Tree Markers Have Higher Miscarriage Rates, Study Says

WASHINGTON - Preliminary results of a government study show female Forest Service workers who mark trees for logging suffer above-normal miscarriage rates.

The study, one of the largest of its kind in the workplace, stops short of linking those rates and other health problems to chemicals in the special blue spray paint used to designate trees included in a timber sale.

But it confirms the higher rate of miscarriages for female agency foresters who have been exposed to the paint or herbicides or both, say two officials familiar with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health survey of more than 10,000 women at the Forest Service.

The officials discussed the results on condition of anonymity. They declined to disclose the actual rates.

The NIOSH study is expected to be made public in the next month or so. The Forest Service requested it in 1993, in response to increasing complaints from employees.

A number of factors complicate the results. Agency crews are routinely exposed to a variety of environmental conditions. Many are exposed to chemicals, including herbicides.

Additionally, the Forest Service switched to a new type of paint in 1993. The agency believes it is safer, but complaints from workers have continued.

Ron Wilson, an occupational health and safety officer for the Forest Service in Arlington, Va., said he's disappointed the study doesn't reach a stronger conclusion.

"I'm so sad about that because some of these women are looking for answers," he said.

"`Was it the paint?' We will never know the truth."

Unfortunately, he is right, says Ron Driscoll, who led the NIOSH study.

"These people are foresters, firefighters. They work with pesticides, herbicides. It is very physically demanding work. All of those are known to be reproductive hazards," Driscoll said.

Forest Service officials contend the second type of paint, introduced in 1993, is safe.

But workers in its Northwest region, where most such paint is used, disagree. Agency officers there are trying a third variety of paint that so far has not produced the nausea and other symptoms workers have complained about.

None of the paints pass muster with officials of the Eugene-based Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, an advocacy group for agency workers.

They say the paint used since 1993 may be just as dangerous as its predecessor, and that it's too soon to tell about the newest version.

A better alternative would be to get rid of the paint and have supervisors point out trees to be cut, the association contends.

A government official who read to the AP from the NIOSH study said preliminary results show "an association between an increased likelihood of miscarriage and work as a forester, use of herbicide and use of . . . tree-marking paint" provided to agency crews before 1993.

While the report draws no conclusions about cause and effect, NIOSH will recommend alternative methods of tree marking and additional monitoring of worker exposure to paints and herbicides, the official said.

The Forest Service has been warned for years that its tree-marking crews were at risk.

Last summer, the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration told the agency the paint was among problems at an Oregon forest that would have warranted about $900,000 in fines for a private employer. OSHA has no authority over other federal agencies.

Investigators found "hazardous conditions . . . which appear to present a threat of serious physical harm" at the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, the Forest Service was told by Carl Halgren, OSHA's area director in Portland.

In 1990, tree-marking crews at that forest became the first to formally complain to supervisors. They cited symptoms including nausea, headaches, diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, blurry vision, chronic sinus irritation, chronic cough, mental confusion and disorientation.

In December, a group of those employees volunteered an extensive report to the agency's regional office in Portland.

"OSHA may issue the Forest Service a willful-violation notice if we continue to expose employees to these hazards," Carla Tipton wrote Dec. 3. Tipton, who has worked at the Wallowa-Whitman for eight years as a timber-sale officer, was among the 1990 complainants.

"Long-term health problems, such as kidney, liver or blood cell damage, concern many employees," she wrote.

When employees tried paints with lower concentrations of less toxic solvents, "they did not experience the immediate adverse health effects," Tipton wrote.

"For these reasons, we believe that the health effects . . . are due to the type and concentration of solvents contained in (government) supplied tree-marking paint."

The agency received other complaints about the paint, from employees on the Okanagon National Forest in Washington state in 1992, at the Rogue National Forest in Oregon in 1993 and at the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit along the California-Nevada border in 1995.

The Forest Service asked NIOSH to step in after a forester on the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania reported a series of miscarriages among paint-crew workers. Birth defects - including Down syndrome, spina bifida, a heart defect and sudden-infant-death syndrome - also were reported among their children.

"In talking to people . . . who used marking paint during or before pregnancy, we found out that several of us have had pregnancies that resulted in no children" or in children with birth defects, forester Vicki Pence wrote agency supervisors on the March 26, 1993.

"A common thread seems to be the use of marking paint," she wrote.

Five years later, these women are still waiting for answers.

"But for the most part, nobody is really worried about themselves," Pence said in a telephone interview from Bradford, Pa. "If you can . . . prevent it from happening to somebody else, that is what this is all about."

Each variety of Forest Service paint contains high levels of solvents so it stays liquid for spraying in cold weather and does not wash off.

It's not clear exactly what chemicals are in the paint. The formula is a trade secret, with some ingredients used to help track timber stolen from national forests.

Tipton and others believe the solvent toluene may be to blame. The state of California has linked the solvent to reproductive problems.

In a letter to Forest Service safety officers on Oct. 22, an industrial hygienist at NIOSH noted that toluene was found "in some of the air samples" collected alongside marking crews at national forests in Oregon and Louisiana.

Toluene "is currently not approved for use in tree-marking paints purchased by the Forest Service," Eric Esswein wrote.

The General Services Administration, which buys the paint, contends toluene is not technically present if it is at levels below 0.1 percent, a level well below those GSA considers to be safe.

"It is my understanding it is virtually impossible to make paint without some" toluene present, said spokesman Bill DuBray at the GSA office in Auburn.

Driscoll said NIOSH survey questionnaires were sent out in 1996 to all 10,500 Forest Service females of reproductive age. About 6,000 surveys were returned.

"It is one of the largest health-hazard evaluations we have done," he said. "We would normally do some kind of sampling, but we wanted to be able to compare jobs in the Forest Service."