The birth of the modern environmental movement is often traced to the publication of Silent Spring in 1962.  Detailing how a number of pesticides, particularly DDT, are toxic to both animals and humans, Rachel Carson’s book sparked a widespread concern for the many ways in which human activity affected the environment.  More to the point, it opened our eyes to the potentially hazardous effects that the chemicals and materials used in American industry, agriculture, and everyday household products have on humans themselves.
 
Monona Rossol has taken up Carson’s call to action with fervor, preaching the importance of safety in the arts to theaters, college arts departments, health agencies, and unions across the country and around the world.  A woman of impressive drive and knowledge, Rossol received training in theater, ceramics, sculpture, and music while studying and working as a chemist and industrial hygienist.  She went on to work for the Center for Occupational Hazards in New York for a decade before going on to found Arts, Crafts, and Theater Safety (ACTS) in 1987.  Since then, she has been working tirelessly through ACTS to espouse the importance of a safe working environment for artists.

Part of her message is daunting, and perhaps worrisome: the number of chemicals in our immediate environment has increased drastically in recent years, and few of them have been adequately tested for human toxicity.  And even when chemicals are known to be toxic, theaters often don’t know how to implement adequate safeguards, or, worse, are even ignorant of their potential ill effects.
 
Gideon Banner: How did you come to work on art and theater safety?
 
Monona Rossol: My family was in theater; they actually were vaudeville performers, and my father played the Orpheum circuit.  I had a union card by the time I was three years old, so I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have a job.  At 17 I went to the university, where I got a degree in chemistry with a minor in math.  I used my chemistry background to put myself through art school by working as a research chemist for the University of Wisconsin and got an M.S. and an M.F.A.
 
While getting these degrees, I walked every day from the chemistry department to the art department and back again, and it dawned on me that I was seeing the same chemicals in both departments.  But in the art department I didn’t see ventilation, training, safety equipment, or any knowledge about what these chemicals could do to you.  I did my first seminars on this problem in the 60s before OSHA existed and before there were safety laws.
 
GB: Was there any concern about hazardous chemicals at the time?
 
MR: No, it was just amazing!  They understood something about safety, like if it killed you outright; they knew about that.  And they knew about lead poisoning, but only acute lead poisoning not lead’s more subtle effects.  But there was very little understanding about other types of chemicals: the solvents, metals, silica and so on.  They thought none of that applied to them because they weren’t working as miners or in industry.  Yet their exposures were actually greater because they were working intimately with these materials, and they were very often working at home with them, and sleeping in the same room with them.
 
My warnings about these chemical exposures fell on deaf ears.  And this was part of the reason I moved to New York.  In addition, being a professional woman in Wisconsin at that time in history was not looked on with favor.  By moving a thousand miles due east, I went from being considered a loudmouthed broad to being an expert.
 
I didn’t have these kinds of problems in NYC.  I soon met a number of people who were interested in art and theater safety.  Three of us set up a corporation in 1977; it was called the Center for Occupational Hazards, later known as the Center for Safety in the Arts.  So I began working as an industrial hygienist, with the goal of becoming a professional member of the American Industrial Hygiene Association.  To qualify, you have to have a degree in hard science (e.g., chemistry or physics), work five or more years while being observed by other industrial hygienists, and then be proposed for membership by two of these professionals.  I became a full Member of AIHA in 1984.  Then in 1986, I left to set up my own corporation.

GB: You had some involvement in studying the health effects of the World Trade Center attacks.
 
MR: By default.  I live on Thompson right near Houston, and when the wind shifted on September 11^th and all that dust and odor drifted uptown, I had my first ever asthma attack.  They were announcing on the radio that the air was fine, and I said, “I don’t think so!”  Any common-sense chemist knows that you cannot grind 16 acres of buildings into dust, with all of their computers, plastics, asbestos, fiberglass, and metals, and tell people the air is okay.  So I formed an alliance with the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, and their lawyer, Joel Kupferman.  I told him how to take samples and create a chain of custody to the lab; and we had our own samples analyzed.  I did a radio broadcast on the 17^th of September on PBS saying, essentially, “Are they crazy?  This air is horrendous and people should not be cleaning up this dust on their own.”  We did our first joint press release on September 22^nd, making us the first people to speak out, and that was just because no one else did it.  It doesn’t take a genius to do what we did.  What I don’t understand is why many other professionals and doctors were not doing the same.
 
