thus the one that cannot be seen is no less than the one that can be seen.

Carl could only just see the finest dust on the inside of the cassette walls of the high

samples. Then I reasoned, if you can only just see it in the highest samples, then it must also be

in the lower samples, we just can't see it. It is not visible. One cannot see 50 ug of lead,

distributed on the surface. I had the agency expertise on surface sampling and the materials, the

sampling media with me. We opened the sampling cassette, using tweezers, removed the filter

and placed the filter in a protective sleeve and analyzed it. Then wiped out the inside of the

cassette, placed the wipe in a plastic bag and analyzed that. Then summed the two results

together as the actual amount of lead that had entered the cassette from the air. We did this in the

hotel room that night. The lab never did this. For thirty years they took the filter out, analyzed

only that and threw the cassette in the trash. How much of the sample was being thrown away by

the lab? On the average and consistently 50%. For example, when the lab reported 20 ug lead

exposure, it was more likely 30 ug. Over time, for all of the past exposure reports. Then I

remembered all of the workers I had interacted with as I have described, sampling their exposed

15
skin and break rooms and personal lockers. I had talked with them, it was not like an interview, I

saw them as me and my right to know.

Solidarity with the other. With what we know, we see ourselves looking back at us

through the eyes of others. We glimpse the Noumenal, a thing we, as producers as workers, a

thing we have in common. That we have labor power (for sale) and a will to live (usually

running in the background). This Noumenal thing, we can not see it or attain it with the senses.

Yet by elimination, labor power is common to all, thus as a social essence. It is a leveler among

the workers, the producers. This is why we address one another as Brother and Sister and

Comrad at the labor Union meeting. It is not all about collective bargaining. This common thing

that we all share is what Union means.

In the struggle for a normal working day, it was a triple fatality, just a usual day for me. It

had happened the previous week. (34) (35) We flew into Kansas City, Sept 10. It was new

construction, a manhole well that was never used. They pulled a vacuum on it to test the seal, but

it did not seal so one man went down to see why, the second to rescue the first and the third did

the same. The fourth man got in his truck and drove to the quick stop to call for help.

I came into the hotel "continental breakfast" and the TV was on the world trade center. I

turned to my work mate, Brett, and said, "Looks like the chickens have come home to roost…

again." Then the second plane hit.

The Topeka Firechief had officially sealed (like a crime scene) the manhole the previous

week. He was there that morning to break the seal and open it for me and Brett Besser (36). I

saw the chief's tears streaming. He was thinking about the NYFD. The outdoors lay silent as I

reeled a very long plastic tube down into the hole. I was using a direct reading instrument to

measure O2 CO2 and H2S, and to collect samples for the lab. I was thinking about the three

16
victims here. If only they had known what they would be exposed to. They would never had

taken the risk. If only they had an instrument to tell them. I could see the stains where the bodies

fell, still on the new concrete at the bottom of the confined space. By the next month I would be

in D.C. the anthrax "attack" response and it has a story too.

"As to the guerrillas, it is evident that, having for some years figured upon the theater of

sanguinary contests, taken to roving habits, freely indulged all their passions of hatred, revenge,

and love of plunder, they must, in times of peace, form a most dangerous mob, always ready at a

nod, in the name of any party or principle, to step forward for him who is able to give them good

pay or to afford them a pretext for plundering excursions." (37)

Did I ever tell you that I got a military interrogation in D.C.? It was from the night

commander in charge of security for the anthrax response. It was because I had been doing this

industrial espionage that I had been trained to do so well.

Was that why you got arrested? For spying on the U.S. government?

No, but we're half way through the narrative.

All agencies "spy" on each other, my boss, Bob Curtis (38) later told me."

But of course he told me that, I was spying for my boss. He wanted me to find out what

NIOSH/CDC were doing in the Hart Senate office building. He wanted their HASP (health and

safety plan) sent to him electronically as fast as possible. OSHA has no jurisdiction on the

Senate, they wrote themselves and their employees out of the OSH act when they passed it. You

know how they are. (39) The Senate has its own Industrial Hygiene experts. But hey, OSHA was

welcomed to come have a look.

I had the latest gadgets. A small electronic camera and a cell phone and they were

compatible, with a cable. We didn't have smartphones yet. When I got there, the ruse was I

17
wanted to get suited up and go into the hot zone and just have a look see. Actually I was stalling.

There was a preparation trailer set up next to the de-con entry into the Hart building. In this

trailer were the training manuals and their history of changes, other manuals, sampling

techniques, PPE, chain of commands and jurisdiction. So I stalled my time in there. First it was

that I needed to get fit tested for my respirator, and then it was that I needed steel toe boots. I

played it well till late into the night and sent all the information to my boss, Bob Curtis in Salt

Lake City. He had a valid concern about over protection causing heat stroke. They didn't need to

be fully encapsulated for anthrax spores.

