THE SCHUNDLER COMPANY

For several decades there has been an ever increasing awareness about the long and short-term health effects of the products we use routinely in our daily lives. In response to this awareness, most companies today test or continue to test their products to determine what, if any, health and safety effects may be associated with them.

Perlite has been mined, processed and used in a variety of applications for over fifty years without any hint of adverse health effects. Perlite is used, with government approval, as a filteraid for water purification and for the clarification of foods, wines, and other beverages; as an anti-caking agent; and, for use in processing, transporting, and in storage areas for direct contact with meat or poultry food products prepared under federal inspection. Perlite is also used as a horticultural aggregate in potting soil, as a lightweight material for concrete, and as a filler in construction products.

Through the work of The Perlite Institute, an international trade association organized in 1949 of perlite mining companies and processing companies, the perlite industry has been at the forefront in examining any potential health effects that may be associated with perlite and perlite products.

To be sure, perlite has been tested often, and information about perlite has been gathered by a number of scientific and governmental groups. Significantly, no test result or information indicates that perlite poses any health risk. Indeed, the uniform result of all the studies and information gathering, points forcefully to the conclusion that perlite is not hazardous.

For instance, The Perlite Institute has conducted several health surveillance studies, the first two published by Dr. Clark Cooper (1975 and 1976), the third published by Cooper and Sargent in 1986, and a fourth and fifth (unpublished) by Tulane University in 1990 and 1994 by Dr. Hans Weill. It is particularly noteworthy that all of the above studies uniformly support the conclusion that perlite poses no significant health risk to workers and consumers.

• For example, in his most recent study (1994), Dr. Weill, Director of the Section of Environmental Medicine at Tulane University, concluded that the workers studied were "free of any evidence of a silicosis risk, or indeed, any measurable adverse respiratory effects of perlite exposure." Another study conducted by him in 1990 found similar results." ^1,2

• Earlier in 1986, Doctors W. Clark Cooper and E. Nicholas Sargent studied the chest roentgenograms of 152 workers with more than 5 years experience in perlite operations, 42 of whom had been working in the industry for 15 years, and 19 for more than 20 years. The study showed no indication that any worker was subject to an increased risk of pneumoconiosis from exposure to perlite. ³

Other studies gathered by a number of scientific and governmental groups also conclude that perlite poses no significant or known health risk:

• Because perlite is used often as a filteraid for water purification and for the clarification of foods, wines, and other beverages, it has been tested a number of times to determine its effects when ingested. In 1982, the WIL Research Laboratories conducted studies to examine the acute oral toxicity, if any, of agglomerated filter aid in albino rats. The study showed no signs of systemic toxicity, and concluded that the LD.50 was greater than the highest doses level administer to the rats (10 gm/km body weight.)

• Acute oral toxicity tests in rats ingesting perlite were performed by the Rosner-Hixon Laboratories in 1977. The results of the tests showed that the acute oral LD50 of perlites for rats is greater than the largest dose administered in the test (10 gm/kg body weight).⁴

• In 1979, the Life Sciences Research Office of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology prepared a report for the Food and Drug Administration of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The report, entitled Evaluation of the Health Aspects of Certain Silicates as Food Ingredients, evaluated perlite, among other substances, and concluded: "perlite. . .used as filter aids in food processing indicate[s] no hazard to public health," and further concludes: "[t]here is no evidence in the available information on... perlite that demonstrates or suggests reasonable grounds to suspect a hazard to the public when [perlite is] used as filter aids in food processing at levels that are now current or that might reasonably be expected in the future." ⁵

• Perlite is listed with approval as a filter aid in food processing by the National Academy of Sciences in the Third Supplement to the Food Chemicals Codex (F.C.C. III) (March 1992) to the Third Edition (1981). ⁶

• Perlite has likewise been evaluated and approved as a filter aid or pressing aid in the processing of food and feed ingredients, and as an anti-caking agent, by the Association of American Feed Control Officials.⁷

• The United States Department of Agriculture has determined that perlite filter aids are "chemically acceptable for use in processing, transporting, or storage areas for direct contact with meat or poultry food products prepared under Federal inspection."⁸

Such results should be reassuring to the general public, and further point to the on-going commitment made by perlite manufacturers to take a responsible position regarding the products that they sell.