GB: Since 1977, do you feel that your work has changed or grown substantially?
 
MR: I’ll tell you what’s changed: there’s more knowledge about the body and basic health effects.  When I first started I literally had to talk about how lungs work and the difference between acute and chronic illness; it was difficult for people to understand these concepts.  Now most people know that if you inhale small amounts of toxic stuff over time it might affect your health later, whereas if you inhale a large dose of the same thing you could have an immediate or acute problem.
 
GB: I’ve come to a better understanding of some of these issues because of the Environmental Working Group and their SkinDeep website, which deals mainly with personal care products.
 
MR: My interest in personal care products is in a professional capacity.  The biggest issue now – and I do not understand why the FDA and other organizations aren’t speaking out about it – is that airbrush makeup is illegal.  It just plain is.  The makeup ingredients that are approved for use on your skin are not approved for use on your lips or around the eye, and none of those makeup ingredients are approved for inhalation.  The airbrush makeup goes into the air in very fine mist particle size, and it’s going to get on parts of the body that it’s not intended for.  Most importantly, it’s going to be inhaled.  The biggest inhalation risk is for the people applying it.  The rules that apply to makeup are available on FDA’s website [at this link]. There FDA tells consumers to ask, “Can the spray tanning product getting on your eyes, lips or can it be inhaled?”  If the DHA does contact these areas, the product is being misused.  Yet I see more and more theaters using airbrush makeup.  In fact, I’m speaking at USITT soon, and on the day that I’m speaking, there’s a whole session on airbrush makeup.  [See here for the conference schedule.]  I intend to sit in!
 
GB: What are some of the other materials, paints, solvents, and so on that you find regularly used in theaters that should cause concern?
 
MR: The product that probably causes the most illnesses are the two-component urethane products, everything from Great Stuff to Smooth-On.  These are products in which parts A and B are mixed either in a container or in the nozzle of a spray product and the word “urethane” is somewhere on the label.  Some are used to make molds, others may create a foam or coating of some kind.  These products give off chemicals that are in a class called “isocyanates”.  These are regulated in workplace air at levels so low that you usually can’t achieve them in ordinary workplaces.  In addition, no respirator cartridge is approved for them when these products are used as we use them in theater.  They really need to be used in local exhaust such as a spray booth.  I recently did a workers’ comp case for a non-union worker who was disabled by exposure to them.
 
Another class of substances that theater people should be concerned about are solvents.  And “water-based” products should not be automatically considered safe.  You need to get the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for all water-based products, because they many contain significant amounts of solvents.
 
And then there are dyes, pigments, welding fumes, wood dust — I guess we have a lot of concerns.
 
GB: Are the MSDS sheets good guides to the safety of products?
 
MR: No, but they’re where you start, they’re where you must start.  The label is not going to do it for you, and in fact, most people misinterpret labels anyway.  I do a whole training session on what label terms really mean legally.  “Non-toxic”, especially, does not mean what you think it means.  The MSDS is supposed to give you more information, but no one agency has enforced the regulations on MSDSs for 20-some years.  So manufacturers have gotten pretty fast and loose with what they choose to tell you.  If you go to really large companies, the MSDS sheets are usually pretty good, because they have good technical people.  But a lot of the companies that manufacture art and theater materials are really just a few steps up from two guys in a garage, and they don’t usually have staff members that are technically trained to write MSDSs.  In addition, the small companies don’t manufacture their ingredients.  They buy stuff from primary manufacturers, mix it together, and then sell the final mixture to you. For example, small paint companies usually buy their oil or acrylic base, the pigments and other additive chemicals from other companies.  Then they mix them together and sell it to you as paint.  Often they look at the MSDS sheets of the raw ingredients they used and try to figure out what they should be telling you on their MSDS.  So a lot of information may get lost, misinterpreted, and so on.
 
There are some really good companies out there – don’t get me wrong – who really try to do it right.  But a lot of them don’t.  One of the most important things is for consumers – artists or theater people – to learn how to identify that difference.
 
GB: Where can you go beyond the MSDS sheets to find more complete information?
 