At some point I was told by some military dude that I had to go talk to the night

commander. This was the U.S. coast guard security for the response. So the jig was up and I

knew it, but I still had to report. The temporary offices for all of the agencies responding to the

anthrax "attack," including the Coast Guard were located in the buildings of the national

conservatory, a beautiful domed victorian hothouse, on the opposite side of the Capitol from

where I was. As I walked through the dark I saw rats running in the gutters along the Capitol. I

hid my backpack in some bushes on the mall. I went in the office. The night commander was a

woman and she was tough. There were others. They interrogated me, it caused me vertigo and

disorientation. I showed them my credentials. Some calls were made, and she told me to get lost

and not come back. A little hostile, I recall. I wandered in a daze around the Mall, got my

backpack, I felt woozy, when I did get a cab, I couldn't remember the Hotel. It was in

Georgetown. I called my boss, he loved me, I scooped everything he wanted. He told me to take

the next day off and see the sights. I wept in the downstairs of the Jefferson memorial. After that

I was assigned to the nearby Brentwood D.C. postal facility which had also been contaminated

with anthrax. I wrote the decontamination assessment for government buildings, for air and

18
surface anthrax contamination. (40) This is where the decontamination workers have done their

work and the effectiveness of the decontamination is assessed. It was modeled on a similar

assessment of asbestos decontamination. Here is a video when we first entered the anthrax

contaminated "hot zone" at the D.C postal facility. Brett runs the camera. It's me and I am

introduced, although it is noisy and the camera is in a plastic bag. (41)

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please… But unheroic

though bourgeois society is, it nevertheless needed heroism, sacrifice, terror, civil war, and

national wars to bring it into being. And in the austere classical traditions of the Roman Republic

the bourgeois gladiators found the ideals and the art forms, the self-deceptions, that they needed

to conceal from themselves the bourgeois-limited content of their struggles and to keep their

passion on the high plane of great historic tragedy." (42)

"Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an

entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought,

and views of life. The entire class creates and forms them out of its material foundations and out

of the corresponding social relations. The single individual, who derives them through tradition

and upbringing, may imagine that they form the real motives and the starting point of his

activity… In historical struggles one must distinguish…the phrases and fancies of parties from

their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality." (43)

It was conflicts between various competing bourgeois factions in 1848 France that Marx

was writing about in "the 18th" but they could be applied to 9 -11 because he was describing the

root causes of the ideologies that result in upheavals and national crises and in how they will be

later interpreted in the cultural hegemony, to stabilize a class divided society. See how the very

dates exude meaning. But, just as September 11 was an interruption and distraction in the course

19
of the nation, so it was also in the flow of this composition, so it was also a distraction and

interruption in my career. Back to my story.

Why there is a right to know the risk.

One must consider that all labor has risks. The risks are part of the labor and are a cause

of the alienation of the worker from the labor. Recall the previous example of a chemical

exposure that literally separated the painters from their skilled craft. The one thing that the

worker owns is their labor. Now, one must understand the difference between the risks inherent

in labor and the consent to those risks. We are emancipated and must sell our labor and in the

bargain must consider the risks of the labor. One might perform very risky work for the right

price, but otherwise would be brutal coercion. This is consent to the risk and is much different

than the risk itself. Where the risk of labor lies in the labor, the consent lies in the worker, the

individual. The consent to the risk also demands something that must come before, (there is a

fancy latin word for this kind of thing) something that must come before, the knowledge of the

risk. So now we have something very golden, a human right. Not one derived from an imagined

god or granted in a special charter or legislation: The worker has the right to know the risk before

consenting to sell their labor.

Owners and managers may deceive but that does not diminish the right. What happens

when a worker is deceived by omission or commission and other permutations? Just as labor is

alienated from the worker because the worker never owns the product of their labor, when the

workers right to know is violated, it is alienation of the worker's self from themself, because the

right exists in the self. My right, for example, was taken from me. (This is why, even though

20
rights are just an idea, an individual has yet a concrete, real and visceral feeling like "that" when

their rights get stepped on, and we all know that feeling.)

Just as this right exists in the production of commodities, a corollary right for the worker

exists in consumption of commodities, the right to know the risks of consuming (using,

whatever) the commodity, and is derived similarly. The thing that the worker does not own is

commodities. The worker must buy them and in the bargain must consider the risks the

commodities pose, etc. "They" wouldn't sell you something bad, would "they?"

An atom is to the substance as the individual worker is to the social fabric. In different

arrangements and formations, atoms can produce different substances. The social arrangement

that we live in currently is Capitalism and the formation is the division of labor among workers.

We all depend on other workers. This we share as essential. Essential because it is very important

to understand. Essential because it is existential, we need it to live. Essential because it is the

meaning of being human, the Generic essence, this interaction with the other.

Understand now, that when I describe my interaction with hundreds of workers, in the

language of intentionality, it represents millions of workers in a social relation. Understand when

I describe the actual event, the philosophical embodiment if you will, describing sudden death or

dismemberment or/if even by a thousand cuts, as the estrangement by the labor to the worker,

then separated from that labor, now this estrangement is understood at the same time as well, as a

social condition. No doubt, it's both.

