Document XOMN2q1oJbE9OQKnpamEbYmxd

7(50 Nr* Scientisi 21 Juiw 1971 PCBs at Maendy: scare or disaster? Nwi4 Press reports of pollution seeping into farmland from a South Wales tip suggest an alarming degree of contamination. How reliable are the data, and how effectively has the Welsh Office reacted to the problem? Jon Tinker i* 8 i i Maendy Quarry lies in the hills above the Tati Vale, 10 miles north west of Cardifl in an area dominated by coal mines, sheep and Plaid Cymru. One hot evening last week 1 drove into the yard of Maendy Farm and asked Dill Maidmcnt, who rents the land from the Glamorgan County Council, if 1 could look at the quarry. He was in the middle of milking, but he yelled for his 10* year old son, Philip. "This gentleman has come from London to see our Pollution. . . . Take liitn up the quarry, and show him." Wc walked up the road and stepped over a strand of barbed wire, past a tired notice- board surrounded by decomposing mattresses, rusty p.iinlcans, skeletal umbrellas, and non- biodegraded washing-up bowls, "tantrisant HDC-Tipping of Hefuae Prohibited," the sign said ineifertiveiy. Further up the road was another, more sinister notice, handlctlered onto the back of a cardboard box. "Danger. Contaminated..Area. Keep Out. Issued by. Plaid Cymru." tontaminaied Areas often look fairly imtnuioiis to the naked eye. This one does not. The sandstone quarry at Maendy belongs to the UP Pension Trust, which leases it to the waste disposal firm of Purie Bros, now part of the Hcdtand Croup headed by l.ord llccchiug. In I960, Purie started to dump a wide variety of toxic wastes at Maendy: 3 -J sludges, liquids, powders, drums, phials, and packets. They went on tipping until the quarry was full to the brim, and then they <S brought in some Inrryloads of soil. But they failed to rover all Macdy's contents. As I scrambled over its surface, 1 checked the names on some of the uncovered drums. Monsanto, 1C1. Dow, RP, said four. But most of the containers arc unlabcllcd, their con tents spilling out: green powders, twisted copper wire, blue syrups, grey pastes, broken pipettes, black liquids, tortured hanks of just- solidified plastics. The Sunday Times, which hns been .splashing the Maemly story for the last three weeks, talks of stinking, bubbling pools ol chemicals. ''Some of the lads used to swim in there before they tipped the soil on," said Philip cheerfully. During the 19CC-70 period, Purie was col lecting toxic wastes from half a dozen South Wales' chemical plants, including Monsanto al Newport and lip at Barry. In the absence of any but the most rudimentary records, no one is sure just what went into Maendy and the four or live other tips that Purie was using at the time, llul it seems likely that down this capacious sandstone hole went such assorted items as acrylic acid, cumene hydroxide, phenolic resins, butlyatcd hydroxy- toluene, styrene, xylol, methylene chloride, lime slurry, lead and other petroleum addi tives, phosphorous prnlasulphidc, alkyl dithiopliosphatcs, high-weight chlorinated hydrocarbons, arsenic, cyanides, aryl sili cates, and polychlorinated biphenyls Among other things. The key names on this list are poly chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from Monsanto, and organic solvents like xylol, butanol, und methylene chloride from HP Like their dose relative, DDT, PCBs seem to be persistent and to accumulate in living tissue The one property undoubtedly to their credit is an extremely low solubility in water, which severely limits their mobility. To abandon such persistent compounds at all was the first Maendy error. However, the hazards of PCBs were not appreciated much before 1971; and since then. Monsanto has very properly used high temperature inciner ation to destroy all PCB wastes. The second Maendy error was to dump these insoluble compounds alongside a variety of organic solvents. The third was to choose as a tip a quarry-on.4he summit of a -hill with a spring undernofeth it The result at Maendy was predictable, although at the time nobody knew enough of the facts to predirl it. Monsanto is not sure how much PCB was dumped in the Maendy quarry, but it does know that between 1966 and 1970 it gave Purie about 30 000 tons of toxic materials. Of that; no more than COO tons came from their PCB plant at Newport, and most of this went to Maendy. My own estimate would be that something