MR: You just can’t research beyond the MSDS unless the manufacturer lists all of the chemicals on the MSDS.  But most companies only list a fraction of the chemicals in the product on the MSDSs.  Sometimes the companies think they only have to list ingredients for which OSHA has regulations.  That would mean that of the roughly 100,000 chemicals used in commerce, MSDSs would only have to list about 400!   Actually, the OSHA hazard communication regulation says that any chemical for which there is even one study indicating that it could be toxic should be listed.  In addition, some manufacturers withhold the identity of their ingredients by listing them as proprietary or trade secrets.  In this case, my advice is not to use these products at all.

A bigger problem is that schools don’t follow the laws.  If they did, students and teachers would understand how to evaluate MSDSs.  OSHA already requires training of workers, including teachers, who use potentially toxic materials.  But they usually don’t know how to read MSDSs because their schools haven’t trained them as required.  And think about that for a moment:  the OSHA regulations include a federal mandate to train—to educate—workers who use potentially toxic materials.  And many schools—educational institutions—are refusing a federal mandate to educate!  And they’re violating the law in the process.
 
GB: Have you seen more arts and theater departments taking up the challenge to include a safety component?
 
MR: Oh yeah, its happening.  Usually it’s after a lawsuit or an accident, or after they’ve been cited by OSHA or the EPA.    And there are a few schools that just decide it’s the right thing to do.   I have rewritten the safety curricula for a number of schools and universities, including for the Yale School of Drama.  I’m proud to say that some of them use my books as texts.
 
So safety needs to be formally addressed in the curriculum.  But you can’t leave the OSHA training up to teachers who never were trained themselves.  If they weren’t taught this formally and well, then they’re not really equipped to address it either.
 
GB: The European Union has passed a number of directives regarding chemical safety.  Do you feel that they’ve surpassed the U.S. in this respect?
 
MR: Oh, we’ve lost all credibility in the safety area over the years.  For example, most of our OSHA air quality standards date back to the 70s, and every time OSHA tries to update them – because they know their own standards aren’t sufficient – various industries form coalitions and sue OSHA because the updated standards would be too great a financial burden.  Recently, the courts decided that OSHA would have to write a complete environmental and economic impact statement for changing each one of the 400-plus permissible exposure limits that they wanted to upgrade.  There’s not enough trees on the planet for the paper it would take to do that; OSHA would be doing nothing else for 20 years, and by then the standards would already be outdated.  So there’s no hope of updating OSHA’s air quality standards through the regulatory process.  There are plans afoot to address this legislatively which just might be successful in this new administration.
 
Other countries’ regulatory apparatuses aren’t perfect, but they’re far better than ours.    In Europe, Germany is the leader; they have a very strong Green Party there.  They’ve set up a series of workplace standards that are much better than ours.  And usually, soon after Germany passes a standard, it is adopted by most of the other European countries.
 
In particular, Europe has a much better approach to cancer-causing substances than we do.  In the U.S., OSHA has to find a regulatory balance between keeping workers safe and keeping the industries who use the carcinogen happy.  This results in literally determining the number of workers who will probably die in order not to put a financial burden on the industries that use the chemical.  In Europe, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer determines something is a carcinogen, the employer is bound to reduce worker exposure to a level as low as is technically feasible.  This makes sense because there is no safe level exposure to a carcinogen.
 
Europe also has a program called REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) that will force industry to test chemicals at long last.  They’ve identified 32,000 chemicals that are manufactured in amounts over a billion pounds a year on which there is no data whatever, and they’re going to start by testing some of the most suspicious-looking of these.
 
So what we really have to get theater professionals to understand that the majority of the chemicals that we use — even some of the common ones — are untested for long-term effects such as cancer and birth defects.  So common sense says, “Don’t slop them all over your skin!  Don’t use them in unvented areas.”
 
GB: Does that include paints?  Do you feel that the use of low- or non-VOC paints makes a difference?
 
MR: Well, the EPA’s VOC regulations have nothing to do with product users’ health.  VOCs are those chemicals that create smog or damage the ozone layer.  Volatile chemicals that are toxic but that don’t have these effects on the environment are not regulated as VOCs.  For instance, a can of 100% ethyl acetate or acetone solvent could legally be labeled as containing no VOCs because those particular solvents don’t have these effects on the environment.  But these chemicals are still toxic to the user.
 
