Industry Continues to Deny Benzene Risk Despite Scary Science

In his article, The Science on Benzene Keeps Getting Scarier. Industry Remains in Denial, Jim Morris lays out the damning many decades-long history of industry’s manipulation of OSHA to fight attempts to reduce the permissible exposure level (PEL) for benzene.  The current OSHA 8 hour time-weighted average PEL is 1 ppm.  However, for example, the European Chemicals Agency PEL for benzene is .05 ppm, “20 times stricter than what OSHA allows”, and the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) recommends .02 ppm.  Furthermore, industry has known since 1948, based on a Harvard School of Public Health report prepared for the American Petroleum Institute that “the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero”.  This was echoed by Dr. Robert Kehoe in 1951 at the University of Cincinnati’s Kettering Laboratory that “it is generally considered that the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero”.   Despite this, in addition to usage in gasoline and industrial products, consumer product manufacturers continue to put benzene in spray dry shampoo and spray sunscreen.