HETA 2002-0089, letter to Nebraska Popcorn, Clearwater, Nebraska

Details

• Personal Author:
  Kanwal, Richard
• Corporate Authors:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Description:
  While our lung function tests of workers at your plant did not reveal obstruction, the abnormality most associated with butter flavoring exposure, this should not be interpreted to mean that there is little, or no risk from flavoring exposure in your plant. As I discussed in my previous letter, while most of your microwave production workers had lung function that was in the normal range, it is possible that some had higher levels of function in the past. The respiratory symptoms reported by some of them may mean that their lung function could become abnormal in the future. In addition, since not all workers are equally susceptible to the effects of a chemical exposure, it is possible that the small number of workers we tested at your plant did not include workers that were sensitive to the air concentrations of flavoring chemicals that were present during our evaluation. Future new employees could be at risk, and changes in your production process, level of production, or the flavorings that you use could increase risk for current workers if exposures to flavorings chemicals increase as a result.
• Subjects:
  Asthma Asthma, Occupational Butanones Chronic Disease Coloring Agents Dust Fatigue Food Additives Food Handling Food Industry Irritants Lung Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Radiography Respiratory Function Tests Respiratory System Respiratory Tract Diseases Safety Smokers

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• Keywords:
  Airway-obstruction Bronchial-asthma Chemicals In Flavorings Chest-X-rays Chronic-inflammation Employee-exposure Flavoring Extracts Flavorings Flavoring Syrups Food-additives Food-colors Food-processing Hazard-Unconfirmed Ketones Lung-irritants Medical-screening Nebraska Popcorn Organic-chemicals OSHA Region 7 Pulmonary-function-tests Pulmonary-system-disorders Respirable-dust Respiratory-irritants Respiratory-system-disorders Smoking Volatiles

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• Source:
  Morgantown, WV: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, HETA 2002-0089-letter, 2003 Jul ; :1-12
• Series:
  Health Hazard Evaluation Reports (HHE)
• Subseries:
  Health Evaluation and Technical Assistance (HETA)
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.26616/NIOSHHETA20020089letter
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Field Study
• Place as Subject:
  Nebraska ; OSHA Region 7
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DRDS - Division of Respiratory Disease Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  12 pdf pages
• Contributor:
  Hartle, Richard
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20030367
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2006-112871
• CAS Registry Number:
  Diacetyl (CAS RN 431-03-8) ; Methyl ethyl ketone [MEK] (CAS RN 78-93-3)
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2003
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• NAICS and SIC Codes:
  31199 - All Other Food Manufacturing - (NAICS)
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:9cf218e049c795e6df32570f7d24d8089e667c90783b9eef3bbeb57f3743ab6232aa67ed64d3b7268721c7e7461954c1ff3631f115a8d419ec55db3931ade3c4
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/172628/cdc_172628_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.39 MB ]