SHOW: Dateline NBC

Dateline Transcript of program aired on April 18, 1997 (excerpts)

KATIE COURIC (Voice-over) They thought they had it all: health, youth, and good jobs at IBM. Did those jobs come at a terrible price?...Cancer, birth defects, among a group of workers and their children.

Unidentified Woman #1: I was diagnosed in 1996 with a brain tumor.

Unidentified Man #1: In 1994, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Unidentified Man #2: In 1989, at the age of 19, I was diagnosed with non Hodgkin's lymphoma.

COURIC: (Voice-over) Breast cancer, testicular cancer; brain tumors, and a variety of pre-cancerous conditions, all represented here. Many of the victims young, still in their 20's. Most with no family history of the kind of cancer they've developed.

COURIC: How many of you all were diagnosed with your illnesses or your loved ones were diagnosed with their illnesses under the age of 30?

(Voice-over) Besides medical problems, they have something else in common: they were among 3,000 people working at the same IBM plant in Fishkill, New York.

Their job? Making computer microchips in the 80's. And now they all want to know, did their work make them sick? In some cases, even result in death.

Brenda Sanders wants to know. Her daughter, Nicole, died four years ago.

Ms. BRENDA SANDERS: I am horrified and I am sad and I feel guilty that I pushed my daughter to go to work in a condition like this. I thought it was a safe place for my daughter to work. And it makes me sick.

COURIC: (Voice-over) Brenda and Nicole's father, James, were thrilled when Nicole got the job at IBM. It meant security for their only daughter, a job for life. But at the time they didn't know she'd be working around a stew of toxic chemicals and that colon cancer would take her life before she even turned 25. Now they believe Nicole's job for life was really a death sentence.

Nicole's parents and the others here were brought together by lawyers suing IBM and makers of the chemicals IBM used. In all, more than 100 people have sued; most of them worked at Fishkill. Only one person here is not involved in the suit.

Unidentified Man #3: I'm not convinced, statistically--I could be--fall into the natural category. And so I'm not convinced.

COURIC: (Voice-over) But everyone else here believes that making microchips at IBM harmed them or their loved ones--that their work caused cancer and birth defects. Like many of the people here, Nicole worked in what's known as a clean room, where computer microchips are made. These high-tech facilities are 100 times cleaner than hospital operating rooms, with special ventilation systems to remove even the tiniest specks of dust. Workers wear special clothing known as bunny suits.

COURIC: They'd go through all of that just to protect the wafers?

Unidentified Woman #3: Oh, yeah. Those wafers were worth a lot of money.

COURIC: (Voice-over) Those expensive wafers looked like CD's. Computer microchips are cut from the wafers. A few particles of dirt and the entire wafer is ruined, thousands of dollars down the drain. While IBM was obsessed with keeping its wafers clean, these workers want to know, did it forget to protect the people making the wafers? Three people here worked within a few feet of Nicole Sanders. All of them got cancer or pre-cancerous conditions.

COURIC: You're convinced you're not just unlucky?

Man #1: Too much of a coincidence. To many people worked in the same area, the same type of tool, all to get it. It's too much of a coincidence.

COURIC: (Voice-over) Never before has such a large group of workers made these kinds of allegations about clean room chemicals. They say were young and healthy before they started working at IBM. So, are their illnesses just a fluke or is there something more to it? Dr. Al Nugget is a cancer specialist.

He's skeptical that these cases are anything more than random.

Dr. AL NUGGET: It's possible, but I--it just seems very unlikely to me. There are a number of different cancers involved, which, again, makes me suspicious that it's not that meaningful.

COURIC: (Voice-over) Dr. Nugget also says some cancers take 20 or 30 years to develop--far longer than many of these people worked at IBM. But Dr. Mark Lepay has studied clean room chemicals and he disagrees. He's a toxicologist and author who's testified for workers who claim clean rooms damaged their health.

Dr. MARK LEPAY: I think it's real. There are too many tumors. There's too many tumors of exactly the type that we know to have environmental causes.

There are too many tumors in people who are too young.

COURIC: (Voice-over) Who's right? That's difficult to know, because so far the government has not looked for any connection between clean room chemicals and cancer. While IBM has conducted its own health studies, it won't say exactly what it studied or make them public. Everyday the clean room workers were exposed to toxic chemicals used to make microchips, some of them known to cause cancer. IBM says they were used at levels far below government standards--levels that are perfectly safe. Workers say now they're not convinced.

Unidentified Man #4: You could smell it. So, you were constantly exposed to fumes.

Unidentified Man #5: Everyone in my area had sore throats, nausea, headaches.

COURIC: (Voice-over) Alarm systems were supposed to alert workers to chemicals spills or leaks, but workers say often they were told to ignore them. And sometimes the alarms didn't go off at all. Henry Drew was a clean room manager.

Mr. HENRY DREW: And we had it checked out and facilities came in and found out there was a major acid leak on the floor that wasn't detected. And come to find out somebody turned off the alarms.

COURIC: You're intelligent people. Why didn't you say something? You read the labels, you smelled the fumes, you got headaches, you got sick.

Unidentified Woman #4: We did say something. I was made to believe it was me, that nobody else had these problems, that nobody else smelled those fumes, that nobody else broke out in rashes. I was told it was psychosomatic.

Man #5: I was told that at the levels that I would be breathing them in, they would not be harmful to me. I was assured of that.

COURIC: (Voice-over) But chemical exposure and cancer is only part of this story. DATELINE has discovered evidence of reproductive problems and birth defects as well. By the early '80s, studies were showing that one class of chemicals, glycol ethers, caused birth defects in animals--fused ribs and an increase in dead fetuses, and in males, decreased fertility.

