Document RLqadQOXyZZmMkEMqmZNbLwn

PORT MMN. MCN. nwsMtMU) HUM**. MM* MAY 41981 PCB: It stands ; for uncertainty FVmb (tail an) wire reports Rather, it moves up the food chain and accumulates along the Fifty-two yean ago, it wai way. The danger Is that PCB . luiled ai the wonder chemical of could end up on your dinner plate the decade and wu credited with in fish, meal, eggs or poultry. And Cteeting many a home, achool, j once you've ingested PCB, it re- ratal and buaineaa (ram elec- *d mains unmet*bolised in your body t trical lire*. `r'and lodges itself In your fatty , Tvlay, to-'.or, co- ,kos,' has A,,,mc of tri' " oat no-'' : Tht toxin has a balf-Ufe of 20 tonijus toxin* ui the country. . 1 years. In other words, in 20 years' Scientist! have debated that dig- '! ' time, about half tht PCB* you in tinctioo. Some maintain it cauaea . goat today will still bo in your . cancer, while other* tay it'a no .. body. Scientists and researchers more dangerous than table aalt. ere concerned because no one The chemical is PCB, an acr knows exactly what PCB does onym for 109 compounds, known once it enters the body. Nor is as polychlorinated biphenyls, anyone certain bow much of it the which were invented to bo used as body can safely absorb over time. electrical cooling oils. Not surprisingly, almost all , Today PCB caa be found In Americans have traces of PCB in everything from microwave ovens their bodies, according to a 1900 to television sets, fluorescent light U.S. surgeon general report on fixtures, electrical transformers hasardoua waste. The chemical and capacitors, refrigerators and was cited ee one of a number of air conditioners. toxic compounds so pervasive in Although now studiea do not the environment that there's no support the thoory that PCB causes cancer in humans, there la way to escape it. . PCB setma to be everywhere. reason to be concerned about the For more than a dacade, PCB , chemical bacause it bioaccumu- has been discovered in all kinds of 1stes in nature. That means PCB,.*. - foodstuffs across the country. j which is a close chemical cousia . ' to DDT. docs not metabolise and 1 cannot be broken down by plants ' MT y*>*m*l* - It has contaminated milk in West Virginia, meatmeal in Il linois. fishmeal in North Carolina and Puerto Rico, fish in the Hud son River and the Great Lakes and poultry feed packaged by Ralston Purina, according to a March 19(0 report by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Traces of it continue to be found in fish taken from area watsrs. . Because of that, Michigan and Ca- i nadian authorities recommend l that people only eat occasional meals uf fish taken from Lake St. Clair, Lake Huron and the St. Clair River. -< PCB levels as high as 19,000 parts per billion have been found . In sediment samples taken from a five-mile stretch of the St. Clair ' River between Sarnia and Stag Is land. The level, which is not un usual for an industrial area, has remained constant since 1976, said , John Kincaid, head of the Great : lakes survey unit for the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. In 1977, il was found in tht breast mine of aU 1,057 Michigan , mothers tested in a state-spoil- - sored program. In 1979, PCB was found in a herd of Kansas cattle, - in Maine lobsters and along 200 miles of roadway in North Caro lina. In 1900, a DePaul University scientist who examined the dust in his Chicago apartment found sizeable amounts of PCB. "And those incidents are the . ones that are known," said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Food and Drug Administration. "Detection of one particular incident is very much a matter of chance. It'a vary likely that there arc a num- See PCB, Pag* iA Nursing OK for most *; mothers . Most Michigan mnthers uo 'ut n,,. - is worry sl7'it tht * dug,.i (u 'CB in then milk when breast-feeling babies, a recent state study has ennduded. But mothers with large amounts of PCB in their muk may want to stop nursing babies, state health officials said. Mothers exposed to unusu ally high levels of the indus trial lubricant polychlorinated biphenyl -- a chemical sus pected of causing cancer -- should at least nave their breast milk tested. State and county health offi cials do not test mothers' milk, said Harold Humphrey of the Michigan Public Health Department. But one private laboratory. Environmental Research Group in Ann Arbor, tests breast milk tor PCB at a cost of M2. A spokeswoman for the labo ratory said the test takes about four weeks, and it can not be done until two to three weeks after the baby is bom. Women at higher risk in clude those who have handled PCB on the job, lived on farms whore the chemical was used as a silo sealant, or