The worker is estranged from their labor because they do not own the intentional product,

the commodity, full of potential riches for the capitalist. What is the relation of the worker to the

unintentional product, the sorrow, sickness, pain and death from their labor? They own that in

their bodies. For what? For the production of something that was never theirs and always outside

21
of them. The worker is estranged from their labor because they cannot own the productive results

from their labor but must own the destructive results… in the body. In Marx's time that was the

end of it. Now there is workers compensation. It is an insurance leviathan, they make their

money. So that the risk of labor is also commodified.

I kept thinking about the missing lead. At this point, the lab trained chemists were still

tossing the sample cassette in the trash and only analyzing the filter. That was a lead sample from

a worker.

Before, the workers had only their labor to sell. Their raw labor. Now they have their raw

labor power, social labor power, raw purchasing power, social purchasing power, a social essence

built of interdependence (Gattungswesen) to find meaning in, and at least two rights, To know

the risks of the production, and of the product. And the lacy social webwork that individual

rights produce. The worker has always had these and has to fight every minute to preserve them.

I went back to Georgia to the massive lead battery plant and collected samples and used

the XRF analyzer and brought the exact same samples back to the lab for Atomic absorption

spectroscopy. You must also understand that the XRF analysis is nondestructive so that the very

same samples will be sent to the lab for AAS or ICP analysis, and the results compared, matched

pair statistics. And also samples from scrap metal recycling in New Jersey and Soldering work

locally. I ran a pilot study that indicated that there was "invisible" lead collected on the plastic

interior and not just the filter in all the various work situations. I was also writing up the

procedure for anthrax sampling for decontamination procedures. I wrote a working procedure in

a couple of weeks, but the finished product had to be perfect, and there was a committee and it

took months. What is more, I decided that having all this responsibility, I needed further

education, so I took my GRE did excel in the language arts, but the science and math ain't bad. I

22
began to pursue a masters in public health industrial hygiene emphasis at the University of Utah.

I was glad that the development of the new OSHA method for the sample preparation for the

lead (etc.) samples which included wiping out the insides of the cassettes was given to the

inorganic methods chemists for validation. I had plenty on my plate.

The class of industrial hygienists was small but there were residents (doctors) and in the

other non-specific courses there were many doctors and nurses and others going into various

aspects of public health. Dean Lillquist (44) was the head (Dean was the dean) of the

occupational and environmental health division of the University of Utah School of Family and

Preventive Medicine. Since I was also working in the lab, I produced the OSHA method for

surface sampling di-isocyanates at this time. (45) These are the chemicals that cause auto

painters to get paint sick, as we've discussed and this is a laboratory analysis, which turns out to

be of interest. I also produced an accompanying guidance on colorimetric indicator swipe

technology that I had evaluated. This would give real time information as to the extent of surface

contamination, while waiting for the lab results. It was also my masters project. I also had a

student assist me in the OSHA lab, so it was also his project too. He is Steve Thygerson (46)

who is currently a professor at BYU. It was presented. (47) Our advisor was Dale Stephenson

(48), currently dean of the College of Health and Human Services at Northern Kentucky

University. This surface sampling method was being used by the Yale school of occupational

medicine to assess the amount of surface contamination in a shop and then do something that

was beyond my level. They took blood samples from the painters to assess exposure and

allergenic sensitivity, to develop a model of causality. Steve got his masters. I did not.

During this time period, Carl Elskamp validated a method for field analysis of air

samples for lead, etc., using the Niton XRF. (49) Similarly and in coordination with my friend

23
Carl, I wrote a validated method for field analysis of surface samples for lead (50), etc., also

using the Niton XRF. We did this so that workers could know the extent of their exposures while

waiting for the lab results. These methods are no longer available on OSHA's website. They are

mere ghosts and have been withdrawn. But there are still references to them in other documents

online. (51)

The director of the OSHA lab retired and Dean Lillquist applied for that position and got

it. No longer an academic and my dean, now he was the lab manager's manager, and my eventual

boss.

The inorganic methods people wrote and validated an update to the official OSHA

method for air sampling for lead, etc., laboratory analysis. This meant that from this date onward,

the result would include the lead that had been previously thrown away. This method included

the instructions to wipe out the inside of the 37mm cassette sampler and include this in the result.

From this date forward, the workers had more accurate information about how much lead, etc.,

they had been exposed to. But the workers before that date had inaccurate information about

those lead levels, indicating it was much lower. And we, meaning OSHA, knew who those

people were. They are in the database. I wasn't comfortable with leaving them behind, as it were.