COURIC: What was even more shocking about these animal studies was just how little exposure to the chemicals it took for these disturbing birth defects and reproductive problems to occur. In fact, they were happening at very low levels,

(Voice-over) at levels sometimes even lower than permitted by the government.

In 1983, the government gave computer companies this warning about glycol ethers, recommending that they "be regarded as having the potential to cause adverse reproductive effects." And urged employers to "give this information to their workers."

Ms. FAY CALTON: I--we really needed to have this.

COURIC: (Voice-over) But apparently, IBM did not share this information.

Ms. PAT MIKULA: So, IBM had this, right?

COURIC: (Voice-over) Fay Calton and Pat Mikula worked in the clean rooms in Fishkill in the 1980s. Pat had already had a miscarriage, so when her friend, Fay, got pregnant, she gave her some advice.

Ms. CALTON: Pat told me that they wouldn't tell me to stay away from it, but it wasn't good for me to be around. I asked her why. She said because it would do harm to the baby.

COURIC: (Voice-over) Fay did not leave IBM. This is her son, Zachary. Fay is convinced the glycol ethers caused Zack's birth defects, a belief she's shared with her son.

Mr. ZACHARY CALTON: I was exposed to the chemical and look what I turned out to be. Different.

Ms. CALTON: Go put him in the...

COURIC: (Voice-over) Zack's condition is very rare and doctors don't know what caused it. But animal studies have linked glycol ethers with craniofacial or head and face deformities. Zachary is one of five children whose parents are suing IBM because they believe working in clean rooms caused their children's abnormalities.

Ms. CALTON: You know, I have a child who is blind, who's got a tracheostomy because he can't breathe, who goes through all this craniofacial surgery. I don't want that for my son and I would not--I would have easily left IBM if I knew that this was going to happen.

COURIC: In 1989, six years after the government had first issued a warning about glycol ethers, IBM began phasing them out. But it took another three years before the company told its workers about the dangers. And when it did, the notice wasn't about birth defects, it was about miscarriages. This IBM study had found that while clean rooms in general were safe, women working around a particular chemical mixture had a miscarriage rate double that of the general population.

(Voice-over) IBM told workers that the mixture contained glycol ethers, the very chemical it was phasing out. But this memo wasn't issued until 1992, nine years after the government's warning. Some scientists today worry that getting rid of glycol ethers may not have solved the problem. They want IBM to do more studies to see if other chemicals in the mixture might also cause miscarriages, chemicals still in use today. IBM officials would not appear on camera, but said they had encouraged workers to contact the company for more information and that they had informed those who still had concerns that they "may be offered the option of working in other areas." Fay Calton said it was too little information too late.

Ms. CALTON: If that had been shown, then I would have not worked in that environment. I mean, I didn't pump gas when I was pregnant because it was harmful. I didn't take medicines.

COURIC: (Voice-over) But what if the employees who got cancer had known about these six men? They were chemists, working together in the same lab in San Jose, California, during the '60s and '70s. The company they did research for: IBM. DATELINE tracked them down and found that John Wong was the first to get cancer, brain cancer at the age of 47. Eventually, it killed him. Ray Hawkins died of brain cancer as well. He was 62. Abdominal cancer killed Gordon Mol at the age of 49. In all, four of the six got cancer, including Gary Adams, who developed a bone tumor. He and his former colleague, Fred Tarman, began to realize it might be more than sheer coincidence.

Mr. GARY ADAMS: And all of a sudden we began to worry. And then when another one and another one, now it really began to hit home.

Mr. FRED TARMAN: And then, of course, it's too late. You know it's too late.

I mean, you--you--you--you yourself, inside, it's too late. I mean, the damage has been done.

COURIC: (Voice-over) Gary Adams was afraid other people still working around the chemicals would get sick as well. He says that's why he wrote a letter to IBM officials 12 years ago alerting them to the problem and asking them to monitor their workers' health. He says an IBM staff doctor told him that would be a waste of time, that the workers did not get cancer from their jobs. These chemists were not in clean rooms and were exposed to only some of the chemicals that the workers in Fishkill were. But should that letter have sounded an alarm?

Dr. LEPAY: Six tumors, or four in this particular instance, are more than enough to warrant a critical examination. Particularly since the workers are all in the same work site. It's extraordinarily unusual.

COURIC: (Voice-over) That 1985, letter was written before Zachary was born, before Nicole Sanders died, before other IBM employees got cancer. IBM officials sent employees a memo about the cancer issue last May--again saying that "health and safety are top priority" and that "IBM clean rooms are safe." They also insist that, among other measures, the company has been "installing equipment to minimize employee contact with chemicals" and that they do not "believe the illnesses of the former IBMers were caused by their jobs." We showed it to Gary Adams and Fred Tarman.

Mr. ADAMS: I mean, that's the same storyline they gave me 11 years ago.

Mr. TARMAN: There's a group of people here that, just like our group, they're just all coming down with the same kind of problems and I'm sure, you know, you're going to say, `This is a coincidence too?'

COURIC: (Voice-over) IBM had a reputation for treating its employees like family and these men and women were thrilled to be a part of the team. They say they were loyal, ready to give their best to the company they called Big Blue. But now they want to know, did they also give their lives?

Man #5: And that's what most of us are here for, so there can be studies for it, and so other people don't have to deal with what we're dealing with on a daily basis.

Unidentified Woman #4: I want a corporate IBM exec to stand up and say, `Yes, we did you wrong, and it will never, ever happen again.'

COURIC: IBM says its workers are no longer exposed to glycol ethers because they finished phasing them out in 1994. Several of the chemical companies that have been sued along with IBM are challenging the workers' claims in court.

Meanwhile, IBM has until next month to respond to the lawsuit. Return to Health Hazards Exposed