Document MG5vDpq9bq645p432xQ2474kz

PCB -- . . * * ' a wonder chemical5 that got Sun., Morch 22, 1981 THE SUN ^ (Continued from'A-1) ' cans have traces of PCB in their bodies, according to . a U.S. surgeon general's report on hazardous waste . issued in September 1980. The chemical was cited as one of a number of toxic compounds so pervasive in The environment that there's no way to escape It. What Is PCB used for and why Is so much of it around -- an estimated 750 million pounds? Since 1929 it has been used as a cooling oil in nearly> all things electrical because when it comes to preven ting fires, few substances beat PCB. Even though PCB use was banned In 1979 when Congress approved the Toxic Substances Control The chemical does seem to be everywhere. In 1979 Act, the law allows a five-year phase-out "grace it was found In the breastmllk of a Lafayette, Colo., period." That means that PCB-flllcd appliances and farm woman That same year It was also found in a equipment will be in use around the country until herd of Kansas cattle, In Maine lobsters and along 200 1984. ' miles of roadway in North Carolina. The chemical's properties are so extraordinary i In 1980, a DePaul University Scientist who ex j that it took many years to find a replacement for it amined the dust In his Chicago apartment found For that reason, officials with the U.S,, Environmen sizable amounts of PCB. And recent government soil tal Protection Agency say, it was not outlawed until samplings found PCB In the snows of Antarctica. 1979, even though Us toxic dangers were known in For more than a decade, PCB has been discovered the late '60s. ' In all kinds of foodstuffs across the country. It has PCB was a laboratory breakthrough because it had contaminated milk in West Virginia, meatmea! In so many desirable qualities. The compound is In Illinois, fishmeal in North Carolina and Puerto Rico, soluble in water, resistant to biological and chemical fish in the Hudson River and the Great Lakes and destruction and tolerates extremely low tem poultry feed packaged by Ralston Purina, according to a March 1980 report by the U.S. Food and Drug peratures without changing its chemical form or l state. It could insulate and cool hot electrical coils I Administration. while neither conducting current nor Igniting and it i "And those incidents are the ones that are known ' satisified every government safety code when it cautioned Carol Tucker Foreman of the FDA. "It's very likely that there are a number of localized caine to electrical fire prevention. Then in 1975 a two-year test study on female rats Incidents of (PCB) contamination each year that we never know about." , . But Monsanto Co. of St. Louis, Mo., which Invented the chemical in 1929, has issued scores of press linked the chemical to liver caiicer. Hundreds of' articles were written, aU labeling the chemical a cancer-causing agent, and fears about PCB spread rapidly. releases and sent their top directors on dozens of Later research has Indicated PCB may not cause speaking tours to denounce what it calls "the PCB hysteria." ^ cancer in humans and does not necesarily cause cancer in rats, cither. . I Says Dr. John H. Craddock, manager of Monsanto's Product and Environmental Safely Division, 'The I After that latest batch of studies many industry officials -- particularly the Monsanto Co., the sole hazards of f'CRs to humans have been greatly exag ' producer of PCB in the U.S. -- breathed a sign of > gerated. PCILs are not human cancer-causing agents and they are not deadly toxins. PCBs are considered only mildly toxic on an acute basis when ingested by relief. . And as for bioaccumulation, a recent study on fish in the Great Lakes showed that the accumulation of ! humans -- about on the same order as common table salt. toxic chemicals like PCB and DDT is not passed to the animals' offspring. Monsanto uses that study to show 'The public has been unfairly alarmed about PCB that the environment "can be cleaned up if we stop and that's because officials in the government com dumping chemicals into it," said Craddock. pletely overreacted and chose PCB as some kind of - toxic scapegoat," Craddock told The Sun. ' Unfortunately, no one knows what happens to people who are either exposed directly to PCB or who eat fish and other foodstuffs containing PCB. And, unless one submits to extensive and complex blood tests, there's nd way to determine how much PCB each of us has in our bodies or how much PCB we may he eating at breakfast, lunch and dinner or drinking In our water. For those,reasons, human bioaccumulation of PCB is quite frightening. It is so feared, in fact, that last year a single incident of PCB contamination resulted in the destruction of 325,000 chickens, 4 million eggs, 41,000 pounds of meat and bonemeal, 12,000 cases of frozen strawberry cakes, 184,000 pounds of concen trates and finished feed and 3,375 hogs. It began when an undetected leaky transformer dripped about 200 gallons of PCB-insulating fluid into feed at the Pierce Packing Co., an animal feed distributor in Billings, Mont. Working Its way up the food chain, the PCB contaminant spread Into 19 stales and two foreign countries, Japan and Canada, before it was