The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a decision handed down on January 28, 1975, added significantly to the developing law governing standards of proof in cases affecting public health. In Society of the Plastics Industry v. Occupational Safety and Health Administration,¹ a Second Circuit panel consisting of retired Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark and two district court judges, all sitting by designation, upheld OSHA's recent imposition of stringent regulations to protect the 6,500 workers employed in vinyl chloride and polyvinyl chloride plants. The opinion placed great emphasis on the danger to the workers from vinyl chloride gas, and dealt almost cursorily with the question of whether industry can meet the new standards. The decision may have serious economic impact, as polyvinyl chloride is the basis for a wide variety of plastic products, including phonograph records and tubing. More than 5 billion pounds of polyvinyl chloride, or some 25 pounds for every man, woman, and child, are produced in the United States each year.

On September 27, 1971, a Louisville, Kentucky, man died of angiosarcoma, an invariably fatal type of liver cancer. The disease occurs very rarely, afflicting no more than 20 or 30 Americans each year. The patient, 37 years old when he died, had gone to work in B.F. Goodrich's polyvinyl chloride plant in Louisville 15 years before. On March 3, 1973, a 51-year-old former worker in the same plant succumbed to the same disease. Nine months later, a third Goodrich employee, a 58-year-old man who had worked in the PVC plant since the end of the Second World War, died of angiosarcoma. The Goodrich plant physician, learning of the three similar deaths, notified first the company's management and then the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).