of the order of 50 tons of PCB lies buried al Maendy Quarry, As the steel drums rust through, the PCH and the organic solvents are being leached out by rain and spring water. From the edges of the tip rivulets of glistening brown liquids trickle over the fields, smelling like a randy tomcat having a bath in rancid cocoanut oil. Maendy is not the only site at which Purie tipped Monsanto and 11P wastes; there is another four miles south at Hrofiskin, and a third at Fenrhos jus! west of Caerphilly. There may be several more. But al these three, local farmers have retained a Londonbased agricultural waste consultant called Douglas Gowan. Gowan was trained as an accountant,, and at one time worked on pollu.tiun problems for the National Fanners' Union. According to his figures, the water in the Maendy streams has a COD (chemical oxygen demand--*-a measure of orgunndicmiral pollution) varying from 1750 to 4860 mg/I, and contains al least 28 named pollutants, including up to 40 pails per million (ppm) of phenol, 1 ppm of copper 1-3 ppm of inetbyi mercury, 2 ppm of lead and 20 ppm of PCH. High PCB levels have also been found in soil and grass, and the sterility, abortion and death of a number or rattle, at Hrofiskin as well as Maendy, have been attributed to the HONS 070205 polluted water and herbage in general, and to PCHs in particular. This theory is the more plausible at Maendy in that last week 1 saw abundant cow, sheep and horse footprints on Die lip surface, and watched a cow and her ralf ankle deep in a mud whose PC.U content is said to be around 10 ppm. finally, a fort night ago Gowan announced the discovery of up to 50 ppm of tri-orlho-cresol phosphate (TOO'), a highly poisonous organophosphatc substance. Unfortunately, not everyone accepts Douglas Gowan's figures, which are based on analyses by ICI nt Rrixham. Monsanto says that the highest PCI! level it has found in Maendy water is 0-09 ppm. The many public authori ties involved--the Welsh Office, the Glamor gan lliver Authority, the Glamorgan Public Health Inspector, the Water Pollution Re search Laboratory of the Department of the environment, the Government Chemist, and various arms of the Ministry of Agriculture --have failed to find any PCD levels above 0-15 ppm. Douglas Gowan says that everyone else has a vested interest in finding low levels, and claims that PCD concentrations fluctuate markedly at Maendy and Brofiskin, increasing in wet weather when high water (lows wash more pollutants Into the open. (His critirs point out that high flows would be more expected to cause dilution.) Cowan's figures have been widely reprinted in the press--notably by the Sunday Times--and the suspicion that Gowan is right and every one else is wrong has been strengthened by the behaviour of the Wrlsh Office. Welsh Office complacency Many people--the local MP, Rrynmor John, included--feel that over the past two years the Welsh Office have been somewhat slow and complacent in reacting to the hazards at Maendy, Brofiskin and elsewhere. For a start, the Welsh Office sees its responsibili ties at Maendy in terms which are somewhat narrow. As a senior spokesman pul it to me in Cardifi Inst week: "Wc arc proceeding with the objective of ensuring that there is no hazard to health/' Possible entnronmcnlaJ contamination has hardly been considered, and no attempt has been made to measure PCI! levels in wildlife around the contami nated tips. A Welsh Office spokesman confirmed last week that it was consulting with the local authorities, DP and l'urlc about fencing the tip. to which children and livestock still have free access. I asked a senior official whether or not the Welsh Office had made any examination of the tip surface, where half-exposed drums and containers still contain accessible chemi cals in an undiluted form. "No," he replied, `'because it's not our job to do so." And in reassuring the public--an operation which, so lar. has not been notably cost-effective-- one official explained that the Maendy stream "would undoubtedly reach WHO standards for purity for certain elements". The aspect of Welsh Office policy which is raising most eyebrows among government cc ieutistc is its refusal to split samples with Douglas Gowan and ICI. Interpreting agrei* data on environmental pollution is har enough; when major dispute exists about th facts, progress becomes impossible. Wlnl the figures of