MYSTERIOUS ILLNESS

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33818, 15 April 1975, Page 17

MYSTERIOUS ILLNESS

P.V.C. u orkers complain (N.Z. Press Assn — CupyrigM) LONDON, April 14. I Medical specialists in Brit-! ain are puzzled by an illness which has hit a group of! men who worked in a plas-| tics factory, and which! seems to have made at least! seven of them impotent. The victims, ail of whom have worked at the Vinatex polyvinyl-chloride (P.V.C.) plant at Stavely, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, have been subjected io exhaustive tests for many months. Some of them have been off work for up to a year. As well as the threat to their sex lives, the men also complain of stiffening ot the joints. bad circulation, shortness of breath, and even impaired mental faculties. Dr Anne Walkei, a consultant dermatologist who examined 36 of the men, said:“This is an extraordinary new situation. We can’t say how long the tests

may take, and we may not get any further than we have at present. “The impotency of some of the men could have been caused by the men worrying about, their condition.’’

Meanwhile the patients are being treated with steroid drugs, such as cortizone. Whether the symptoms are directly involved with the P.V.C. works will not be known until the cause of the illness has be pin-pointed.