One more mention, I should have listened to chemist Mary Eide. (52) She was telling me

that there was a shake down coming around and that lab employees could even be arrested for

insubordination. At this time she wrote and validated a laboratory method for surface

contamination of Hexavalent-chromium, chrome VI. This is the Erin Brockovich chemical, you

recall. And Mary, she is also so good of heart, she also prepared an accompanying document that

evaluated a colorimetric indicator wipe technology for surfaces, for this dangerous chemical.

24
This would give real time information as to the extent of surface contamination, while waiting

for the lab results.

OSHA teaches five broad categories of hazards in the workplace, Biological, Chemical,

Physical, Safety and Ergonomic. Canada CCOHS adds a sixth, Psychosocial. Sorrow, sickness,

pain and death, and mere wear on the body are inherent in existence. They are amplified by

labor. Even, say, if you owned your own self-sufficient farm, there would be many risks of

injury. What is different in the capitalist system of social production is that the worker never

owns the product, and that both absolute surplus value (from extended working hours) and

relative surplus value (from increased productivity i.e., speeding up the line) are causes for

increased occupational illness, injury and death. There is strong evidence of this. Citation

needed? It's kind of common knowledge. Two amputations a week are the cost of working in a

US meat packing plant. (53) There is a direct link to profit (surplus value) and occupational

sorrow, sickness, pain and death. "The worker becomes poorer (in wholeness, in life and this

includes the health of the worker) the more wealth he produces, the more his production

increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity (in terms of wages

they go down, in terms of health, risks go up) the more commodities he creates. The devaluation

(in many aspects) of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world

of things. Labor produces not only commodities (products); it produces itself and the worker

(here, the worker includes the worker's life, health and mental health and bodily wholeness and

the worker as a gestalt, more than the sum) as a commodity (for sale) – (here Marx clearly

delineates labor as a commodity and the worker as a separate commodity and of course, the

products) – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general. (Note the word

25
"rate." This means that the labor and the health etc. of the worker is consumed at the same rate

at which they produce the commodities.) This fact expresses merely that the object(s) which

labor produces – labor’s product(s) (note there are at least three, labor itself, the product, and the

worker which includes the wear on the body and illness and injury that will occur in the body of

the worker.) – confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The

product of labor is labor (and the worker, the workers health, etc.) which has been embodied in

an object (the product), which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. (and the

objectification worker's sorrow, sickness, pain and death) It's realization is its objectification.

Under these economic conditions this realization of labor (the creation of the product and the

creation of occupational illness embodied in the worker) appears as loss of realization for the

workers (they can never own the product and they must always own the amputation, illness or

death) objectification as loss of the object (the product) and bondage to it (the workers body,

damaged for life, the "product" of the labor that the worker must own) appropriation as

estrangement, as alienation." "So much does the labor’s realization appear as loss of realization

that the worker loses realization to the point of starving to death. So much does objectification

appear as loss of the object that the worker is robbed of the objects most necessary not only for

his life but for his work. Indeed, labor itself becomes an object which he can obtain only with the

greatest effort and with the most irregular interruptions."

(54, italics mine)

I rode my bike to work that Friday morning. It was late May. My mindset was one of

deep concern about the unaccounted lead exposure of the workers, actually numbering in the

millions, although I also had met and interacted personally with several. I met an OSHA lab

worker on my way. He was walking to work. I stopped to explain that I was going to take action,

26
that I was going to get a lawyer and take legal action but first, I would talk to the director of the

lab, Dean Lillquist. You remember Dr. Lillquist from the University. Now he is the director.

When I arrived at the lab, I had worked up a sweat from my ride. When I went to the director's

office, Dean was not there that day. Instead it was Bill Babcock, substituting. I went in and

closed the door. I explained the situation. He already knew. I told him that I had been able to

access the database and I was able to understand that it contained the names and companies and

amount of lead exposure of every individual that had been sampled since OSHA became an

agency in 1972. Thirty years. That those levels were actually half again as much higher. That

those were actual people who had the right to know their exposures. That OSHA had the ability

and responsibility to do that. I yelled, "Bill, knowing what you know, OSHA can't just let that go,

like it was nothing. OSHA can't do that!" The HR "lady's" desk was just outside the door and

she heard the ruckus I was making, so did several others. I did not threaten to hurt or bring harm

to anyone. But I was loud and this was my purpose. When I reflect back, I could have been more

restrained, I could have continued saying nothing. That was not an option knowing what I knew.

For me to keep my mouth shut at OSHA's flagship laboratory would also alienate me from what

I knew about those lead exposures, and thus myself. Sometimes in the course of work, people

disagree over the next steps to be taken. Sometimes they get loud in the discussion. It is not a

federal case. It is often how work gets done. It is also assault to yell at another person. In the

lunchroom, Mary gave me a salad, the kindness intended to be calming. Later I talked to the

union steward about "whistleblowing" protection for me, because I was still planning to get legal

advice. In the meanwhile, the HR "lady" had called the FBI. I didn't know. I left early that day.

This was Friday, Monday morning, I was in the shower, getting ready for work, when the heavily

armed U.S. marshals knocked at the door.