the four government labor; lories ami Monsanto all agree that PC levels in Maendy water is at most 0 15 ppn the Gowan figures run up to 20 ppm. How ca differences of two or three orders of magn tude be explained? Again, why does Cowa claim that ICI has found up to 50 ppm t TOCP, a chemical which the govcrnniei agencies have as yet been unable to detect In these circumstances, it is standard sciet tific procedure, to take a scries of joii samples, split them on the spot, and analy> them separately. This the Welsh Office stea> fa.flly refuses to do. H will go so far as alio\ ing Gowan to take parallel samples whr government agencies take theirs, but it wi not split a sample with him, nor will it acre) suggestions from him as to when and whei to sample. Since the essence of Gowan'i case is th. high PCD levels only occur intermittent! this attitude hardly helps to resolve tl dispute. "We have our responsibilities," Welsh Office spokesman told me firmly, "or. they clearly are very weighty responsibi ties, but they do not extend to having tl programme of our researches laid down I someone else. If his reputation is at stak then so is ours." This attitude is biller resented by many scientists in the Depot ment of l'.nvironmcnt, who in this instam arc having to act under Welsh Office ordei Split sampling, which the Welsh Offirefuscs to allow, would be the simplest w. of resolving the conflicts of data. Howev< perhaps the discrepancies derive not from lack of comparable samples, but from diff< ing analytical techniques? For examp! might confusion exist on the definition water? Perhaps ICI was including a hea suspension of silt in its water samples. I p these points to Douglas Gowan last wee and he agreed to provide me with full deta on a small number of samples. There w one set of soil specimens which interest' me particularly, since it had been split in two parts and analysed by both ICI at Brixhii and Dr Nicholas Platonow, a toxicologist Guelph University in Canada Platonov rr firmed to me last week that he, like 1(1. h obtained a figure of 10 to 20 ppm on thr two soils, These soils, Gowan told me, h come from Maendy on 1 and 7, May, in' They had bern sampled by a senior chrm from ICI Brixham. and witnessed by Gnu and two of bis associates. Unfortunately, t 1(1 chemist concerned, although he rente bers the pair of samples clearly, told me I. week that he had not himself taken llir nor had he been in Wales on that day. The only other sample whose provenai Gowan provided was a pair of water sp< mens in which on 7 June, 1973, Con announced ICI had found TOCP at a level to 50 ppm. This pair of samples. Doug Gowan said, had been taken at Marndy 21 May by the same ICI chemist, in t presence of Professor George Clarke. HONS 070206 eminent veterinary toxicologist who has been advising Gowan. When 1 rang Professor Clarke, he was unable to confirm this. "I've only been up to Macndy once and that was last yew," lie said. In an extensive field investigation pro* gramme, records can of course easily become confused Jlut it is a matter of regret that 1 lici t1 should be doubt about two such key samples- -the only two whose provenance was supplied to me. It is also unfortunate that, in the ease of the latter sample, the ICI chemist whom Gowan quotes as having found up to 50 ppm of TOCP should have denied to me thiil this chemical was ever detected. This denial was repeated by Dr Hob Pearson, deputy director of ICTs Brixham lab: "1 would be happier to say this was a phos phorus peak with characteristics that could be TOCP." 1 put this discrepancy to Douglas Gowan. He invited me to settle the matter by phoning Professor Clarke, since he had been down to Brixham to clicrk the TOCP finding. "1 was shown one experiment with a blue colour which mipht have been TOCP, but it was never positively identified," said Clarke. Id's tosts qutrisd The Brixham lab's measurements of PCB levels have been based on chromatography only, and have not been confirmed by mass spectrometry. An independent expert to whom 1 showed a complete ICI analysis sheet rejKHling 10 ppm of PCB in Macndy sludge took a different view. The peaks could be those of a PCB, he commented, but without mass spectrometry or some other positive identification, they could not be distinguished with certainty from any other high boilingpoint uromalic. Again, both l>r Pearson and the chemist concerned