TAYLORSVILLE, N.C. -- Sheri Farley walks with a limp. The only job she could hold would be one where she does not have to stand or sit longer than 20 minutes, otherwise pain screams down her spine and up her legs.

 

"Damaged goods," Ms. Farley describes herself, recalling how she recently overheard a child whispering to her mother about whether the "crippled lady" was a meth addict.

 

For about five years, Ms. Farley, 45, stood alongside about a dozen other workers, spray gun in hand, gluing together foam cushions for chairs and couches sold under brand names like Broyhill, Ralph Lauren and Thomasville. Fumes from the glue formed a yellowish fog inside the plant, and Ms. Farley's doctors say that breathing them in eventually ate away at her nerve endings, resulting in what she and her co-workers call "dead foot."

 

A chemical she handled -- known as n-propyl bromide, or nPB -- is also used by tens of thousands of workers in auto body shops, dry cleaners and high-tech electronics manufacturing plants across the nation. Medical researchers, government officials and even chemical companies that once manufactured nPB have warned for over a decade that it causes neurological damage and infertility when inhaled at low levels over long periods, but its use has grown 15-fold in the past six years.