27
"And so we passed along a narrow path

Between the torments and the city wall,

My Master first, and me close at his back.

"Master, O power, that makes me turn through all

These circles of unpiety," I said,

"Please tell me, if you care to, where we are:

Who are the people lying in these graves?

They're on display: the covers of their tombs

Are lifted up, and no one’s standing guard." (55)

They manacled and shackled me and drove me past the lab, past a window. I could not

see in but they could see me. This was done for identification. I was kept at Salt Lake County jail

until the arraignment. The director, who had not been there that Friday, Dean Lillquist Phd., was

there at the arraignment. He is no medical expert but he told the magistrate that maybe the AIDS

had caused me brain damage. That was the kiss. They kept me in Logan County and Davis

County to soften me up.

"So I discovered this. I did a pilot project to prove it," I told my public defender, Robert

Steel. (56) ( see footnote per his response to this paper.) The "whistleblower" protection would

not be for me, I was told. If I had discovered a danger in the lab and caused trouble, I would be

protected. If I discovered that thousands of people were harmed, because of bad lab techniques,

and caused trouble, there was no protection for me. He told me that there wasn't any traction in

that. I thought it was kind of a big deal, the lead and all. I wondered what those who were

exposed would think. I didn't understand that the public defender was there to get the best terms

for my confession.

28
 "Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has

conscious life activity."

(In prison, in the jail, one has no actual control of their life activity. Any activity is the object of

an authority's will. The prisoner's will counts as nothing. In the jail, the prisoner's life is owned

by someone else, in another's hands.)

"It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity distinguishes

man immediately from animal life activity."

(But in jail, man is no more than an animal in a cage.)

"It is just because of this that he is a species-being."

(Other than the absoluteness of death, nothing alienates a man from his own species-essence

more than the violence of forced incarceration.)

"Or it is only because he is a species-being that he is a conscious being, i.e., that his own life is

an object for him."

(But as explained, one's life is not their own in jail. You own nothing in jail. You have been

separated, alienated from your labor, your job, you are alienated from your fellow workers and

the other significant people in your life, you are alienated from yourself and all that defined you.)

"Only because of that is his activity free activity."

(But I obviously had no free activity, not in jail.) (57, italics mine)

In the most extreme way, estranged labor had reversed this relationship for me. In the

most extreme way, my labor, i.e. the product of my labor, had ended up alienating me from every

important relationship in my life.

Chapters could be written about jail, in another paper, perhaps. Here you are made to be

the product. Here there is a replication of structures, but different. One's world becomes so much

29
smaller. One has no freedom to change location. Movement is harshly restricted but one's

freedom to think is expanded. There is a lot of time. Commodities like a candy bar or coffee are

currency. In the time and the empty repetition of jail, I wrote a lot of letters and poetic

philosophy. I wrote letters, end to end as if chain smoking. I filled several prison notebooks. In

jail I studied rune writing. A lot of the white aryan assholes have rune tattoos and I wanted to

read them. I worked out the english sound equivalents, that is all they were doing, it wasn't old

German, just English written with runes as approximate sound equivalents but there was no "d"

sound only a frictive "t." I also worked out the Edda poem as to what the symbolic meaning of

each of the rune glyphs was supposed to be and not just their sounds. I don't believe in

superstitions but I saw a business opportunity. I created a rune divining kit, so I could read the

fortunes of the ICE holds. Two sopas a reading. A sopa is a soup, as in a ramen noodle. I always

told them that they needed to go talk to their father, or sometimes mother depending on the

coldread. They would sit around a circle, I would wrap my blanket around my shoulders and

perform my best shaman. I became a ramen shaman. I had been reduced to be a joke but this was

not funny. I was just passing time. I was charged with four counts of assault on a federal officer,

that would be the HR and three bystanders. By the way, I was also a federal officer. They found

my passport in my office, I had spoke professionally representing OSHA at a number of

conferences and developed a big booming public speaking voice in the process. One time it was

held in Toronto, that's why the passport, but it caused me to considered a flight risk so the bail

was impossible. Each count could be a maximum of ten years. There was a book cart that came

around weekly. Mostly bad paperbacks, Dean Koontz novels and the like, I didn't read them but

one day I found a small treasure, a collection of short stories by Russian authors, it had Chekhov,

Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and others. Later I found a real treasure. No, not Marx. They do not allow

30
that in Davis county federalized jail. It was my reintroduction to Camus, l'etranger, The

Stranger. I hadn't thought about it, the existentialism, since college. I know, it may seem

implausible that I was in an intractable predicament in the jail reading about Meursault who was

in an intractable predicament in a jail. Both of us hurling headlong towards judgment. He seemed

like a role model for a jail-lifeworld and at least I didn't shoot anybody five times. I made the

book my own in this place where no one owns property. I took it with me when I left, although

the paper and the ink remained there.