admitted to me last week that their laboratory no longer held reference samples for the controversial high PCB levels (hey had reported in water. Pear son, confirming that 1C1 had been aware the Macndy investigation`was likely to end in litigation, called this loss "unfortunate". liouglas Gowan's lapses of memory over details are not confined to scientific data, lie alleges that in 1972 Purlc offered an out-of court settlement to one of his clients. The figure involved appears in Gowan letter to the Welsh Olficf dated 10 May, 1973, as 00 000; it was retailed to me as 40 000; and it is said by the client to have been only 30 000. _Purlc emphatically denies making any such offer. According to Gowan, a Purlc director said at that lime that if this offer was not accepted, the operating subsidiary Redland-1'urle might be allowed to go bankrupt, and no compensation would be forthcoming. Gowan lias also suggested to me that Hcdland-Pmle is currently transferring its assets to the parent Bcdland Group in case the cost of making Macndy and other tips safe becomes loo great to bear. This claim, which also appears in a letter from Gowan to the Welsh Olfice dated 10 May, 1073, was described to me by Richard Hawkins, the nedlandPurle company secretary, as "a patent falsehood. Such a course has never even been contemplated." Quite apart from possible deficiencies in the existing data, the Gowan case contains three extremely odd gaps. First, why has he never taken milk samples from the affected farms and sent them for PCB analysis? A PCB build-up in the tissues of cattle is always associated experimentally with high levels in the milk, although nobody can be sure that the presence of one of the many other pollu tants might not inhibit this excretion. Second, why in Gowan's lengthy, wide-ranging and repetitive correspondence with the Welsh Office, which repeatedly passed on the result of analyses at Brixham, were photocopies of the actual id reports not enclosed? Gowan says this was done to save his clients expense Third, why were MAFF veterinary officers first invited to participate in the postmortem examination of the bull calf which died at one of the tips earlier this year, and then prevented from doing so by the dispersion of the carcass to different laboratories in Britain, Canada and the United States? While the Gowan-lCI data would seem to need some confirmation, some of them at least arc relatively secure. For example the bull calf had (according to Gowan) 25 ppm of PCB in its liver, a level which must be indicative of serious local contamination; luckily, tissue samples of this calf are still extant at Brixham, and thus available for checking. And soil contamination at the 10 ppm level is obviously a matter of concern. The. unfortunate possibility is that the un yielding altiludr of the Welsh Office on the one hand, and Douglas Gowan's somewhat ravalier treatment of scientific data on the other, will prevent consideration of the very real hazards present at Macndy. Some scien tists will undoubtedly go along with Dr Alf Voddcn of Monsanto, who considers that should Douglas Gowan's PCB data be provrd entirely correct (and Voddcn claims that even with the help of organic solvents a concentration of more than 0-09 ppm of PCH in water is "impossible") this still involves no risk to man or beast. Others no doubt will feel that even if environmental PCB levels arc no higher than the Welsh Office believes, this still demonstrates a worrying degree of pollution. The majority are perhaps likely to suspend judgement until undisputed figures are avail able. This can only be achievrd by a speedy reversal of policy in Cardiff. As an interim measure, and until the present somewhat limited official analyses of milk have been extended to cover all cattle grazing near the tip, it would be prudent to accept the demands of the local Plaid Cymru branrh that the tip be properly fenced and sales of milk and eggs from the affected farms be suspended. While the distaste of the Welsh Office for any close cooperation with Gowan is easy to understand, it is less easy to justify, and non-scicntific public opinion is unlikely tn be reassured unless split-sampling takes place. An honest reassessment should allow the counter-accusations of scare and cover-up to he replaced by an urgent attempt at remedy. And that is what the farmers would surely like to see. MONS 070207