You also don’t really know what is in a can of paint.  The labels of common brands of latex paint are likely to list about five ingredients: water, an acrylic polymer, titanium dioxide (which, by the way, is now listed as a lung carcinogen), maybe a little antifreeze so it doesn’t freeze if it sits out on a loading dock, and maybe one other little ingredient.  But those are far from the only ingredients.  There can be 30 or more other ingredients in that can.  This is because acrylic plastic doesn’t want to ball up into little beads and stay suspended in water as it does in these products; plastic is hydrophobic [i.e., “water-hating”].  It takes many, many chemicals to make that emulsion stable.
 
GB: When it comes to fog and smoke in theaters, Actors’ Equity worked very hard to improve the standards for ventilation and ingredients.  Do you feel that smoke and fog conditions have improved because of their efforts?
 
MR: Yes, Equity was the first to address this.  Now they need to revisit it.  They need to look at the ESTA standards because there are certain aspects of those standards that are better than theirs now, such as actually measuring the amount of particulates in the air.  Yet I’m not really happy with ESTA either, because the levels that they’ve accepted as safe are essentially those set by OSHA for healthy adult workers.  Well, not all theater workers and performers are healthy adults: we have children and elderly people on stage, sometimes people with health problems and disabilities.  And singers and dancers are athletes who inhaling a lot more air and doing things that ordinary workers don’t do.  We really need to revisit this regularly every time new data comes along.
 
GB: I’ve worked with several theatrical organizations recently that had just gone through major pushes to get up to date on compliance with OSHA standards.
 
MR: That’s very encouraging.  But usually theaters do that after someone complained to OSHA.  OSHA doesn’t usually visit after a complaint now.  Instead, they write a letter to the employer, saying, “We’ve had the following complaints.”  They list the violations and provide a schedule to get into compliance.  Even then, the employer usually only has to write OSHA and tell them that they’ve fixed things.  That’s not much incentive for employers.
 
Hopefully, the compliance updating at those theaters included training that taught the painters, costume workers, carps, propmakers, makeup artists and the performers who wear make up how to really interpret label terms and read MSDSs.  If you can’t read the MSDSs, what’s the point of collecting and filing them?  The training that I do for our IATSE local is three to four hours, and intense.  But when they leave, they can read an MSDS.
 
GB: What is your relationship with IATSE?
 
MR: I have been an employee of United Scenic Artists Local USA829 since 1995.    A consortium of unions called the New York Production Locals also use my services through Local 829.   We do regular training and I inspect shops, theaters, and film locations.  And since some of our collective bargaining agreements make the OSHA regulations a contractual issue, we can require changes.
 
And I’m always available for workers to contact about workplace problems.  This is important because we know that people who complain are likely to find themselves suddenly unemployed.  So we let our people know that, rather than making waves themselves, they can call the office when they see something hazardous.  We will then inspect the worksite and get the problem fixed.  If the worker’s employer yells at me, I like it: it means I’m doing my job. 
 
With non-union workers, it’s much more difficult, because they really have no pull.  No matter what they see, no matter how bad it is, if they complain, some employers find it much easier not to rehire them than fix the problem.  And they usually have no recourse.
 
GB: Do Equity, SAG, and AFTRA have the same protections?
 
MR: I wish they did.  I wish each of them had a professional safety person on staff who would do just that.  Usually the safety positions in unions are occupied by lawyers or by people who have just been in the business a long time.  Instead, they need professional safety people with credentials.   
But USA829 has let all of these unions know that they can talk to me about problems and I’ll do my best to give them the technical information they may need.

GB: You also do consulting for buildings in the planning stages.  How are you involved in that process?
 
MR: In three ways.  First, architects may contract with me to be on their team before they even bid on the project.  That way the potential client knows that they’ll have a professional person on the team who’s going to address the safety and regulatory issues.   If we get the job, I work with the architects and engineers throughout the planning and construction stages.
 
Second, schools and universities may hire me because they’re already in the process of building a new facility and are becoming concerned that some of their needs are not being addressed.  These schools hire me to sit in on planning sessions to make sure that the new building will comply with OSHA and EPA regulations.  
 
Third, schools and universities may contact me after a building or theater has been built to inspect and report on safety aspects of the building.  And, unfortunately, there are some brand new theaters today have built-in OSHA, EPA and building code violations.

GB: What are the main areas of OSHA regulations that you pay attention to?
 
