By David Michaels Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), chair of the House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FDA has called on Food and Drug Administration to ban diacetyl until more research is completed. As we’ve written (here and here, for example), diacetyl is the artificial butter flavor chemical that has been crippling workers […]

By David Michaels In the last few days, the national media has finally focused on the failure of OSHA to protect workers from devastating lung disease caused by exposure to artificial butter flavor. (The problem goes well beyond microwave popcorn factories, to the flavor industry and other snack food plants.) Articles in the Washington Post, […]

By David Michaels Following up on a powerful indictment of OSHA’s failure to protect workers from diacetyl and other hazards published two days ago in the New York Times, today’s edition of the newspaper has a scathing editorial on the demise of OSHA under the Bush Administration. The editorial writers particularly go after OSHA Assistant […]

By David Michaels On April 26, 2002, exactly five years ago today, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published a report about the risk of a terrible and sometime fatal lung disease, bronchiolitis obliterans, in microwave popcorn workers. The report appeared in the CDC’s widely-disseminated Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Since then, dozens of workers […]