While I was languishing, up the river, in the slammer, and this was unknown to me at the

time, I found out later, I was given a thank you in a publication by the occupational medicine

doctors from Yale. (58) They had published their research, and they had used the surface

sampling method for the di-isocyantates that I wrote about, for the auto-painters. So I got a

formal published thank you, for that work, while laying on my bunk in the jail.

Another time my public defender Robert Steel came to me with a problem to see if I

could help him. In the Layton area, there was a crew, actually one guy working for a company,

fumigating the outside of a home for rodents. Unknown to this guy, there were two little girls

asleep downstairs of the home. They never woke up. (59) They had been poisoned and the guy

was charged with some degree of manslaughter. It was federal because of FIFRA, the Federal

Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and Robert was defending him. I told him that

OSHA has no jurisdiction over commercial applications of those fumigants but it sounds like the

guy did not understand the hazards involved with the chemical. OSHA would require that the

employee be trained in those hazards and how to mitigate them. Records of that training are

required, as well as the materials, books, pamphlets etc., as well as the labeling on the containers

of the fumigant. I told Robert to interview the guy to see what he knew about the hazards and

31
had he been formally trained and see how that squared with the company records. I thought, for a

moment, I was still at my work.

Desmotology is the fancy word for public heath of people in the jails, juvenile detention

centers, and prisons. It is the black hole of Calcutta in healthcare. New intakes would often be

young men in heroin withdrawal. Trying to keep it secret. One could tell. They were either

vomiting or sleeping it off. Myself and other inmates would have awareness and keep watch. I

would have hardtack candy for them and an occasional smuggled orange.

I had survived the jails for more than seven months. My public defender explained that he would

defend me but the jury would probably drop three of the counts and hold me to the one, thinking

the compromise was doing me a favor. It was still ten years. I'm no Antonio Gramsci, I'm not

willing to die in prison. I signified the lie, I perjured myself and was released. I signed the plea

deal. When I got out, I got tested, they don't do that in there. My cd4 count was 80.

I hadn't received the message yet. I was sprung around the holidays. I registered for yet

another last bit of course work at the Rocky Mountain Center for Environmental and

Occupational Health, at the university med school. My heart wasn't in it, neither could I afford it.

I gave up. It wasn't a physical suicide that got me. And it wasn't a sudden devotion to a higher

power, mother Mary did not come to me in my moment of alienation. I could face starvation. I

was in no position to assuage my angst with an avalanche of material goods. I remained wary of

political zealotry as religion, as release. No, no, no, my particular suicide was of the deep

psychological variety. A sexual debauch in a chemical soaked haze.

"Every night I would strut at the bar, in the red light and dust of that earthly paradise,

lying fantastically and drinking at length. I would wait for dawn and at last end up in the always

32
unmade bed, indulge mechanically in sex and then sleep without transition. Day would come

softly to throw light on this disaster and I would get up and stand motionless in a dawn of glory."

"Since, in the waking state and with a little self-knowledge, one can see no reason why

immortality should be conferred on a salacious monkey, one has to obtain substitutes for that

immortality. Because I longed…" "Despairing of love and of chastity, I at last bethought myself

of debauchery, a substitute for love, which quiets the laughter, restores silence, and above all,

confers immortality. At a certain degree of lucid intoxication, lying late at night between two

prostitutes and drained of all desire, hope ceases to be a torture, you see; the mind dominates the

whole past, and the pain of living is over forever. In a sense, I had always lived in debauchery,

never having ceased wanting to be immortal." "I lived in a sort of fog in which the laughter

became so muffled that eventually I ceased to notice it. The indifference that already had such a

hold over me now encountered no resistance and extended its sclerosis. No more emotions! So it

was with me as I peacefully died of my cure." (60)

I was lost. But I'm OK now. I accept my mortality and my insignificance and hell I've

even got a mortgage. I understand that my product, at my work, my work, was never mine. My

colleagues' work was never theirs. This is evident in the fact that all of the work that was done

for the methods and advice on real time, direct reading instruments, those for field analysis

outside of the lab, all of the colorimetric indicating surface techniques that allow quick

determination of chemical spills and leaks, all of these were taken off line. Reserved, with no

mention of their existence. Censorship is a harsh word. I never owned them. I guess they didn't

want competition, all assessment must be done in the lab, two week minimum turnaround time.

Idealism when running a lab can be problematic.

33
 My "Maoist" self criticism is that I thought I could uphold the state of affairs, the

capitalist system of social relations that we have, by trying to fix my one little bit of it, the

chemical exposures, and that would make it a little better, but also would be a part of upholding

the exploitation as a whole. As the agency that tells the owner how much poison they are allowed

to throw at their workers. Other that that, I look back with no regrets. I will take the bullet now,

please.

