Document V3XeggeVz91oBV1NOGDpnY7dp

SEP34 79 IN WASHINGTON Martha Angie and Robert Walters Persistent, prevalent PCBs By MARTHA ANCLE ntf ROBERT WALTERS WASHINGTON (NEAj - WUh apologies to composer Woody Gutitrie. here's a new line for one of the coun> try's best-known folk songs: "Prom the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, tliis land Is soaked with PCB." PCBs are polychlorinated biphenyls, a family of toxic, highly persistent industrial chemicals that have caused liver damage and Mrthdefects In laboratory animals. The redwood forests span the southern coast of Oregon, where a commercial bakery recently discovered that it had purchased -- and now must destroy -- 50,000 PCBcontaminated eggs. The Gulf Stream waters wash the west coast of Florida, whore a chemist recently found a marked decline in the potential fertility of young men that appeared to be related in part to PCB (races found in the subjects' sperm. This month's reports of PCB con tamination aren't limited to thooo two states. In Franklin, Idaho, a poultry company is in the procoss of dootroylng more than 300,000 contaminated chickens and more than 1 million poisoned eggs. In Clinton, Iowa, a packing company Itdestroying the moatfrom W.MO more chickens, all purchased from the Idaho firm. In Richmond, Utah. PCB traces have been found in 75,000 frown cokes that also must be destroyed. In Billings, Mont., federal health officials have converged on a hog processing firm whose meat ami by-product is suspected of being Uw source of the most recent outbreak of widespread PCB contendnation; The government investigation already encompasses most of the country's northwest quadrant because the Montana conguny sells 100,000 to 300,000 pounds of animal feed weekly throughout Washington, Oragon, Montana, Idaho, Mlmaaota, North Dakota and South Dakota. The Florida experience, described at the mid^eptember annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, lad researchers to conclude that 23 percent of a group of mole college students involved in the study suffered from functional sterility. OUmt scientists reported at the Amenrnn Chemical Society convention that tons of PCBs fall from the air each year Into the Great Ukes. Food products confiscated, destroy ed or banned by federal officials because of PCB contaminationn discovered in' the early 1970s include the following: more than 400,000 egg? in Virginia and North Carolina, 350,000 pounds of turkey roll in South Carolina, 51.000 turkeys in Minnesota and 350,000 chickens In Maine, New York and North Carolina. There's more. New York's Hudson River, Alabama's streams and i^ke Michigan were found to Itave such high levels of PCBs that fishing In those waters was banned. Milk con tamination has been reported In West Virginia and Ohio. Meanwhile, the company that was the oh US. producer and marketer of PC8i for almoal half a century la buauy propufmndislne the public about tho real and imagined glorlea of Indurtrtal cbetnlculo. . Tho Monaanto Co. of St. Louie ItnaUv halted tta production of PCB, loold under the Aroclor trade name! In thr autumn of im -- but not until H had produced enough of the toxic liquid to float an entire navy. Monaanto baa claimed In recent year* that it alwaya waa concerned about the danger, poeed by PCB, and "baa made every effort" la kaop the public Informed about the hasards. But whan the threat of PCBa waa Bnt tttadoeed In the early Wile, Monaanto denigrated thooo revelaUont at mare "political chargaa and aenaatlonal headline. . jeare lactic, and nannational reporting." The company now haa mounted an ambition and eapamlva advertising campaign designed to demonatrate that chemicals are valuable, if not in dispensable, to modern life. I 0 1 1 9 0 0 SNOW