detecled. i Some 1,400 firms may have received the con i taminated meatmeal or feed made from it, the IJ.S. Food and Drug Administration reported. It is impossible to say how many persons and livestock ate some PCB-contamlnated food prior to detection or whether the government was able to track down every PCB-tainted morsel. But it is possible to say that every person alive today has varying amounts of the chemical in their bodies. Random studies "have revealed PCBs in PCB-ARCH-EXT0375919 Staff photo by Glonn Coper* Sign warns that PCBs are used in these Southern California Edison Co. capacitors in Rialto. human fat tissue and blood plasma in amounts greater than 2 ppm (parts-per-million) and 29 ppb (parts-pcr billion), respectively," according to a fourvolume report issued last year by the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto. The EPA has ruled that any electrical cooling oij or lubricant with more than 50 ppm of PCB represents a health hazard. And any material containing more than 500 ppm of PCB must be destroyed by incinera tion. To put all those figures in perspective, most elec trical transformers and capacitors use PCB concen trations at 500,000 ppm or higher. ' . ' In the past 30 years, more than 750 million pounds Sunday special and would cause wide-spread power outages," Crad dock said. . . 1 What progress has been made toward finding a of PCB were produced. And nearly all arc believed to replacement for PCB? have been discharged into the environment -- and According to nearly all government and industry the food chain, the FDA states. officials contacted by The Sun, it has been less than Today, approximately 84,000 utility PCB trans satisfactory. formers are still in service, containing 180 million Since 1977 the nation's utilities have been working pounds of PCB mixtures. About twice as many to come up with an adequate substitute for PCB. pounds of PCB are used in capacitors as In trans In those years, chemists have come up with two formers and 95 percent of all capacitors contain PCB, such replacements; silicones, which are made by the study by the Electric Power Research Institute several manufacturers, but not Monsanto, and a found. . chemical called dJoctyl pbtbzlate, or DOP, which is Under the 1979 Toxic Substances Control Act, being used as a PCB substitute in electrical capaci utility companies cannot be forced to replace PCB- tors. fillcd equipment before the natural lifespan of the , Some replacement is going on now, even though machinery. In other words, PCB equipment docs not the EPA ruled that equipment docs not have to have to be replaced until it fails. Ironically, such contain non-PCB fluids until It malfunctions. failures often start with PCB leaking, dripping and/or exploding into the environment. "Although the law says they can use them (PCB- In addition, since less than 1 percent of PCB filled equipment) for the normal life span of the equipment fails in the first 40 years of use, many equipment, public pressure Is forcing the utilities to companies and industries may still he using the I take them out sooner," said Craddock. chemical in the year 2019 -- which is 40 years from One utility that has really felt the pressure'is the date PCB was outlawed by Congress. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. In Northern California, "It's a very stable, immobile, persistent chemical. where "an immediate replacement program is cost It's very tenacious and virtually nothing will break it ing us between $30 million and $50 million," said one down," said a spokesman for the FDA which set company spokesman.' "tolerance levels" for PCBs in 1973, four years before . - the Environmental Protection Agency acted on the But will those customers be appeased if, as Monsan problem. to's Craddock predicts, "their electric bills double? I Because PCBs were used in printing ink and food don't think so. I think consumers will take a second processing equipment, the FDA also set tolerance look at PCB when that happens and it's hound to levels for paper food packaging materials and happen." banned the use of PCB in industries that handled Even though PCB is on its way out, the toxin food, feed and food processing. trauma that the nation's electrical industry has gone However, the primary usage of PCB -- as cooling through is far from over. oil in electrical transformers and capacitors -- was In fact, many utility officials fear that it may only not banned outright "mainly because there were no have begun. suitable replacement chemicals," said Dr. Paul Wil " * ' liams of the state Health Department's Hazardouus Their fears are based on test results recently Materials Management Division in Berkeley. released by the National Cancer Institute. The results Monsanto "wanted to stop production of PCB in show that one of the non-PCB replacement com 1975 but the EPA asked us not to because there was pounds, DOP, has been found to cause cancer in nothing to use in its place," Craddock told The Sun. female rats. . "The EPA thought that taking PCB off the market without a suitable replacement chemical would have Next: The effects of PCB and the problems of destroying a catastrophic effect on the nation's utility industry