Rep. Michael P. McGeehan (D., Phila.) cited a December report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which accused the company of taking a "scattershot approach" in tallying the tumor cases, among other faults.

"It does raise some question in my mind and in the committee's mind about how seriously Rohm & Haas took this problem," said McGeehan, who chaired the Labor Relations Committee hearing.

Phil Lewis, a Rohm & Haas vice president who oversees workplace safety, countered that the company had taken the matter "extremely seriously."

To suggest otherwise "personally offends me," said Lewis, who is a physician.

"The terrible fact of life is that clusters of disease happen that have no cause," he testified later.

The hearing, at the Holmesburg Recreation Center, was held officially to gather facts on workplace safety and a draft proposal to broaden state hazardous-material-reporting requirements. McGeehan said after the hearing that he had scheduled it in response to Inquirer articles about the Rohm & Haas cancers.

Since 2001, the company has been studying brain cancers and nonmalignant brain tumors among those who worked at its main U.S. research facility, in Spring House, Montgomery County. In 2004, company epidemiologist Arvind Carpenter reported that he had found no link between the illnesses and any exposure to workplace chemicals.

In a second study, completed in January, he found no evidence that the rate of brain cancer was even elevated. Previously, he had estimated the brain-cancer rate to be two to five times the norm.

After the criticism from NIOSH, the company turned over the ongoing research to the University of Minnesota. That work is expected to be finished in two years, Lewis said.

McGeehan said his goal was a law authorizing a state agency to investigate workplace safety. That is now the responsibility of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which declined to investigate this case because Rohm & Haas was conducting its own research.

"You folks have a much better handle on what's going on in our own backyard than a federal agency would," he told two officials who testified for the state Department of Labor and Industry.

McGeehan and two other committee members conducted the hearing; the rest of the members were at hearings elsewhere in the state.

Also testifying were Aaron Freiwald, an attorney for 10 families of former employees, and Tom Haag, a former company executive who first asked Rohm & Haas to investigate one of the cancer cases in 1996.

In the audience were relatives of three cancer victims as well as one former Spring House employee, Martina Granger, who had a benign brain tumor removed in October.

For her, the term benign is a misnomer. She continues to have chronic headaches, and said her head sometimes "is ringing like a bell."

"Every so often," Granger said after the hearing, "it feels like my head's being stabbed with an ice pick."

at 215-854-2430 or tavril@phillynews.com.