Document ZpELMzNGRNaYkY1pVwR0e3xL

August 11. 1983 Mr. David S. McCrea McCrea Z< McCrea 119 South Walnut Street P. 0. Bo:: 1310 Bloomington, Indiana 47402 Dear Mr. McCrea: This letter is written in response to the items a. -through e. on page 2 of your letter of August 3, 1988. Several of the items merited rather extensive responses which were prepared in the -form of separate documents which s~ee referenced at the appropriate places in this letter and attached to it. I have attempted to respond to your listed items in order below. a. Reasons for testing: The attached document "History of the Westinghouse PCB Survey" describes how the PCB testing came about and who was involved. The short answer is that some of us in Westinghouse felt that eventually those companies who were releasing to the environment chemicals which had serious adverse effects would eventually be made responsible for their actions. The chief executive officer (CEO) of Westinghouse wanted the company to be a "good citizen" and take this 'responsi bi 1ity voluntarily (see the document cited above, page 3, line 20 to page 4, line 15; also see the attached document "Date of Meeting with Westinghouse CEO". Some of the rest of us thought it made good business sense: filing the problem when only the company knew about it, before a hue and cry was raised, was bound to be much cheaper than being forced to take remedial measures later under public scrutiny and court order-- essenti al 1y> fore-warned was fore armed. b. Methods for testing: A moderately -detailed description of the methods for measuring PCB'S in the collected samples is put forth in the attached document "Method Used For Measuring PCB's,In The Samples From The Westinghouse PCB Survey". c Decision-making process not to make the test data public: I have discussed this point at some length in the attached document "Who Knew About The PCB Survev Data And Bv What Deci sion-Making Process Was It Decided Not To Make It Pubiic?". A shortened answer is that I do net think such a declsi on--making proces? tool ,pif:e. The survey started out as secret to give those concerned time to react apprcpritely before the public became inflamed, I do not thin): a -corporate-wide, high-level assessment of the results ever tool place. d. Description of your conference meeting with Westinghouse attorneys in New York, and e. Description of telephone conferences with attorneys and what they communicated to you with regard to your serving as a consultant for Mr. and Mrs. Conard: Both of these items <d. and e.) are dealt with in the attached document "fly Contacts With the Law Firm Representing Westinghouse", I hope that you find these materials both responsive to your requests and useful. Also attached to this letter you will find a ball for my services to date. Sincerely your T. 0. Munson, PhD 904494 HISTORY OF THE WESTINGHOUSE PCB SURVEY by T. O* Munson, PhD (8/6/1988) I joined the Westinghouse Electric Corporation's Oce^n Research Laboratory (WORD then located in San Diego, CA in May of 1969, They didn't really have a project ior me to work on but felt that a PhD Biochemist would add some needed breadth to the staff. I was given the task of coming up with a project which would augment ongoing WORL programs and possibly lead to some outside contract research money. At that time WORL was conducting an ecological study of a portion of the nearby nearshore marine environment. The project I came up with was to measure the residues of the pesticide DDT in the tissues of the animals in the study area. A few scattered bits of data suggested that the levels of DDT in the southern California marine environment were higher than one might expect simply from the input of urban waste. In the last half of 1969 and the first half of 1970, with funds supplied by the Westinghouse Research and Development Laboratory in Pittsburgh PA (of which WORL was a part), I set up the necessary equipment to analyse for "hard"Cor persistent) chlorinated pesticides and learned how to do the analysis. In the process of doing the necessary literature reading, I learned about polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's) at this time. Scientists around the world had been measuring the accumulation of "hard" chlorinated pesti c ides (especisi1v DDT and its metabolites) in wild animal tissues sines the 904495 late 1950* s. In certain areas of the world, unknown chlorinated substances occurred in the animal tissues at high enough levels to inter-fere with the chlorinated pesticide analyses. In the middle 1960"s these substances were identified as PCB *s by scientists in Sweden. I got a set of PCB standards from Monsanto and began measuring PCB levels in the marine organisms, as well as the DDT residues. Sometime during the summer of 1970, I read an article on PCBVs which listed their many and varied uses, and I 1earned to my surprise that by far the largest use was in the electrical industry as an electrical insulating fluid in transformers and capacitors. After making some inquiries, I learned that