Document B5EqRJye0n5rmpXDojgLdbJ7j

. MILWAUKEE SENTINEL ; MILWAUKEE. WtSa * ' t>. ico,oil . i MAY 'b 1969 Reliability of DDT Lab Analyses Questioned at Madison Hearing By QUINCY DADISMAN ' Sentinel Staff Writer i Madison, Wii, - The natural resource deportment's hearing Into a petition that it ban the use of DDT In the state Wednesday 'turned into an in* quiry Into the reliability of an* lysos made by a Madison lab* oratory, . pounds closely related to DDT. DDD is a fraction of technical (squirt gun) grade DDT and DDE is the material into which mueh DDT is changed when it passes through a living ani mal. ' DDE shows up on the gas chromatograph tape as a sepa rate "peak'* in the line drawn Izeak Walton league, which petitioned for the ban, went deop into the procedures used by the WARF lqb. * Mode! Unknown Under Yannacona't ques tioning, Coon admitted that he had not used a gas chromato graph in more than a year, that chromatography, to determine . the accuracy of the reports. '. He said that lab workers had ' been aware of the possibility ) for confusion posed by PCB's I since they were identified in Sweden In 1997 and that the hydrolysis step had been avail able since last year, if needed* < On the witness stand nearly jthe entire day was Francis B. Coon, who heads the chemis* try section of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) Institute, Inc., labors* by the machine, but tbd peaks for DDD, DDT, and the PCB's are near each other. Coon testified that it was usual practice to modify the DDT by hydrolysis, or saponi he had done .only 100 of the 15,000 or so analyses made by the lab in the last few years and that he didn't know the model of the machines used in the lab. Steak Cut ; Coon said that a steak -- a cross section of the center of the fish -- had been cut from the 'coho salmon used In the test The steak did not include ' , 1 1 lory. , fication (making it into a soap) He said that most of the the f I s h's intestine and, he , The WARF lab is interna so t h a t it can be separated tionally famous among bio from the less soluble PCB's in chemists as the ptaoe where, the gas chromatograph. they send samples for analysis DDE Is the fraction of DDT as a doublecheck on their own which anti*DDT forces have work. . said upsets hormone belance in work was dona by others in tho lib and that he checked the chromatograph tapes for accu racy, informing some clients that further testing should be done if there were indications that PCB's were present in the said, he was uncertain whether it included any back fat Earlier testimony Indicated that.DDT tended to concen- , trete in fatty tissues when eat- en by animals. Coon had been placed on the some species of wild birds. sample. _ Throughout the exchange, t stand Tuesday by Willard S. Victor J. Yann&cone, Jr., at In about 1% of the samples hairing examiner Maurice van : Stafford, counsel f o r the in* torney for the Citizens Natural tested, Coon said, gas chroma Suateren we a kept busy ref- j dustrial task force for DDT of Resource- association and the tography tests were fechecked erasing a aeries of objections f the. N a 11 o n a i Agricultural Wisconsin division of the by another process, thin layer by the two attorneys. . Chemicals association, which opposes the proposed ban. Analysis Brought Coon brought with him a gas chromatograph analysis or a coho salmon caught in a Lake Michigan tributary. He testified to a series of. tests made with the instrument -- which detects differences in chemical compounds electroni cally apd indicates the differ- e n c e s by a wavy tine of a graph -- which showed that the salmon contained DDT and some of its chemical relatives, and PCBi, polychlorinated bi phenyls. ' Some analytical chemists say the presence of PCBt, chlorine compounds used in In dustry, make analyses for DDT difficult and have resulted in confusion in evaluating studies of biological samples uken from the environment.. Coon testified that the gas chromatograph tape indicated that the salmon contained DDT, DDD and DDE, as wsU as traces of PCBs. DDD and DDE ore eoaa- ______ A - HONS 029005