Bucking a Toxic Trend
       By Marla Cone
       Los Angeles Times

       Wednesday 22 October 2003

       HICKORY, N.C. Whenever Bobby Bush hears that a chemical used by
     his foam-making factories is building up in babies and breast milk,
     polar bears and whales, it makes him cringe.

       Bush has long known that being branded an environmental villain
     can be bad for business. In this case, he fears it might be bad for
     his soul too. While he is often skeptical of the claims of
     environmentalists, he has been deeply troubled to learn that a
     flame retardant used in foam might be disrupting development of
     babies' brains.

       Last year, Bush set out to make Hickory Springs Manufacturing Co.
     the first polyurethane foam company in the United States to
     eliminate brominated flame retardants.

       In the world of manufacturing, environmental revolutions are
     often born at a single assembly line where a freethinker like Bush
     takes a risk and tries something new. As the largest manufacturer
     of foam used in furniture, Bush is in a unique position to affect
     the future of his industry.

       But doing the right thing and making a buck aren't always
     compatible.

       In the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where Hickory
     Springs produces enough foam every day to fashion 40,000 sofa
     seats, it turns out that protecting the planet isn't easy.

       For half a century, polyurethane foam has been the backbone of
     upholstered furniture, replacing old-fashioned latex that crumbles
     and tears. Resilient but soft, foam gives a sofa its springy
     comfort, a recliner its body-molded support.

       Its only drawback is how quickly it burns. A smoldering cigarette
     or a match can ignite foam cushions like a torch.

       Since the mid-1980s, foam companies have relied on a compound,
     called penta, to slow the spread of flames in furniture cushions
     enough to meet California's flammability standards, the nation's
     most stringent. Most furniture sold elsewhere does not need
     fire-retardant foam, although some national manufacturers put it in
     all their products.

       Penta, a type of polybrominated diphenyl ether, or PBDE, has been
     cheap, effective and versatile for the foam industry. About 20
     million pounds are used yearly, almost entirely in the United
     States.

       But a few years ago, disturbing reports about the flame retardant
     began emerging in Europe. Swedish scientists found it building up
     in the breast milk of women at a rapid pace. Tests on animals show
     it disrupts thyroid hormones, which guide brain development, and
     sex hormones that control reproduction. At most risk are babies,
     who are exposed in the womb and through breastfeeding. The
     discovery caught the eye of executives at IKEA, the Swedish
     furniture giant. IKEA has long demanded that its suppliers live up
     to an altruistic "Code of Conduct," modeled after a guiding
     philosophy of its homeland that emphasizes social and environmental
     responsibility.

       With no fanfare, before Americans were even aware of the threat,
     IKEA in 2001 issued a directive to its suppliers: No brominated
     flame retardants in its products. Not just in Sweden, but
     worldwide.

       In the business world, it is called "greening the supply chain":
     A retailer demands environmentally sound products, and the order
     trickles down to the manufacturer of each and every part. In
     Europe, such caution is quite common. Industries there voluntarily
     began phasing out penta in the 1990s.

       Bobby Bush didn't need to overhaul his factories to satisfy the
     Europeans' demand for penta-free foam. IKEA suppliers buy only a
     small portion of his total production.

       But Bush is an unconventional corporate executive.

       Vice president of Hickory Springs, and head of its foam division,
     Bush is a third-generation foamer, a take-charge guy who doesn't
     care what his peers in the industry think of him. And he isn't
     about to let his 60-year-old family-run business become embroiled
     in a nasty controversy over some chemical just because it's been
     used by foam factories for years. "Sticking your head in the sand
     is not an acceptable response, in my book," he said.

       Bush was born into the foam business in North Carolina's
     furniture belt, where one-third of the nation's household
     furnishings are manufactured. Attracted by lush hardwood forests,
     settlers carved a world-renowned furniture industry out of the
     backwoods of Catawba County in the 1880s.

       Hickory Springs started out in 1944 on the periphery of furniture
     manufacturing, making only bedsprings. Then, when polyurethane
     became the hottest thing in the industry in the 1950s, the company
     ventured into the foam business. Bush was 5 years old when Hickory
     Springs began pouring its first foam, and started working summers
     at the family-owned company when he was 15. His dad headed up sales
     before retiring this year.

       Today, Hickory Springs, with 4,000 employees in 17 states, makes
     everything that goes into a piece of furniture except the wood and
     fabric.

