Secrets behind the mask
Others disagree. "3M came forward with a product that had some fundamental flaws, [and] their immediate focus was to sell that product, as widespread as possible," says Vernon Rose, an industrial hygiene consulting engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Alabama. "It was obvious they didn't consider how well it would perform in the workplace. There's no doubt in my mind it was [unsafe]."
Throwaway. Millions of Americans--miners, shipyard workers, textile workers--must use respirators to protect against contaminated air. The human respiratory system does well keeping out bigger particles. But smaller particles, measuring only minute fractions of the width of a hair, can get into the tiniest passageways of the lungs and lodge there, causing scarring that essentially causes victims to suffocate to death.
Cheap, lightweight, and meant to be thrown away after just one use, the 8710 was a hit with employers, while a high profit margin made it a winner for 3M. The company was first into the disposable-respirator market and dominated it for years. It sold at least hundreds of millions of 8710 masks--precisely how many, 3M won't say--while workers staked their health and safety on the claims 3M made about the mask.
Coal country was a lucrative marketplace for the 8710, but now it's a legal battleground for 3M. In West Virginia, state officials believe the company should share the cost of treatment for coal miners who have become ill. The state is suing 3M and other respirator manufacturers to recover costs of treating and paying benefits to more than 20,000 miners. The expense borne by the state's workers' compensation fund already has reached hundreds of millions of dollars, the lawsuit alleges, and the state's lawyers are seeking punitive damages on top of that. Frances Hughes, the state's chief deputy attorney general, likens 3M and the other firms to tobacco companies. "The manufacturers knew for a long time these masks didn't perform," she says. "We'll be able to prove that they knew and conspired to keep this information from getting out."
Many who worked around silica dust also are suing 3M. Silica, the second most common mineral in the Earth's crust, causes silicosis--a disabling, irreversible, and often fatal lung disease. At least 1.7 million U.S. workers are exposed to silica dust in jobs like construction, sandblasting, and mining, according to the government, and several hundred deaths are reported each year. As a shipyard supervisor, Alvin Gipson wore the 8710 for 10 years while overseeing tank-cleaning operations. But the mask provided him too little protection, he says, against silica. "You came up with a fog of dust that was so thick at times you could hardly see," he recalls--just the kind of "thick, choking dust" that 3M claimed, in ads, that the 8710 would protect against. In the late 1980s, Gipson says, his chest began to tighten, and breathing became difficult. Diagnosis: silicosis. "I know when I get tired, to stop--that's in everything I do," says Gipson, who won a confidential settlement from 3M. Still, Gipson, who is now retired and living near Houston, considers himself fortunate--he counts a dozen men who worked for him who battled respiratory woes and are now dead. All, he says, wore the 8710.
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