the electrical insulating fluid used by Westinghouse was called Inerteen, specially formulated by Monsanto and having as its main component Aroclor 1242, the. PCB mixture containing 42 weight percent chlorine. At about this time a very significant event took place at WORL-- the manager. Dr. Roy C. Gaul left to take a position in the Office of Naval Research in Washington, D.C., and he was replaced by a career Westinghouse executive. Dr. J. C. R. Kelly, Jr. By virtue of his.more than 20 years of service with Westinghouse and his elevated position (he was a Director, one step down from a VicePresident), Dr. Kelly knew everything and everybody in the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It was evident later w hy such a high-level person had been chosen as our new leader: the decision had been made to terminate WORL in San Diego, and it was up to him to decide whether to move a remnant to the East Coast to continue the operation or to terminate :t completely. The decision to move WORL (and as man.- ot the 904496 senior staff members as wished to go) to the Westinghouse site at the Bav Bridge near Annapolis ND, was announced November 1. 1970. The move was to be accomplished by the end of January, 1971. In September or October of 1970, I expressed my concern to Dr. Kelly that the Westinghouse Electric Corporation might have a potentially very serious environmental problem., related to the use of PCB's. Sweden had already begun regulating the use of PCB's, and the U. S. scientific community was beginning to pressure the U. S. government to do so also. I had been unable to determine whether anyone within Westinghouse knew that this was taking place or N whether there were any environmental concerns associated with the use of PCB's. Dr. Kelly was able to ascertain very quickly that my concerns were not unfounded-- Westinghouse did indeed have an "exposed flank*' in this area. He wrote a memo summarizing our concerns and transmitted it to Dr. William E. Shoupp, the Westinghouse Vice-President who was the head of the Westinghouse R!<D Laboratory. The subsequent events were rather breath-taking for me. Within a few months of raising my "red .flag M'.down near the bottom of the corporate ladder, the Chairman of the Board of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation (Donald Burnham) was standing in front of my equipment while I briefed him on the potential environmental problems concerning the use of PCB" s-- b loconcentrati on, b iomagni ficat lor,. and per si stence in aquatic ecosystems. I do not remember very much specifically that Hr. Burnham said except that he assured me that if any Westinghouse plant were doing anything that might be deleterious to the environment, he wanted to knew 904497 about it and wanted it stopped. He said then and had said elsewhere that the Westinghouse Electric Corporation would toe a "good citizen" with respect to the environment. I did not -feel that this was Just rhetoric-^he struck me as a very sincere individual. I think at that time he was serving on some Presidential Advisory Panel for the Environment or something like that. All o-f this made an impression on me at the time because I was young and idealistic, and was a bit shaken to think that I might be working -for one of the "black hat" corporations who where raping the environment in. pursuit o-f the almighty buck. In the absence o-f documentation, I am unable to -fi:: the time of this meeting closer than the period November, 1970 to September, 1971 (see associated document, "Date o-f Meeting With Westinghouse CEO"). That portion of the senior sta-f-f of WORL who chose to move East moved themselves and their -families during the month o-f January, 1971, and -for the -fol 1owing months conducted business out o-f rented rooms in a motel near the Bay Bridge site until the new o-f-fice/1 aboratory spaces were completed in late March or April (1971). During this period o-f disruption, I made use o-f the time by completing the -first trips to the Westinghouse sites at South Boston VA, Sharon PA, and Bloomington IN. Dr. Shoupp provided support -for the project out p-f his discretionary -funds until the new project -funding cycle in September. At each o-f these meetings I met with the plant manager and members o-f his sta-f-f to explain the program and gather in-formation -for planning the subsequent sampling phase o-f the survev. The purpose o-f this survey as stated to them 904498 was to determine whether these manufacturing sites which incorporated F'CB'S into products were lealing significant levels of RGB's into the environment in the process. At each such meeting I emphasized the fact that we had the opportunity tc 3ocate problem areas and tale remedial action before such problems became public knowledge and a panic situation might occur. At no location was the management in favor of conducting such a survey. The feeling seemed to be that there would not be a problem unless and until I uncovered one. The field sampling portion of the survey was conducted during the Summer and Fall of 19*71 to the best of mv recollection. We drove to each site with the appropriate sampling gear, collected samples and carried them tack to the laboratory for analysis. The samples were analyzed either directly by me. or by a chemist under my supervision. I di,d all of the data work-up and report preparation. If I am remembering correctly, the reports were distributed by mail and then I met with the management at each site to discuss their report in person. The original concept of the survey had been tc extend it to several other sites and the many repair facilities, but after this original effort, it sort of faded away. The funding for internally funded research programs at the Westinghouse R?