EHHI also wants to emphasize the need for quality control in the manufacture and sale of such products. There is the greatest concern when such products are placed in schools and other public workplaces.

The following information on the toxicity of carpeting has been supplied to Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI) by John William Hirzy who retired from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after serving 27 years as Senior Scientist in the Office of Toxic Substances. Hirzy also served as a charter member, officer and past president of the EPA Headquarters professionals’ labor union.

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) installed new carpet at its headquarters building in Washington, DC, employees immediately began complaining about adverse health effects from odorous emissions from the carpeting.

The two Unions representing HQ employees, Local 2050 of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) and Local 3331 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), got management to stop installing more carpet. Union scientists began working, as a representational issue, to understand what was happening.

Once news of the carpet crisis became widely known in newspapers and TV coverage, people from around the country began calling and writing in to the Local 2050 office about their own bad experiences with new carpets. Hundreds of these messages came in. The Union passed this information on to senior EPA management.

EPA did a health survey, finding that over 600 employees who were exposed to the installed carpet got sick, and about 60 developed chemical sensitivity that made it impossible for them to work in the building. Their chemical sensitivity, derived from their exposures to the toxic carpeting, caused them to become ill from traces of other chemicals as well, thus limiting their ability to move about freely without becoming ill. Some of these people were forced to wear gas masks when away from their homes.

The Unions learned that a professor at University of Arizona had been investigating similar complaints, and that he identified a chemical, 4-phenylcyclohexene, 4PC, as the probable cause of adverse effects. 4PC is a trace component of the latex glue that holds the carpet-backing layer to the carpet tuft layer.

EPA established a policy for the EPA headquarters to only purchase carpet not made with the latex containing 4PC, and to allow employees to vote on whether to have any carpet at all installed in their group’s workplaces. This policy was not made public.

About 25 percent of random carpet samples purchased by and tested in a New England laboratory caused severe respiratory and nerve damage and death in mice that for one hour breathed air passed over carpet.

EPA, instead of regulating the carpet industry, decided to convene a series of meetings consisting of representatives from industry, unions, government agencies and citizen representatives who attempted to investigate carpet issues. The Union’s conclusion was that the batches of finished carpets contained levels of 4PC that were toxic.