       Bush, 49, is a bit of a contradiction, a blend of savvy,
     skeptical businessman and idealist. He's a Republican, wary of
     regulations and conservative on fiscal policy, less so on social
     issues. He insists he is no environmentalist and resents those who
     use scare tactics. "Tree-huggers" and "overreacting,
     nose-in-the-air" types are what they are, he says.

       When Bush first heard warnings about brominated flame retardants
     last year, he was dubious. But upon reading details of what
     scientists had reported, he confronted the manufacturer of penta,
     Great Lakes Chemical Co., and was appalled to learn that the
     company had no scientific data to refute it.

       "My reaction turned to one of disgust," he said. "Their
     unpreparedness and failure to warn us about impending action in
     Europe helped convince me that we would be better off without it."

       After some soul-searching, Bush concluded that he wasn't willing
     to bet people's lives that the scientists were wrong.

       The strongest, most enduring bond in Bush's life is the one he
     shares with what he calls his extended family: the relatives,
     friends and neighbors who work with him at Hickory Springs. And if
     the flame retardant is dangerous, he knows it is the people he
     loves the most who face the biggest health risk because they spend
     so much time around foam. "That's pretty personal," Bush said, "and
     that's the reason that we made an early effort to do the 'right'
     thing. The message here is that fire retardant saves lives, but we
     have to use safe chemicals."

       Word of the IKEA directive against using penta reached Bush early
     this year, when a few IKEA suppliers phoned him to say they would
     no longer buy Hickory Springs' foam as long as it contained PBDEs.
     Bush was ready for them. His largest plant was already PBDE-free.

       But that was about to change.

       A Complicated Recipe

       Inside a cavernous factory in the heart of North Carolina, the
     crew at Hickory Springs Manufacturing Co. is making buns.

       A blend of resin, acetone, flame retardant and other chemicals
     slithers down the conveyor belt like a giant ribbon of whipped
     cream. By the time the creamy mixture reaches the end of the belt,
     it has been turned, purely by chemical reaction, into a 45-foot
     long block of white foam called a bun.

       Bush stuck his neck out when he vowed to find alternatives to
     penta. Foam treated with the chemical represents about one-third of
     Hickory Springs' production the foam manufactured for use in
     California. And changing ingredients in the precise recipes for
     foam would be tricky.

       He contacted a chemical company, Akzo Nobel, which was developing
     an experimental, phosphorous-based flame retardant considered safer
     than penta. It raised costs of some foam by 20%, but after trials
     at his plant, it seemed effective.

       By the end of 2002, Bush was proud to say that Hickory Springs
     had the only furniture foam plant in the nation to operate without
     PBDEs.

       But then spring arrived in North Carolina. It was pushing the
     double 90s: 90% humidity and 90 degrees. On days like these, the
     middle of a foam block can swell to more than 350 degrees.

       A worker sliced into the center of a bun and noticed that a
     stain, little more than a shadow, had spread through its core.
     After a few more batches, there was little doubt. The new flame
     retardant had scorched the foam. Scorching is a foamer's nemesis
     because it turns the core of pure-white foam a dingy yellow, and no
     one knows the batch is discolored until it cools, 24 hours after it
     comes off the pouring line.

       Workers in the testing laboratory were struggling with another
     problem. In the lab, hand-sized pieces of foam are hung every day
     from a rack and exposed to an open flame to determine how long and
     how much the material burns. The new formula foam was failing the
     tests. That meant it would not meet California's standards. Similar
     flammability problems had also hampered the company's plant in
     Commerce.

       The crew tinkered with the formula for weeks. Meanwhile, Doug
     Sullivan, Hickory Springs' technical director, was getting nervous.
     Every time a batch fails, it takes three or four days to make up
     for lost time and catch up with backlogged orders.

       Bush knew he had to get the pouring line moving again. Foam is a
     cutthroat business, in which you can lose a customer if your
     product is priced one-tenth of a cent too high or you're a day late
     with an order. In recent years, the furniture industry has been
     suffering one of its worst downturns. Bush risked losing one-third
     of the plant's orders if he stopped using penta.

       "It got to the point we were trying and trying and trying and we
     couldn't let it jeopardize production," Bush said. "I hated to back
     up. But, dammit, we have to stay in business."

       Soon afterward, a tanker truck dropped a month's worth of penta
     5,000 gallons at the factory door.

       Red-Flag Evidence

       People watch TV on it, do office work on it, drive on it, stand
     on carpet that covers it. It looks harmless, seems inert. But
     lately scientists and environmentalists have been talking about
     foam as if it were poison.

       Scientists from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and
     European institutions are calling penta the single most worrisome
     industrial chemical in widespread use today, comparing it to DDT
     and PCBs, compounds banned a quarter-century ago.

