Cancer Plagues Forensic Scientists : Benzidine: Key Crime Lab Tool Leaves Tragic Legacy

After four operations to remove tumors, surgeons finally cut out Reed McLaughlin’s cancerous bladder last January. Now, the retired Los Angeles police sergeant sits in a cluttered trailer here in his backyard, drinking a beer at 10:30 a.m.

Cancer is on his mind as he flips through a medical journal and comes to a dog-eared chart that suggests he has a 40% chance of living two more years. Then, the former lawman begins to weep, apologizing for his tears.

McLaughlin, 67, was a criminalist, a police crime laboratory expert, for more than 25 years, and is convinced that his frequent on-the-job exposure to a chemical called benzidine is to blame for the cancer that took his bladder and may take his life.

For decades, he and other forensic scientists throughout the nation routinely dabbed or sprayed benzidine solutions on walls, floors, weapons and corpses to expose traces of blood or highlight bloody fingerprints at crime scenes. It was considered the best and most sensitive test of its kind.

But in the early 1970s, federal health officials confirmed long standing suspicions that benzidine causes bladder cancer. Studies warned that the first signs of malignancy appeared, on average, 15 years or more after contact with the chemical, which is readily absorbed through the skin.

More than a decade after most began removing it from their laboratory shelves, most of the nation’s estimated 3,000 active and since-retired criminalists are only now beginning to understand the consequences of having relied on so powerful a chemical tool. A handful, like McLaughlin, have had their bladders or bladder tumors removed; untold others have been diagnosed as having potentially cancerous “abnormal cell growth.” A few members of the small fraternity have died of cancer.

Often Thought About

“I think the fact that (bladder cancer) could pop out in anybody that used it has crossed everybody’s mind,” observed Ron Bridgemon, head of the Arizona state crime lab in Tucson and president of the 250-member American Society of Crime Lab Directors. “No one really knows how insidious it is or how bad any of the other chemicals are that we’ve used.”

Several police crime labs, including the Los Angeles Police Department’s, have instituted annual screening programs, checking lab workers’ urine for any pre-cancerous abnormalities. Other criminalists have taken it upon themselves individually to have regular urinary examinations.

Still, despite widespread concern about cancer, a few continue to use benzidine, insisting that the risks are unproven or, at best, minimal.

Whatever the dangers, benzidine’s ultimate effect on U.S. criminalists may be but a footnote in the history of a chemical that was once extensively used in American industry. Far more cases of benzidine-related bladder cancer have been documented among factory workers who have used benzidine solutions to dye clothing, leather and paper.

Blue-Collar Users

Blue-collar workers, like criminalists, were generally ignorant of benzidine’s carcinogenic properties until the 1970s and took even fewer precautions than police lab workers to limit exposure.

But there is irony for police scientists who fear that they contracted bladder cancer or carry its seed because of benzidine: Working in their labs or at secured crime scenes, they felt immune from the occupational hazards faced by their uniformed counterparts policing the streets.

“We didn’t have to deal with wife beaters and robbers. We thought we were safe,” said McLaughlin, a polite, bespectacled man with a wispy, pencil-thin mustache.

“I think about how little we knew then about these chemicals, how dangerous they really were, and I just feel like I was used.” It is a thought that crosses his mind often in retirement here, 80 miles south of Eugene, where the silence of the timbered hills is disturbed only occasionally by the echoes of logging trucks bound for the mill.

Bitterness Shared

Three thousand miles away, on Long Island, N.Y., Richard Janelli, 59, shares McLaughlin’s bitterness over a chemical that he once considered vital to his job.

A firearms examiner and crime scene investigator for most of his 28 years with the Nassau County Police Department, the 6-foot-4 Janelli has had nearly a dozen malignant tumors taken from his bladder since the first walnut-sized growth was detected in 1973. The last one was found in March.

He retired from the police department in January, 1985, on medical disability.

“Hell, I actually had a tube of benzidine break in my bare hand once,” Janelli said. “If I would have known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.”

Jerry W. Chisum, managing criminalist of the California Department of Justice’s crime lab in Modesto, wouldn’t have, either.

Chisum, 47, was trained to use benzidine while studying police science at the University of California at Berkeley. He worked with it afterward in the Kern County and San Bernardino County sheriff’s departments before joining the state Department of Justice.

Doctors found a tumor in his bladder in 1980. Chisum later filed a lawsuit against 10 chemical companies that manufactured and distributed benzidine. He recently dropped the suit, agreeing to a “less than six-figure” settlement.

“I haven’t had a recurrence, but it’s never really cured,” Chisum said. “When do I know which exposure caused it and which one will bring it back?”

Criminalists began using benzidine as a test for blood sometime after 1923, the year the Los Angeles Police Department established the nation’s first police crime lab.

Mixed With Acid

A white crystalline powder, benzidine was mixed in small bottles with a mild acid or alcohol. Some criminalists would then dip cotton swabs into the bottles and apply the swabs to stains presumed to be blood. Others poured the solution into atomizers to spray benzidine on hard-to-reach places. Still others would pour it on sponges and wipe down large surfaces.

If blood was present--even in traces of one part per 300,000 of water--it would turn a bright, aqua blue color. Thus, forensic scientists could literally retrace a murderer’s tracks, sometimes establishing the evidence needed to implicate or exonerate suspects.