And it is so much better to be safe than sorry, right? Or is it better to beg forgiveness after

the fact? Was it worth it? Oh yes. It ended my career a little early, but understand, I had a

complete 27 year career. I was able to keep my pension. Because I demonstrated how to increase

the sample recovery by a third, (half again as much is a third) I caused the OSHA standard for

lead (etc.) to be defacto more protective by a third. It takes an act of congress to change an

OSHA standard. The lab managers did not like it. They did not want a controversy. They did not

want the lab to look bad, but they were stuck with it. Industry owners, seriously big industries,

like lead acid battery manufacturers, were pissed. This meant they would have to tighten up their

controls, their ventilation systems, air flow system, "housekeeping." It would be millions of

dollars. It would drive some of the lower end operations, like radiator welding and scrap metal

recycling out of business because of costs. But they were stuck with it. When the more efficient

sample recovery was implemented at the OSHA lab, millions of workers were better protected.

The lab defended the change in procedure under some pressure. Business and politicians

did not like it. Warren Hendricks explained this in a professional journal. (61) The justification

he wrote is sound, it is correct. Anything collected inside the sampler represents the workers

breathing air. Everything inside the sampler, meaning anything on the filter and anything

collected on the inside walls of the cassette sampler inclusive. The article does not describe the

34
history that resulted in the change in the lab procedure, nor should it. But the article begs the

question about the sampling before the change. I knew that those workers from before had been

misinformed about their lead levels (and the other metals, beryllium, etc.) and we knew the

workers names.

Was it worth it? Oh yes. Say it after me, it's no better to be safe than sorry. Just because I

failed in my attempt to get these people their rightful information, their right to know their

exposures, i.e., notified that the exposures the OSHA had reported to them were significantly

lower than we know them to be. Just because I failed in my attempt does not mean these people

weren't worth the trying. There are things involving people's lives and health that are worth

trying even if one fails. Remember that lesson. There are things worth trying, even if one fails.

Nothing is really ok, but we get on, enjoy life. I accept that there is no meaning other than

what I make it to be. Finding one's own meaning in life is doubly rewarding. One attains a

personal meaning as well as a journey to find that meaning. This is my burden and this is my

prize. I can ponder and create my own subjective evaluation of beauty and meaning, without

having an objective standard of beauty or meaning, of this very text for example. Is it ok… to

self reference? However it is! The missing lead that is in the bodies of millions of workers, those

my age, those beginning to retire, those that worked since they graduated from high school. The

missing lead that is more often hidden in the bodies of people of color than white populations.

(62) The unreported lead in this population, and chrome VI, cadmium, arsenic and beryllium,

etc., underreported for over thirty years. Half as much again, missing lead. That's a third, it is not

insignificant. The missing lead did not go away. It is in their bones. It will return.

The missing lead did not disappear, it is waiting in their bones. And then long forgotten,

yet it did not disappear but was just sleeping. You've understood for a while that when lead gets

35
into the body it acts as an analog to calcium and goes into our bones. The missing lead did not

disappear, it sleeps our bones. And then it awakens. Now you understand that when we age, our

bones demineralize. The calcium comes out. Also does the missing lead reappear, into the bodies

of those exposed but never told the amount. Their right to know the hazards of their workplace

denied. Lead is a nasty neurotoxin. This awakening lead will surely result in more sorrow,

sickness, pain and death in the form of Parkinson's, memory problems, dementia and Alzheimer's

spectrum only to name a few. (63) We will all be gone in a day or two. So, before I forget and go,

I find my voice and write.

"Your awakening

Is an endless rising,

Your rising

An endless falling." (64)

“In the language of flowers, the traditional meaning of sweet hyssop is of humility,

repentance and health, and symbolically sacrifice, redemption and purification.” (65)

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Books, NY, NY, pg 65.

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3132, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Reprint, 2000,

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36
(4)United States, Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration,

Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response, OSHA publication 3114-07R,

2008, https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA-3114-hazwoper.pdf

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(6)Kevin Cummins LinkedIn profile, Person

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(7)Shell plant explosion in Diamond, Louisiana 1988, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation,

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pg. 6 https://pubs.acs.org/toc/cenear/71/34

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Reactives (Mandatory)." 29 CFR, 1910.119 App A

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 https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.119AppA

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(14)"Concept Sciences, OSHA Reach Settlement Agreement." EHS Today Archive 29

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ent-agreement

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(19)Marx K. "Kapital vol 1 Chapter ten, Section 3: Branches of English Industry Without Legal

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Method Development Team Industrial Hygiene Chemistry Division OSHA Salt Lake