oaten tainted Great Lakes fish. HONS 011766 S* ?W lam Will_______K>ST HUSOW, WlCW.Menlny Me|r e mi U CMlinuvd from Pat* 1A , ber of localized incidents of con , lamination each year that we . never know about." But MMsanbLCd- of St Louis, ! Mo., which invented the chemical in lift, has issued scores ofpress ! releases and sent its top officials : on Rosens of speaking tours to det nounce what it calls PCB ; hysteria. "The hazards of PCBs to hu[ mans have been greatly exagger sted. PCBs are not human can . cer-causing agents and they are > not deadly toxins. PCBs are conl sitlered only mildly toxic on an ` acute basis when ingested by hui mans about on the same order as common table salt," said John II. Craddock, manager of the com pany's product and environment safety divisnn. - "The public has been unfairly alarmed about PCB, and that's because officials in the govern ment completely overreacted and chose PCB as some kind of toxic scapegoat," Craddock said. But what exactly is PCB used for and why is so much of it around -- an estimated 750 mil lion pounds? Since 1929 it has been used as a cooling oil in nearly all electrical things because it was extremely successful at preventing fires. Even though PCB was banned in 1979 when Congress approved the Toxic Substances Control Act, the law allows a five year phase-out grace period. That means that PCB-filled appliances and equip ment will be in use around the country until 19M. PCB's biggest consumer has beeir the utility industry, which uses the unique chemical to cool its huge electrical transformers and capacitors. The chemical is so extraordinary that nothing could be found to replace it for many years. For that reason, offi cials with the U S. Environmental Protection Agency say, it was not outlawed unul 1979, even though its toxic dangers were known in the late 1960s. PCB was a laboratory break through because it had so many desirable qualities. The compound was insoluable in water, resistant to biological and chemical de struction and could tolerate ex tremely high temperatures with out changing its chemical form or igniting. It did not freeze nor did it boil. It could insulate hot elec trical coils without conducting current, and it satisfied every government safety code when it came to electrical fire prevention. Then, in 1975, a two-year test study on female rats linked the chemical to liver cancer. Hun dreds of articles were written, all : labeling the chemical a cancer . agent, and the hysteria about PCB spread. More sophisticated scientific research now shows that PCB may not cause cancer in hu mans and does not conclusively cause cancer in rats, either. After that batch of studies, many industry officials breathed a sign of relief. And as for the bioaccumulation fear, a recent study on fish in the Great Lakes ' showed that toxic chemicals are not inherited. In other words, blosccumulation of compounds like PCB end DDT are not passed on, generaUoa to generation. , Unfortunately, no one knows what happens to people who are either expoMf (Directly to PCB or who eat Bah and other foodstuffs containing PCB. And, unleu one submits to eiiewMvo and cotnpioa blood tests, there's no way to' de termine how much PCB each of us has in our bodies. Monsanto Co. "wanted to stop production of PCB in 1975, but the EPA asked us not to because there was noth ing to use in its place," Craddock said. "The EPA thought that tak ing PCB off the market without a suitable replacement chemical would have a catastrophic effect on the nation's utility industry and would cause widespread power outages," he said. What's been the result of all the hoopla over polychlorinated biphenyls? According to nearly all govern ment and Industry officials contoctad by Gannett News Service, it's hem leu than satisfactory. Since 1977 the nation's utility companies have boon starching for an adequate substitute for PC*... . .. Over the years, chemists have' come up with two such replace-; ments: silicones and a chemical' called dioctylphthalate, or OOP, which is being used as a PCB sub stitute in electrical capacitors. Some of that replacement is go ing on now, even though the EPA ruled that electrical equipment does not have to contain non-PCB fluids until that equipment be comes faulty or malfunctions. Even though PCB is on its way ` out, the toxin trauma that the nation'a electrical industry has lone through is far from over. In fact, many utility officials fear that it may only have begun. Their fears', are based on test results recently leleased by the National Cancer Institute. The results show that. one ef the non-PCB replacement compounds, OOP, has been found to cum cancer in feynale rata, j HONS 011767