Is your job killing you?

Jobs that cause illness or death.

John Espera was thrilled when he was told he got the job at the phone company. He was only 20 and it was his second job in his life. He was working in the office when the company announced that they needed workers to work outside in the cable department putting up cables. It sounded pretty good to him. He would be making more per hour than other workers doing this kind of work because he would be climbing poles and installing cables in all sorts of weather climates.

What the company did not tell him was that he would be working around lead cables and chemicals that the company was developing to help with communications solutions in the US and also Europe.

Espera admitted that many times he was around many chemicals but the company assured him that it was all right, Espera worked for the phone company for 30 more years.

He was able to buy three homes for his family, one for his own family, one for his mother, and another for a vacation home. He was finally able to live the American dream as he said and live a life of luxury.

When he was in his fifties. Espera noticed he was having trouble urinating at first. He thought of stress at the job but then he began uncontrollable urges to go to the restroom all the time. He had lost his wife recently and decided to take some time off.

He found out that his two kidneys were not working or barely working. The doctor said it seemed to be from all the chemicals he was around working on through the years. He had to start kidney dialysis. He first thought that he would eventually get off of dialysis and live a normal life again.

The phone company decided to have him retire with a nice pension but his condition after a few years, got worse. He went from having dialysis once a week to three times a week. Espera was able to live with deteriorating kidneys until his death in his early seventies. One physician stated that usually, patients with dialysis live up to ten years and not twenty.

The phone company made changes to its chemical usage after many employees were getting kidney and liver damage. The phone company also paid some nice pensions meaning pay off’s to keep past employees happy instead of suing.

Senator Bennett Johnson of Louisiana had OSHA (occupational safety and health amendment) passed a bill back in the nineteen-seventies that small businesses under 15 employees hand out a maximum fine for safety and health violations. This would have come in handy years later when some small businesses declined to acknowledge this bill, especially California.

?Bill Williams was cutting his rosebushes in his front yard in California when he heard a man scream. The gardeners across the street from him were cutting a neighbor’s palm tree when the one gardener at the top fell to his death, the gardener nor the business did not have the right climbing tools to trim a palm tree in the first place.?

The gardening truck took off without him and left him dead in the neighbor’s driveway. Williams instantly called 911 but it was too late. The man had died.

The gentleman who had died was an illegal gardener. Many gardening businesses in California hire day laborers to help with major yard work, especially in towns like, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Santa Barbara, etc.

The homeowners did not know the gardening company that came to trim their palm trees only that they had called so many to come and whoever showed up was given the job. The homeowner said he paid the man cash for this gardening company to show up that one day. He paid the money and left for work. The gardening truck was just an old truck that was painted over many times and Bill Williams could not recognize the name of the company on the truck.

The police finally found the gardening truck that was abandoned and stripped because the truck originally was stolen and revamped because some of the day laborers decided to start their own gardening business. Which was not uncommon in a poor economy. The crew would go around and pick up jobs from heard say or advertising on bulletin boards of grocery stores or the Pennysaver newspaper of other gardeners who had too much work or too little work. The men would pick up day laborers waiting on street corners for heavy jobs in the neighborhoods.

The men would then pay in cash the day laborer for the work needed for that day or week. And the men would leave that and go their own way. The company may or may not use the same men again.

If the gardening business were permissible then OSHA would have charged them $1000 to $150,000 and also murder if the men who left him were caught. Luckily the man responsible for this illegal gardener passing away was caught and is serving time.

Women who work in electrical professions are 45% more likely to attract breast cancer than women in other fields. This was compared to two studies done in the 1990s and another one in 2004. The risk was 70% higher for female electrical engineers, 28% percent higher for electrical technicians and 80% higher for other professions.

As one researcher put it that this is the highest level of breast cancer seen in women in previous decades.

Most of the jobs involve constant exposure to magnetic fields but there was proof that other fields also exposed women to cancer such as computer programmers, computer equipment operators, data enterers, and telephone operators such as 911 or 411 workers. And air traffic controllers who are exposed up to 10-12 hours a day.?

Marsha Vincettia was an X-ray technician who worked in a small medical clinic in a poor neighborhood. Vincettia began noticing that her skin was turning brown in places but considered it to be that her tan was fading. Friends of hers started to tell her that she did not look good and she admitted she did not feel good.

Vincettia became upset when she noticed her skin was tan was turning gray and some of it was falling off. She went to the doctor who told her that she had skin cancer and cervical cancer. This was due to working as an X-ray technician without a hazardous work suit on to prevent the radiation from coming back at her from using the X-rays on the patient.

The faculty did not have lead in the walls to prevent the radiation from harming their patients as well as their staff using the machines.?Vincettia died five month later after being diagnosed. After a lengthy trial, her family received $50,000 from suing the clinic after her death. And the clinic closed its doors for good. Vincettia was exposed to radiation every day up to eight to ten hours a day sometimes up to six days a week.

Beverly Beccara did not know her job was secretly killing her until she found out she had stage 2 cancer. She was a hospice home health nurse who constantly gave IV’s to patients in hospice care for chemotherapy symptoms and pain, deal with patient’s families and grief counseling. She admits that she overcame her cancer but went back to work because like everyone else had bills to pay and two children to support.

The cancer came back seven years later as a stage 4 this time. Even with extensive chemotherapy and radiation, she knew she had less than five years to live. Beccara use to always give IV drips for chemotherapy, radiation, pain, etc. and these drugs can have ample side effects. She admits that she use to get migraines and vision problems but continued onward for her job. She also used to visit rehab/nursing homes in unsafe neighborhoods to visit patients.?This was a problem with her nursing care as well.

She was attacked twice on two different occasions in two very dangerous neighborhoods. Luckily she was able to make it back to her car on one occasion and on another she went back into the patient’s home and called for police.

Singer Olivia Newton-John died from breast cancer that came back on three different occasions. The last time it was in her spine, the first time in 1992 with the help of chemo, radiation, and homeopathy she overcame it and was considering retiring from show business to concentrate on her family.

Then in 2013 she noticed a bump on her shoulder from a car injury and did not think that the bump was serious but found out it was cancer and had it removed.?In 2017, she discovered the cancer had come back in the base of her spine. She took homegrown cannabis to deal with the pain from fracturing her sacrum back in 2018 and to learn to walk again.

Newton-John admitted in interviews in 2019-2022 that she was touring and performing under enormous pain in 2017 and 2018 and people asked her why she kept going as long as she did with her career.

She confessed she was used to being a performer and singing and touring/performing is what she was meant to do. Newton-John said she contemplated quitting many times in the past but her music and seeing the fans kept her going. “My body finally said, if you don’t stop then I will see to it you do,” said Newton-John.

She also admitted that touring, as a performer is very vigorous because you are performing one night on stage and leaving the same night to sleep on a bus for the next concert venue. Newton-John said she use to look at the matchbox covers to see what town she was in because it all became one big blur after awhile.

She said, “People look at a performer that has a luxury lifestyle but that is not true because when you are on tour you don’t get to view the city or state you are in because you are rehearsing and performing for the crowd then it is off to the next city either the next day or the day after.” When she performed the Physical tour in 1982, which was a 50-city concert tour, finally after the tour schedule was completed she had to take three weeks off just to catch up on sleep. Newton-John said, “I was exhausted.”

Sadly Newton-John lost her battle with cancer on August 8, 2022 when she died at home.?