Technical Center Sandy Utah, February 2021

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(21) Footnote. Regarding the efficiency problem. The reactive di-isocyanate needs to be captured

and fixed into a known chemical or it will react into something else that is not

di-isocyanate and be lost to measurement. The filter is treated with a chemical, the

derivatizing agent. This will stabilize the di-isocyanate. However, most of the

di-isocyanate is in an aerosolized form. Tiny droplets. One little droplet will hit in the

exact same spot on the filter where a previous one has landed, and the derivatizing agent

will have been depleted from this previous impact. And thus be lost. We were doing triple

side by side area sampling during automobile spray painting. This was done so that each

of the three samples were from the same area of air. One sample was sealed after

sampling following the OSHA method, one sample was extracted immediately after

sampling. This means the filter was immediately taken out and placed in a vial containing

known amounts of the DMSO/acetonitrile solvent. The third sample was not filter

sampling but rather impinger (bubbler) sampling. This is where the air is pulled through

the liquid DMSO/acetonitrile solvent, which also contains the derivatizing agent. This

repeated many times with multiple set-ups. All of the samples were taken back to the lab

39
 for analysis and then statistical analysis. There was strong evidence that the amount of

di-isocyantate collected by the lab method was less than the amount by either immediate

extraction, or the bubbler impinger. The bubbler impinger had the highest sampling

efficiency. Impinger sampling is a gold standard, but they are awkward.

(22)Bello, D. et al. "Skin Exposure to Isocyanates: Reasons for Concern." Environmental Health

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Exploitation." 1867, Oxford University Press, Oxford New York, 1995, pg.155.

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(25)Edward Zimowski Facebook profile, Person

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(27)"Which Niton Elemental Analyzer is Right for Me?" Thermo Fisher Scientific, Accessed 25

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lysis/portable-analysis-material-id/portable-xrf-analyzer-selection-guide.html

40
(28) Lawrence R. Niton 700 series. 8 March, 2001. Author's personal collection

(29)Lawrence, R. "Evaluation Guidelines for Surface Sampling Methods" OSHA Salt Lake

Technical Center, U.S. Department of Labor: Salt Lake City, Utah, 2001

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(30)Lawrence, R., Elskamp, C. "Evaluation Guidelines with Testing and Reporting Protocols for

OSHA On-site Air and Surface Sampling Methods." OSHA Salt Lake Technical Center,

U.S. Department of Labor: Salt Lake City, Utah, 2002, Withdrawn

(31)Materion Brush Beryllium & Composites (Formerly Brush Wellman) 14710 W Portage

River South Rd, Elmore, Ohio, Place

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eryllium-Elmore-OH.htm

(32)Lawrence, R. Sandblasting the paint on Interstate 75, Ohio, 23 August, 2000. Author's

personal collection

41
(33)"37mm Lead Cassettes With MCE Filters" Occupational Training & Supply, Inc. 2022

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(34)"3 Kan. Construction Workers Killed." Associated Press 28 August 2001

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(36) Brett Besser ResearchGate profile, Person

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(37)Marx, K "Guerrilla Warfare in Spain 1809" New-York Daily Tribune 30 October, 1854

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42
(38)Bob Curtis Facebook profile, Person https://www.facebook.com/bob.curtis.739326

(39)Footnote regarding the Senate, you know how they are… "The meaning which production

has in relation to the rich is seen revealed in the meaning which it has for the poor.

Looking upwards the manifestation is always refined, veiled, ambiguous – outward

appearance; downwards, it is rough, straightforward, frank – the real thing." Marx, K.

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Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property." Dover

Publications Inc. Mineola New York 2007, pg 122

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of the 1st Annual Regional National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) Young/New

Investigators Symposium, Salt Lake City, Utah, 12-13 June, 2003. Edited by Donald

Bloswick, The Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health

(RMCOEH) and The Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt

Lake City, 2004, pp. 81- 106.

(41)Lawrence, R. "Anthrax Decontamination at Brentwood Postal Facility USPS Washington

D.C." YouTube, 15 September, 2012, https://youtu.be/pS_ucNhZ0lk Accessed 15 March,

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43
 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

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Applied Industrial Hygiene Chemistry Team Program Support Division. OSHA Salt Lake

Technical Center, Salt Lake City Utah. March 2002.

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(46)Steve Thygerson, Curriculum Vitae, Professor, College of Life Sciences, Brigham Young

University https://lifesciences.byu.edu/directory/steven-thygerson

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44
 Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA Salt Lake Technical Center, Salt

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Footnote: I emailed Robert a draft of this paper and this was his reply: Rich,

Magnificentjob. Interesting, thoughtful, and compelling. I don’t remember the

conversation on “whistleblower.” I still appreciate your kindness in helping on

45
 the fumigation case. I think you are remembering the plea discussions exactly as

you experienced them at that time; I just remember how sick you were. Bob

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46
 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11083332/#:~:text=Evidence%20is%20emerging%20th

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(65)Lawrence, Cassaundra. Florist. Conversation with Rich Lawrence. March 2022.

Postscript

"According to the economic laws the estrangement of the worker in his object is

expressed thus: The more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more values he

creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product, the

more deformed becomes the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous becomes

the worker; the more powerful labor becomes, the more powerless becomes the worker; the more

ingenious labor becomes, the less ingenious becomes the worker and the more he becomes

nature’s slave."

(Marx, K. "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Estranged Labour." Dover

Publications Inc. Mineola New York 2007. p. 71)

47