A California lawmaker has introduced a bill in the State Assembly to ban the use of diacetyl, a chemical used in artificial butter flavor that has been linked to bronchitis obliterans, a rare and life-threatening lung disease also known as popcorn worker's lung.
The WaPost tells the story of 44-year-old popcorn worker Irma Ortiz:
She was once in constant motion; her co-workers compared her to a roadrunner because of the way she darted around the workplace. But now Irma Ortiz sits at the edge of her couch, too winded to sweep her patio or walk her son to school without resting. She is slowly suffocating.
No federal laws regulate the use of diacetyl and the slow-moving Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Bush Administration has not yet inspected microwaveable popcorn factories.
Health officials in California have taken action and studied the problem:
Since the first California case of popcorn workers lung was diagnosed just over two years ago, state health officials have screened workers at each of the state's 29 food-flavoring plants, looking for breathing trouble...
So far, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA, has found eight flavoring workers with fixed obstructive lung disease, most of those with bronchiolitis obliterans. Twenty-two more have below-normal lung capacity, which may be the beginning of the disease.
The Post reports that even less is known about the possible dangers of eating popcorn with diacetyl or breathing the fumes after the bag has been in the microwave.
The Environmental Protection Agency has studied the fumes but is waiting for the industry to review the study before releasing it. The Food and Drug Administration has diacetyl on its list of substances "generally recognized as safe" but has not studied it.
Well, that's reassuring.