MR: There are many, but often I see problems with fall hazards.  For example,  OSHA requires that all places from which you could fall more than 4 feet needs guarding.  So a structure like a catwalk needs a top rail at 42 inches, a midrail, and a 4-inch toeboard,.  If your lighting people decide they want the architect to put a single rail on one side of the walk at 55 to 60 inches to hang lights on it, then you have to provide 5000-pound anchorage and a sliding lanyard connection for your people because they will to have to be in harness up there.  So you’ve got choices to make.  But most of our lights are smaller now, and we really don’t need those high rails.  So it is possible now to redo the catwalks with OSHA-compliant guarding and put them all at 42 inches with 4-inch toeboards, and now they’re safe. 
 
That’s what Cirque de Soleil did with the O  theater at the Bellagio: it’s one of the few theaters I’ve seen that is in full OSHA compliance.  (I consulted for them, and also for their headquarters in Montreal.)  The theater was not in compliance when they started the run of that show, but it is now because they redid it.  You’re as safe on a catwalk at the O theater as you are in your living room.
 
GB: Do you think it’s difficult to reconcile the need to be safe to humans with the need to care for the environment?  Are they sometimes mutually exclusive?
 
MR: They can be reconciled, but the criteria for safety of the user and the environment are very different.  For example, the new biodegradable products often are more toxic to people than the ones they replaced.  The best example is citrus oil, which we think must be safe, because it comes from the rind of a fruit.  But Mother Nature put it there to kill insects, and it does it so well that citrus oil is also an EPA-registered pesticide.  If you want a biodegradable pesticide, citrus oil is a good one, but it is far more toxic than petroleum distillates, than acetone, than many other solvents.
 
For another example, the new air conditioning gasses: better for the ozone layer, but slightly more toxic to people.  And many of the new phosphate-free detergents are more toxic to use than the old phosphates.  Those old phosphates acted fertilizer, and they actually integrated back into the environment.  But we put so much of them in our lakes and streams that the algae populations exploded, used up all the oxygen in the water, killed the fish, and created a head of foam that was aesthetically unacceptable.  So we banned the phosphates and replaced them with non-phosphate and biodegradable detergents.  Some of these may not be any better in the long run.  For example, there is a bill before Congress to ban the phosphate-free detergents, because they think the breakdown products from one type of phosphate-free product (the nonylphenol detergents) are causing fish, amphibians and reptiles to have reproductive problems.   These detergents are already banned in Europe.
 
So there may be long-term effects from the use of some of these biodegradable products that we just don’t know about.  Basically, biodegradable products usually are only a short-term fix.  We need to do more research and see if they don’t cause long-term problems to both people and the environment.  So “natural” and “biodegradable” are not labels you should trust. 
 
GB: Do you feel that companies like Seventh Generation, that produce biodegradable cleaning products and claim to be very green, are aware of these issues?
 
MR: I think they’re getting better, but when many of these kinds of companies first started they didn’t really have the background to evaluate their choices.  They were so anxious to find a profitable solution that they very often endorsed the use of certain ingredients before they had all the data.
 
And then there is the underlying problem that we can’t fix by finding better ingredients.  This problem is: We just use and throw away too much stuff.  The best thing we can do for the environment is to quit consuming at the rate that we do.  If we all did this, of course, the economy would crash.  But we need to look that dilemma square in the face.
 
GB: I know you said that you feel gauche promoting your books; but what are the publications you make available to artists?

MR: Well, the newsletter that I publish is $25 a year, and it keeps up on a lot of the issues that I’m talking about.  The Smithsonian has all the back issues archived all the way back to ’87 if you need them.  I also write columns for the IATSE Local USA829 newsletter, for Clay Times on ceramics, and a number of other regular articles.  I’ve written seven books, and the eighth will be coming out sometime this year electronically through eBay.  We also publish a list of short data sheets that cover individual subjects to answer people’s specific questions.

If readers want to e-mail me for information, I’ll answer.  The best way to contact me is to go to ACTS website and click on “contact” and email me.  I’d be happy to hear from you.
 
Links:
 
Arts, Crafts, & Theater Safety

The New York Committee for Occupational Health & Safety’s Safety in the Arts link page

Los Angeles Times: “California Officials Launch ‘Green Chemistry’ Initiative“