Diacetyl, a chemical that gives butter flavor to popcorn causes damage to the lungs of mice says a team from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, reports Reuters.

"The condition can lead to obliterative bronchiolitis -- or 'popcorn lung' -- a rare and debilitating disease seen in workers at microwave popcorn packaging plants and at least one consumer.

" 'This is one of the first studies to evaluate the respiratory toxicity of diacetyl at levels relevant to human health,' Daniel Morgan at NIEHS, whose team led the study, said in a statement."

Labor unions and workplace safety advocates have been sounding the alarm for many years.  They were ignored by the Bush administration.  Check out  Confined Space, for a list of articles about popcorn lung posted just on that site alone since 2004. 

This describes the health damages of popcorn lung:  "One scientist, research physiologist Jeffrey Fedan, used the words 'astonishingly grotesque' to describe the toxic effect of diacetyl, a key ingredient in the flavoring.

"Vincent Castranova, chief of NIOSH's [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Heath} pathology and physiology research branch, said that the effect of breathing butter flavoring vapors could be likened to inhaling acid.

"The airway response is the worst we've ever seen," Castranova said. And that's comparing it to a catalogue of notorious respiratory toxins such as asbestos and coal dust.

" 'When we say this is bad compared to what we've done before, we have a database of 20 years of exposure to different things that we compare it to,' Castranova said. 'In layman's terms, it ate away the coating of the airway.' "

Here's what OSHA did: nothing. 

"Despite the severity and speed with which the butter flavoring chemicals appear to act, no regulations have been developed to prevent workers from breathing the mixture.

"The Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the federal agency that enforces workplace safety standards, has focused instead on developing voluntary guidelines.

"[This} illustrates the human cost of a broken regulatory system. OSHA regulates very few chemicals and most OSHA limits were adopted by ACGIH limits set in the 1940's and 1950's based on the scientific evidence than available. The layers and layers or regulatory analysis added onto the process by the Reagan administration and the Gingrich Congress have turned a standard-making process that took from six months to a couple of years, to a labyrinth now measured in decades."

OMBWatch wrote this last year about Bush's politicized federal agencies and their response to the dangers of popcorn lung:

"Federal regulatory agencies have known for years the dangers that diacetyl exposure creates among workers in factories where bags of microwave popcorn are tested. The only agency to have taken any action, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has kept its study of the chemical's impact on consumers secret except for sharing it with the popcorn industry. Now the first case of potential consumer illness from exposure to diacetyl has been documented.


"Meanwhile, manufacturers of microwave popcorn have now begun to voluntarily remove diacetyl from their products, although they had the results of the EPA study in late 2005, according to the Washington Post story. ConAgra Foods, Inc., General Mills, Inc., the American Popcorn Company and Weaver Popcorn have started to phase out or replace the flavoring additive."

Why didn't these companies test the chemical, diacetyl, for health safety before exposing workers and consumers?

Describing an article about how corporations influence the regulatory and tort system, Confined Space writes, "Our system of regulating and controlling workers' exposure to toxic chemicals is broken, kaput, dead.

"In a perfect world, society would approach the use of chemicals with a public health approach -- not permitting workers to be exposed to chemicals until they are proven safe. Instead, we live in a topsy-turvey world where chemicals are given the same rights that human beings have -- to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, chemicals are generally only proven guilty when someone -- usually a labor union -- notices that bodies are piling up. But thanks to the chemical industry's influence, even body counts are no longer sufficient to actually regulate workers' exposure to chemicals.

As always, under the Bush administration it is corporate profits before people.

Americans keep discovering that living in Bushland is absolutely and literally dangerous to their health.

And impeachment is still off the table.