McLaughlin, for example, used benzidine in January, 1962, to investigate the highly publicized slaying of a prominent doctor’s wife in her Pacific Palisades home.

The woman had been savagely beaten. A trail of bloodstains indicated that she had been dragged from the kitchen, into a bedroom and, finally, into a bathroom.

Homicide detectives first suspected her husband. But, using benzidine, McLaughlin discovered and enhanced a bloody heel print in the house. He concluded that the print did not match any of the doctor’s shoes, helping confirm the physician’s claim of innocence. Another man eventually was convicted of the slaying.

With so dependable a tool, it’s easy to understand why many criminalists developed an attachment to benzidine and why some were resentful when it was declared a carcinogen.

Missed on the Job

“It was super-useful and we used it a lot,” said Richard Bingle, chief forensic chemist of the Los Angeles Police Department’s crime lab. But when benzidine was declared a carcinogen, the first topic of discussion was not that crime lab workers might have cancer, Bingle said. Their first thought was “My God, what are we going to use now?”

Most police scientists grudgingly turned to the chemical phenolphthalein, which is considered less sensitive than benzidine. “At times, I wished we still had benzidine,” Bingle admitted.

In 1973, after benzidine had been shown to cause cancer in humans, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration introduced formal regulations on its use, along with a dozen other chemicals. OSHA ordered that anyone using benzidine in solutions greater than 0.1% must wear protective clothing, gloves, boots and respirators, among other safety precautions.

Almost immediately, as awareness of cancer in the chemical industry began to rise, U.S. production of benzidine and its dyes began to decline. Today, benzidine is no longer produced domestically. Small quantities of imported benzidine continue to be used in some industries.

“Benzidine is probably the oldest known specific chemical cause of cancer and has the least number of excuses for continuing to use it,” said Sheldon W. Samuels, health director of the AFL-CIO. “It’s been used for this long out of sheer ignorance, even though the connection with bladder cancer has been around since before the turn of the century.”

Relatively Rare

Compared to malignancies of the lungs, colon, stomach and prostate, bladder cancer is relatively rare--6.5 men in every 100,000 will eventually die of it compared with 72 per 100,000 for lung cancer, according to American Cancer Society statistics.

More than 40,000 Americans will contract bladder cancer this year, nearly three-quarters of them men.

Despite its link to bladder cancer, benzidine is still used by a few U.S. law enforcement agencies.

At the Center for Forensic Science in Toronto, Canada, criminalist Norman Erickson said he reviews proficiency reports of both U.S. and Canadian crime labs that show that some regularly test for blood with benzidine. Because the reports are “blind studies,” Erickson said he does not know which labs are involved.

Erickson, 50, has more than a passing interest in benzidine. He and three others in his lab who worked with the chemical until its ban in Canada in the mid-1970s have been diagnosed as having abnormal cells in their bladders. Erickson has had his bladder surgically scraped three times since 1981.

“That’s the scary part to me,” Erickson said. “With all we know, it shouldn’t be used.”

Yet one crime lab where benzidine remains available to forensic scientists is in Rhode Island. The state crime lab at Kingston has been using it since 1973--but not without a price.

Inmate Sues

In 1979, state prison inmate Douglas Gomes sued after benzidine had been applied to his arms, chest and shoulders. Prison authorities suspected him of involvement in the stabbing death of another prisoner and were looking for traces of the dead man’s blood on Gomes’ body. No bloodstains were found and Gomes was never charged with the slaying.

“When the substance was applied to my skin, (it) felt cold and tingled,” Gomes was quoted as saying. Gomes said that a week later, a rash and sores broke out on the areas of skin where benzidine had been applied.

A jury eventually ordered that the state pay him more than $75,000 over his fear of developing cancer.

More recently, reputed Rhode Island mob figure Frank (Bobo) Marrapese won $25,000 in a jury decision that was overturned on appeal in 1985. Marrapese’s skin was dabbed with benzidine during an investigation into the murder of a man alleged to have been his competitor in crime, according to Richard Wooley, special assistant state attorney general of Rhode Island.

Yet the Rhode Island state crime lab continues to rely on benzidine in investigating violent crimes.

“I still use it myself occasionally,” said the lab’s director, David DeFanti. “I see nothing wrong with it. No one is this office has ever had any problems to my knowledge.”

No Direct Contact

Nevertheless, crime lab employees and the suspects they examine no longer have direct contact with the chemical, Wooley said. When authorities want to check a suspect’s skin for a victim’s bloodstains, a cotton swab saturated with a saline solution is applied to the skin and then carefully dipped in benzidine.

Many forensic scientists admit that they rarely practiced such precautions when handling benzidine years ago. Some, including 52-year-old Dorothy Northey of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department, recall instances in which they inadvertently splashed benzidine on themselves or inhaled raw benzidine powder.

Today, in analytic fashion typical of their profession, Northey and others who have never suffered any bladder irregularities wonder what the future holds.

“I don’t think that we go around worrying all the time, but I can tell you this: I’m planning to retire early. I want to be around to enjoy it,” Northey said. “You realize after a while that there aren’t too many old criminalists around.”