Popcorn flavoring victims dies as jury awards $7.5 million

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/secretingredients/archives/164220.asp?from=blog_last3

Ronald Kuiper died last week, just one day before a jury decided that a maker of chemical butter flavoring owed him $7.5 million for destruction of his lungs.

Kuiper was 64 when I interviewed him five years ago, just before doctors confirmed what he told me he already knew - that he had bronchiolitis obliterans, which is also called "popcorn lung."

Obviously, the jury agreed that it was diacetyl that was killing him when he testified briefly before them.

In the 90s, inhalation of this synthetic butter flavoring had been blamed for destroying the lungs of hundreds of workers in microwave popcorn plants throughout the Midwest. Included was American Pop Corn, the plant in Sioux City, Iowa, where Kuiper worked as a butter-flavor mixer.
Picture

The verdict, which took jurors six days to reach, was against Givaudan Flavors Corp. of Cincinnati. Earlier, Kuiper and his wife had also sued three other mega-flavor makers - International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc., Flavors of North America, Inc. and Sensient Flavors, Inc.

I'm told they paid the Kuipers without going to trial.

Kuiper contacted me after he read articles I'd written in Baltimore for The Sun on sick workers I'd found in flavoring, food processing and other plants across the country where diacetyl is used.

FULL story at link.