Opinion ID: 203936
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Liver injury from VC exposure at 500 ppm

Text: Appellee Dow first learned of the danger of liver injury sometime in 1959, during a study conducted by its scientists Ted Torkelson, F. Oyen, and V.K. Rowe. The Torkelson study exposed rats and rabbits to VC at concentrations of 500 ppm and lower, up to seven hours a day for a period of several months. In May 1959, Rowe wrote W.E. McCormick of Goodrich about the study, which was still ongoing, and suggested that 500 ppm is going to produce a rather appreciable injury when inhaled 7 hours a day, five days a week for an extended period. The Torkelson study was published in October 1961, in the journal of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). Appellants' expert, James Jones, formerly an industrial hygienist at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), described the publication of the Torkelson study as a seminal event, and stated that all [PVC manufacturers] would have been aware of it certainly. Jones explained that Monsanto probably knew of the Torkelson study, even before [it was published], because I think the information was actually shared with the industry a year or two before it was able to be published in print. Indeed, Monsanto had personal contacts with Torkelson. Dr. Maurice Johnson, then a Monsanto physician, testified that Torkelson personally informed him in 1963 of updated information regarding the hepatic toxicity of vinyl chloride. [10] As the district court noted, Monsanto possessed a considerable amount of medical expertise during this period. It maintained an Occupational Medicine Department, whose staff included toxicologists, physicians, and industrial hygienists. The department conducted medical exams and epidemiological studies of the health of Monsanto employees, and cooperated with outside medical researchers from universities and government agencies who were investigating VC toxicity. Several of the individuals who worked in the department held leadership positions in professional associations; for example, Elmer Wheeler, Monsanto's Assistant Director for Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology, served as President of the AIHA from 1959-1960, the period the Torkelson study was being conducted and possibly disseminated to members of the PVC industry. Dr. Emmet Kelly, Director of the Occupational Medicine Department, served as Chairman of ACC's Medical Advisory Committee from 1959 to 1961, the year the Torkelson study was published. Members of the department had access to, in the district court's words, Monsanto's ... own library of materials on the potential health effects of VC, which it had maintained since the mid-1940's. Bruce Eley, an industrial hygienist who worked at Monsanto, testified that the library contained a wide variety of medical and scientific journals, including publications ... [that] addressed the health hazards, toxicology, [and] safe handling practices of a wide array of compounds, including vinyl chloride. In light of Monsanto's leading position in the PVC industry, the early communication between industry members about Torkelson's results, the prompt publication of Torkelson's results in a major journal, the personal contacts between Monsanto and Torkelson, Monsanto's maintenance of a library of medical literature on vinyl chloride, and its staff of industrial hygienists, physicians, and toxicologists, a reasonable jury could only conclude that Monsanto either did perceive or reasonably should have perceived the danger that VC was toxic to the liver. There is no basis in the record from which a reasonable jury could conclude that a warning from Dow, Union Carbide, or Goodrich would have enabled Monsanto to better perceive the danger, see Knowlton, 930 F.2d at 120, or that such a warning would have further deterred Monsanto, and caused it to establish a lower VC exposure limit at Indian Orchard, see Hoffman, 751 N.E.2d at 855 (The sophisticated user doctrine applies where a warning will have little deterrent effect.).