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December 9, 2003
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FORMER IBM EMPLOYEES SAY "BIG BLUE" KNEW IT WAS EXPOSING UNSUSPECTING WORKERS TO CARCINOGENS -- ON "60 MINUTES II," WEDNESDAY, DEC. 10
ON THE CBS TELEVISION NETWORK
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Company Kept Its Own Mortality Records, But Didn't Warn Employees ?
??? ????????? IBM officials deny that they knowingly exposed employees to carcinogens, but a series of lawsuits brought against Big Blue by 250 current and former employees charge that an unusually large number of people who worked in "clean rooms" during the 1970s and 1980s have contracted cancer.? Three of IBM's former employees tell 60 MINUTES II correspondent Scott Pelley that an alarming number of workers have contracted cancer and that it resulted from exposure to chemicals in "clean rooms," where the microchips and hard drives that helped propel the rapid growth of the computer industry were built.? Correspondent Scott Pelley's interviews with the former IBM employees will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES II, Wednesday, Dec. 10 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. ?
Since 1969, IBM has kept mortality records for nearly all of its employees in the U.S. -- 30,000 records in total. Despite their access to the information, IBM officials say they have never used the information to track employee health.? Richard Clapp, an epidemiologist at Boston University, is an expert at tracking cancer deaths and analyzed IBM's mortality records. "There's no doubt in my mind that cancer is a significant problem in this workforce that's represented in this database," says Clapp, who adds that the percentage of cancer cases at IBM is well above national averages.? "For brain cancer, four times higher.? For multiple myeloma, even higher than that -- six times higher, but that's a very rare cause of death. For breast cancer, twice as high as would have been expected in the general population." ?
???????????? "I believe that we were human guinea pigs," says Keith Barrack, a former employee of IBM's East Fishkill, N.Y., plant, who has been diagnosed with testicular cancer.? "[An] experiment, so to speak.? They knew these chemicals were bad from day one.? They didn't care about us, they didn't care about human life -- they cared about making money."? ?
Barrack says the protective suits that workers wore may have kept dust off the products but didn't shield employees from the powerful acids, solvents and coatings used to make computer chips.? He also tells Pelley that one compound he used daily was delivered to him in bottles that lacked the manufacturer's safety labels, which warned of damage to the testes.? ?

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Robin Lapinski says IBM told her that the glycol ethers she worked with in East Fishkill were safe.? "There was [no] mention of cancer or birth defects to us or I would have never been in there," says Lapinski.? She was working with glycol ethers as late as 1991, even though eight years earlier IBM received a bulletin from the federal government warning that animals exposed to glycol ethers showed "fetal abnormalities," "skeletal defects"?and "embryonic deaths." The bulletin also said there was reason to expect "similar reproductive effects in humans."? In 1991, Lapinski's son was born with retinoblastoma, a rare eye cancer that afflicts only one in 15,000 children. ?
Another former employee, Armida Mesa, who worked at IBM's San Jose, Calif., plant, was diagnosed with breast cancer, even though she was considered low risk and none of her seven sisters or her mother ever had the disease.? Mesa says she, too, wasn't warned about the danger of the chemical she worked with, methylene chloride, but she did notice that it tended to melt her gloves. "So you just used your [bare] hands," says Mesa.? ?
???????????? In addition to high rates of breast and testicular cancers in "clean room" employees, eight of the 10 men who worked alongside Gary Adams in an IBM lab in San Jose developed cancer. Adams was so concerned in 1985 that he alerted the IBM medical staff to the names of his colleagues, the cancers they had and the chemicals they worked with.? "I expected alarm bells to go off all over IBM," says Adams.? Adams says he was called in to the medical department and told cancer was an unfortunate fact of life and that nothing pointed to exposure at work. After the fourth man in Adams' workgroup died of brain cancer, Adams sent a letter to Louis Gerstner, IBM's chairman at the time.? One of IBM's medical doctors responded in a letter to Adams, "regrettably, cancer is one of the most common causes of death in American adults." ?
IBM declined to be interviewed by 60 MINUTES II, but said in a letter, "...our hearts and prayers go out to the IBM employees and their families who have been stricken with this disease. However, there is absolutely no scientific evidence linking cancer to chemical use in any IBM work environment." ?
Jeff Fager is the executive producer of 60 MINUTES II and Paul Gallagher is the producer of this report. *???? *???? *
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Press Contact:? Kelli Edwards 212/975-6795 kee@cbsnews.com ?