After briefly attending Rhode Island School of Design in the mid-sixties, I moved to San Francisco. At nineteen years of age I managed to get a job working in the copy center at Golden Gate College. Located in the basement, the copy center had no windows; all the ventilation was provided by vents connected to the central heating and cooling system of the building.
The job consisted of running a Multilith 1250 printer, a small offset press on which exams, worksheets and other course material were printed. Although small, the press operated exactly like a larger sheet-fed printing press, using metal plates, “paper” plates, a water-based solution, and oil-based ink. At the end of each workday, the entire press had to be cleaned and made ready for the next day’s use.
The final part of the cleaning process was de-glazing the ink roller assembly. Ink rollers on an offset press are made of hard rubber; they are arranged in a stacked, oscillating array so that the ink is spread evenly between the rollers prior to contact with the printing plate, which then transfers the inked image to paper. To remove the bulk of the ink, a relatively mild solvent was used. The last step, however, the de-glazing of the rollers, required something stronger, a degreasing solvent called Trichloroethylene.
Trichloroethylene (TCE) is extremely volatile. TCE on a piece of soft gauze soaked with it evaporates so quickly that ice crystals immediately form on the surface of the gauze. The procedure involved wearing gloves and pressing the soaked gauze against the rollers to remove any remaining ink residue. Once completed, I’d throw the gauze into an open garbage pail as instructed.
What I did not know at the time, and it appears nobody knew, was that TCE and its fumes are highly toxic, associated with cancer, kidney damage, and other bodily harm. At nineteen, I didn’t know and didn’t think much about it. What I did know was that from time to time when TCE touched my bare fingers, I could taste it within a second.
By the end of the day, like any industrial location where printing takes place, the room smelled of ink, solvent, and cleaning materials. It turns out all those fumes in the basement copy shop were being sucked into the ventilation system and being distributed throughout the building. Moreover, my co-workers and I were exposed to airborne toxins for eight hours each day.
Back in 1968 the Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) did not exist, and neither did its workplace regulations. So too the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). My two years at that job ended before any injury caused by TCE came to light. In 1982, TCE was famously the subject of a book, lawsuit, and later a movie.
In my mid-twenties, I began to have heart rhythm problems. At twenty-eight, it sent me to the hospital and testing provided evidence of cardiomyopathy. Since then, it’s been a lifetime of monitoring and ongoing treatment. I can’t be sure that TCE caused my problem, but I suspect it did. Studies have shown that exposure to TCE can damage the functioning of the heart. Notably, a co-worker during my two years in the copy center had a heart attack in his fifties.
This past week, fifty-five years after my exposure to TCE, the EPA has banned its use. Too late for me, however.
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