       In North America, levels in people and wildlife are doubling
     every few years, and it has already spread, via the air, as far as
     polar bears near the North Pole and sperm whales in deep ocean
     waters. The three highest recorded levels in breast milk so far are
     in a woman in Missouri, one in Oregon and one in Indiana.

       Some scientists suspect that penta from furniture foam collects
     in household dust. Others say discarded sofas, carpet pads and car
     seats could be leaching penta into landfills that flow into
     waterways, where it contaminates fish.

       An EPA scientist even speculated that in the future, foam
     cushions might have to be handled like a hazardous material. The
     foam and furniture industries, however, consider that ludicrous and
     remain dubious that furniture foam is responsible for the penta
     accumulating in human bodies

       Despite the evidence of a growing health risk, use of penta
     remains legal. The EPA, saying it wants to do more research, has no
     plans to restrict its use nationally. California this summer
     enacted a law that bans products containing two types of PBDEs,
     including penta, but it doesn't become effective until 2008.

       The ban is a bit ironic because, Bush said, "the only reason we
     are using this stuff is because California told us to. They said
     make this foam safer." Even though the flammability standards still
     stand in fact, the state has proposed making them even more
     stringent next year the industry's main tool to comply with them
     will be outlawed.

       The bottom line is that California wants flame-retarding foam,
     but doesn't want flame retardants.

       No Ready Substitute

       In July, upon signing the bill banning penta in California, Gov.
     Gray Davis announced that "manufacturers and retailers can easily
     switch to other flame retardants and our air, rivers and ocean will
     be cleaner."

       But, in reality, no U.S. foam company has succeeded in ending its
     reliance on penta. So far, no other chemical works as well.

       "If we were told tomorrow that we can't use penta, we'd be in
     trouble," said Herman Stone of the Polyurethane Foam Assn., an
     industry group.

       Chemical manufacturers including Akzo Nobel and Great Lakes
     Chemical Co. have invested tens of millions of dollars in the past
     few years experimenting with less toxic retardants to replace
     penta, which is a $30-million-a-year market. "It will be very
     difficult to meet 2008, but we're committed to do that," said Anne
     Noonan, a vice president of Great Lakes Chemical, the only current
     maker of penta. "Foam making is not a science; it is an art. It
     takes a long time to change this market."

       In Europe, all furniture is already penta-free. Finding
     alternatives there was easier, Stone said, because European
     customers prefer denser, less springy foam in their furniture and
     are willing to pay more. Also, Europe has no flammability
     requirements except in Great Britain, where furniture foam is
     covered with a layer of melamine, a costly fiber that slows fires.

       IKEA is the only retailer in the United States that insists on
     PBDE-free products. That raises the cost of its U.S. furniture
     about 10%, because its suppliers add melamine like they do in
     Britain, but it "pays off in the long run," said Magnus Bjork,
     senior compliance manager at IKEA North America. "What costs you
     have, you can gain it back with consumer confidence."

       Discoloration is the major reason the U.S. foam industry has not
     switched. Most consumers do not know or care what color the foam
     is. But many furniture makers will not buy yellowish foam.

       Bush says that if furniture makers and customers were
     "colorblind," penta could be eliminated today.

       Most people, he says, would tolerate yellowish foam if they knew
     the alternative was a chemical that could harm a baby's brain.
     "We've tried to sell that point, but they [furniture makers] won't
     hear of it," Bush said. "The discoloration factor is a flimsy
     excuse, but it's been this way for decades."

       The EPA has granted permission for sales of small volumes of
     several experimental compounds after companies conducted only brief
     initial screening for environmental effects.

       Adam Peters, a chemical assessment scientist at Great Britain's
     National Centre for Ecotoxicology and Hazardous Substances, said
     phosphorous flame retardants, the most popular alternative, "are
     generally likely to be of less concern."

       They have low toxicity, degrade more quickly, and do not
     accumulate in human and animal tissues. But he and other
     toxicologists caution that full details of their effects won't be
     known until years of additional toxicity testing is conducted on
     lab animals.

       "Are we exchanging the devil for the devil?" said Bill Perdue,
     the American Furniture Manufacturers Assn.'s director of
     environmental and regulatory affairs.

       Bush is experimenting with new solutions and hoping to eliminate
     all brominated flame retardants at his plants by next year.

       Since the onset of the industrial age, from the car industry's
     battle against smog to invention of pollution-free paints, history
     has demonstrated that manufacturers can prevail over technical
     obstacles.

       "We're not giving up," he said. "We will have a solution."