Chrysler Fined $1.5 Million for Health Hazards

The Labor Department on Monday fined Chrysler Corp. a record $1.5 million for health and safety violations at a Delaware automobile assembly plant after dangerously high levels of arsenic and lead were found in the air at the site.

The department’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration said 811 job safety violations were found in January at the Newark, Del., plant, three-fourths of which were considered serious or willful.

OSHA Administrator John A. Pendergrass called the fines “the only possible response to a totally unacceptable situation.”

‘We Mean What We Say’

” . . . Our issuance of the citations today should send a clear signal to all employers that we mean what we say,” he said.

Chrysler officials said they will not contest the fine and pledged to make the necessary improvements.

But they maintained that most of the violations were “relatively minor electrical and mechanical safeguarding discrepancies” and said they were caught up in a “new vigor” by the agency to crack down on safety regulation.

“You might say that it’s our time in the barrel,” Gerald Greenwald, Chrysler vice chairman, said in a statement.

The fine was the second government blow to Chrysler this month. Two weeks ago, a federal grand jury indicted two company executives and accused the auto maker of selling as new hundreds of cars that managers had driven extensively with the odometers disconnected.

Industry analysts said the effect of Monday’s action on the company’s competitive position should not be as severe because the problems affected workers rather than customers.

“This is more of an embarrassment more than anything else,” said Thomas O’Grady, president of Integrated Automotive Resources, an industry research firm. “Nobody likes to get fined a million, but at the same time it’s sort of after the fact” because corrective action is under way.

The fine, totaling $1,576,100, surpasses the previous record penalty of $1.3 million assessed last year against Union Carbide for health and safety violations at its Institute, W. Va., chemical plant.

Await Inspection Results

Moreover, Chrysler officials are awaiting the results of extensive OSHA inspections that were conducted at facilities in Belvidere, Ill., and Twinsburg, Ohio. The findings there are expected to be announced soon, federal officials said.

At the Delaware plant, OSHA said that it found unsafe arsenic and lead levels in several areas, inadequate warnings to employees of the health effects of substances in the workplace and violations of rules covering safety equipment, fire protection and electrical protection.

In some areas, workers were breathing air that contained up to 20 times the level considered safe for lead content and twice the safe levels of arsenic, the agency said. Tests found that two workers had elevated lead levels in their blood, although no ill effects have become apparent.

“Lack of adequate safeguards and protection for workers dealing with substances as dangerous as lead and arsenic cannot be tolerated,” Pendergrass said.

Excessive lead exposure can cause damage to the central nervous system and in some cases be fatal. Arsenic can also be lethal and potentially carcinogenic.

Chrysler officials said they are improving the monitoring of lead and arsenic levels in the company soldering and paint booths, where the chemicals are primarily present, and that a full plant overhaul is imminent.

The Newark plant, with 4,000 employees, “is one of the few Chrysler facilities still to be renovated under the company’s ongoing $12.5-billion modernization program,” a company statement said. The renovation is scheduled for 1988.

In the meantime, the statement said: “Chrysler has formed a task force to review working conditions at all our manufacturing plants.”