`Erin Brockovich hexavalent chromium case`

Public-awareness anchor for hexavalent chromium toxicity. Tom uses it to explain why chromic-acid-based aluminum cleaning baths fell out of favor, and pairs it with the parallel collapse of automotive chrome plating between 1982 and the mid-1990s. Tom adds a personal recollection of disposing of chromic acid down the laboratory drain at MIT in the early 1970s.

What's the problem with these two? Anybody know what the problem with the two that contain chromic acid is? Environmental. CrO3 — that's Erin Brockovich. That's what she got all that money for: those kids who had liver cancer and birth defects and other things in California. Chromic acid is a carcinogen, one of the most potent carcinogens we know. The reason you didn't have chrome bumpers on automobiles in the United States between about 1982 and 1995 — why? Because people in the chrome-plating shops did a study and showed they had a much higher incidence of cancer. So they shut down the shops. It wasn't until the mid-90s that Ford built an environmentally protected chromic acid plating shop for Ford Explorers. Cost them a couple hundred million dollars with all the controls. No one's going to be breathing chromic acid fumes in a modern electroplating shop. But it took about 15 years to design the controls, so now we're back to doing chromium plating.