Lifesaving Drugs, Deadly Consequences
Printer-friendly version
Healthcare worker? Take our survey here.
Read the full story here
Secondhand chemo – like secondhand smoking – is an apt description for disease that occurs after chronic exposure to low doses of a drug intended for someone else. And like secondhand tobacco exposure, it can have deadly consequences.
An InvestigateWest investigation has found that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration does not regulate exposure to chemotherapy in the workplace, despite multiple studies documenting ongoing contamination and exposures and their potentially deadly consequences for human health. Studies as far back as the 1970s have linked increased rates of certain cancers to nurses and physicians. Occupational health experts believe that’s because when nurses, pharmacists,technicians and increasingly, even veterinarians, mix and deliver the drugs, accidental spills, sprays and punctures put them in close, frequent contact with hazardous drugs. These are drugs that can save lives of cancer patients, but ironically, are also human carcinogens themselves.
A just-completed study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 10 years in the making and the largest to date, confirms that chemo continues to contaminate the work spaces where it’s used, and in some cases is still being found in the urine of those who handle it, despite knowledge of safety precautions.
Read the story of Sue Crump, a Seattle area pharmacist who died at age 55 of cancer she believed was linked to her years as a pharmacist mixing chemotherapy in hospital settings. Her story is just one uncovered in a year-long investigation by InvestigateWest’s Carol Smith that drew upon early studies showing links between workplace exposures and later disease, slow recognition that the drugs have long lasting and even lethal consequences, and a reluctance to meet the problem with strict workplace safety regulation, at the federal and state levels.
While safety awareness has improved, the most basic precautions remain recommendations only, even as federal scientists and occupational health experts have pushed for more regulation in the work place.
Most alarmingly, the toxic drugs that some pharmacists and nurses believe caused cancer years later are moving out into home health care, veterinary clinics and non-hospital clinic settings where the deadly consequences of exposure may be even less recognized.
Our full story appears below. It was also published by The Seattle Times and MSNBC.com, and a broadcast investigation was produced in partnership with KCTS 9.
This images used in this presentation of Sue Crump and her daughter Chelsea were made by photographer Paul Joseph Brown for InvestigateWest. Photographer Mike Kane shot the video of Sue and her family for Investigate West. The video/slide show was produced by Daniel Gawlowski of The Seattle Times.
Lifesaving Drugs may be killing health workers
Sue Crump braced as the chemo drugs dripped into her body. She knew treatment would be rough. She had seen its signature countless times in the ravaged bodies and hopeful faces of cancer patients in hospitals where she had spent 23 years mixing chemo as a pharmacist.
At the same time, though, she wondered whether those same drugs – experienced as a form of “secondhand chemo” -- may have caused her own cancer.
Chemo is poison by design. It’s descended from deadly mustard gas first used against soldiers in World War I. Now it’s deployed to stop the advance of cancer.
Europe and Canada set more controls on workplace chemo
In the United States, there’s a lot of discussion about the difficulties of requiring hospitals and clinics to prove they are not contaminating their workers with toxic drugs.
But some other countries are already doing that.
Other Voices
The Widow Speaks
Oncology pharmacist Bruce Harrison died at age 59 of a rare form of cancer. He was one of the authors of the strictest set of guidelines yet for healthcare worker safety, guidelines that had they been mandatory may have saved his life.
The Veterinarian Speaks
A diagnosis of thyroid cancer at age 35 changed vet Brett Cordes’ life. Now he’s a safety crusader warning other vets that the stuff they’re using to save our pets’ lives could be threatening their own.
The Whistleblower Speaks
Luci Power was one of the first pharmacists in the United States to pressure her employer to take seriously warnings about chemo handling coming out of Europe in the early 1980s. Read how one activist changed a workplace.
The Patient Speaks
Hospital pharmacist Karen Lewis once had a cavalier attitude toward gloving and face masks, believing a little exposure wouldn’t harm her. Four years after being diagnosed with a pre-cancerous blood disease, she knows differently.
Q & A with Jordan Barab, Dep. Asst. Secretary of Labor for OSHA
We asked what the agency charged with protecting American workers is doing to protect healthcare workers on the job.
Watch the full episode. See more KCTS 9 Connects.
Extended Video from KCTS Connects
Sue Crump, In Her Own Words
Watch the full episode. See more KCTS 9 Connects.
Extended Interview with Seth Eisenberg, RN
Watch the full episode. See more KCTS 9 Connects.
Behind the Scenes at Swedish Hospital
Watch the full episode. See more KCTS 9 Connects.
Wealth & Poverty | February 2013
End of the Line
“It was just common knowledge – when you turn 18, you’re done,” Sharayah Lane said. “After the checks stopped coming, we all went our separate ways."
End of the Line is a new series by Claudia Rowe asking what happens when teens get too old for foster care in Washington State.
Photo Credit: Jon Connell/Flickr
Environment | January 2013
Sharecroppers of the Sea
Meet America's newest sharecroppers. Guys like Jared Bright who vie for control of the Pacific fishing industry's lower rungs, the only rungs that seem to be left. They don't own the halibut, not even when it lands in their boats.
Lee van der Voo uncovers absentee landlords, brokers and bankers, and fish quota that costs more than your house — realities that fly in the face of more official, rosy portrayals.
Health | November 2012
The Mystery of MS
Kids with multiple sclerosis, historically an adult disorder, offer researchers a set of intriguing new clues about the disease that could lead, eventually, to better treatments.
With adolescent MS on the rise in the Northwest, Carol Smith meets a young patient who is learning to live with the disease at the age of 16, and the doctors and scientists trying to keep her healthy.
Environment | October 2012
Clean Water: The Next Act
In 1972, Congress enacted legislation to end water pollution. Forty years later, American rivers and lakes are still badly contaminated, and new threats to clean water are outpacing the Act's enforcers. Follow along as InvestigateWest and EarthFix investigate.
Immigration | September 2012
Center of Detention
The Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Wash., generates millions in revenue for its private operator by processing thousands of deportation cases each year. Oscar Estrada is one of those cases.
Environment | June 2012
Parks for Sale
As local governments trade away public parkland, the safeguards put in place by the Land and Water Conservation Fund to protect that land are full of holes.
Robert McClure tracked a handful of park conversions for more than three years, reviewed thousands of pages of documents and compiled a database of over 40,000 park grants.
Public Health | January 2012
The Prescription Epidemic
As Washington enacts the strongest prescription drug law in the country, InvestigateWest presents a six-month investigation into the origins of the prescription epidemic, the challenge it poses for communities, and what lessons other states might learn.
Check out the full list of news outlets publishing the story, and visit KCTS.org to watch Prescription for Abuse, a KCTS 9/InvestigateWest documentary and roundtable with prescription drug experts.