Secrets behind the mask
They weren't alone. Edgar Clough wore the 8710 for years while sandblasting tanks, bridges, and barges. He died from silicosis in 1994, leaving behind six children, after what his wife, Gean, describes as an excruciating ordeal. "When he couldn't breathe," she recalls, "he'd look up at me and just reach for my hand. He had a look, and a fear, in his eyes. I just never want to see that look in anybody else's eyes." The disease left them both helpless. "It's indescribable," she says. "It was such a horrible way of life, it kind of relieved me when he died. I know it sounds terrible, [but] the suffering is so bad." Clough won a confidential settlement from 3M, but by the time that happened his health was so bad he needed a wheelchair and oxygen to get around and could speak for only minutes at a time without resting.
3M officials acknowledge now that its respirator shouldn't have been used for sandblasting. But that's not what the company said when it sold the mask: "It stops sand and silica," declared one ad, with no warning against sandblasting. Another ad specifically cited sandblasting. Years later, Clough's widow says she still remembers the day her husband came home telling her of an amazing new product--the 8710--that was going to protect him. "He showed me how great it was," she says. "They weren't to go into a tank without it on."
Asbestos was another market for the 8710. 3M promoted the respirator for protection against this cancer-causing fiber commonly used in insulation, even battling federal regulators who wanted to limit the respirator's use against it. Elizabeth Grassley was among those who used the 8710 for asbestos protection. In the 1970s, she did a home-building project on the Big Island of Hawaii, where she also later ran a floor-sanding business. Repeatedly exposed to asbestos dust and fibers, Grassley came down with mesothelioma, a malignant tumor that invades the linings of the lungs and elsewhere. She died last December, and her mother and children are now suing 3M and other firms. Their suit claims 3M led Grassley and others astray: The company said the respirator would work and met government standards, when it didn't; the mask couldn't be checked for adequate fit; and 3M failed to issue warnings about the respirator's known limitations. "The respirator was sold to the public," the suits says, with "full knowledge by 3M that [it] could not and did not meet" government regulations.
Despite the 8710's problems, 3M was unequivocally upbeat in its marketing of it. In one advertisement, 3M declared that the 8710 "keeps lung damaging dusts out of the nose, mouth and lungs." In another, 3M proclaimed that its product stopped deadly dusts "from ever reaching the lungs." 3M also broadcast claims of the mask's key selling point--comfort--even as it collected data showing workers didn't like it. For instance, when the Eastern Associated Coal Corp. queried coal miners about the 8710, nearly 90 percent rated it unacceptable, chiefly because it was too hot, too fragile, and too hard to breathe through.
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