/D Laboratory was done on a competitive basis using priorities set up by the operating divisions within the company. If the operating divisions did not want a project, only strong support from the top level of the corporation would get it funded. This project apparently did not have such support after the first curve.. If I am 904499 remembering correctly, the project was -funded for the September 1971-September 1972 period at the level of about man-years of effort, and then hardly funded at all after that. 904500 Date G f Meeting with Westinghouse CEO By T. 0. Munson. PhD (8/9788) Upon initial consideration o-f this matter, I fir-ed the date G-f this meeting to the time period (November-December o-f 1970) by the -foil owing thought process, inspiteo-f the absence o-f documentation. I sped-f ical 1y remember the speed at which the events un-fol bed -from my -first mentioning the problem to Dr. Kelly to the meeting with the CED c-f Westinghouse-- a matter o-f a -few weeks or months. Giving a. one-on-one presentation to the CEO o-f one o-f the country's major corporations makes a lasting impression when one is 29 years old as I was at that time. The February 24, 1971 mme -from R. D. McClain o-f Bloomington to D. M. Sauter, Manager o-f the Distribution Apparatus Division (which you supplied me), makes it clear that the Westinghouse PCB survey was underway by that date. My sped-fie memory o-f the presentation to Mr. Burnham was that it was in my lab. and my lab was packed in boxes -from January, 1971 until a-fter the spring thaw in Annapolis when the -foundations could be poured -for the new laboratory space--- `sometime in March or April o-f 1971. I was remembering that the project de-finitely did not begin until a-fter the meeting witn Mr. Burnham. Also along these same lines was the -fact, that when J -first visited Sharon PA (before February 24, 1971 according to the above mentioned memo), I was sent packing by the plant manager when I explained what I wanted to do. Hi opinion was that they would not have a prob 1em f I did not 904501 sample the river. He knew that PCB-s had been spilled into the river, but felt that no harm could have been done because Sharon Steel a short way further down river had totally wiped out the river. After I returned to Annapolis. Dr. Kelly reported to Dr. Shoupp, and Dr. Shoupp talked to the Vice-President of that particular manufacturing division. Subsequently, I was invited to return to Sharon by the plant manager (probably John Rissinger), and he took me to the country club for lunch where we planned the scope of the survey at Sharon. I'm do not think Dr. Shoupp could have turned that situation around without the involvement of higher management-- Westinghouse was run very strictly by chai n-ef-command But on the other hand, upon reflection, a fairly clear image has formed in my mind of my standing in front of the equipment in my laboratory showing a chromatographic trace of a PCB formulation to fir. Burnham. The problem is that I did not acquire that particular equipment until we got into the new lab space in Annapolis. If that picture .is correct, the meeting could not have taken place in late 1970 in San Diego. It also seems unlikely to me that the meeting was in San Diego for another reason. Westinghouse had very little manufacturing activity of any magnitude going on West of the Mississippi in 1970. Mr Burnham would have been unlikely to have flown 6 hours Just to get a 10 minute briefing from me. It is much more likely that he was scheduled to visit the Oceanic Divisi on faci1ity at the Bay Bridge site near Annapolis (Just across the parking lot from WQRL), and they scheduled a brief stop for him to get a first-hand look at 904502 where the PCB survey was going on. So I would have to say that I'm not sure when the meeting tool: place, but I am dead certain that it did take place. The most likely time was in the period November, 1970-September, 1971. 904503 1 Method Used For Measuring PCB*s In The Samples From The Westinghouse PCB Survey by T. 0. Munson, PhD (8/10/88) 5 The analysis of these samples was performed before methods for PCB analysis were promulgated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but the method finally put forth by the USEPA reflects pretty closely the methods which had been used earlier, and which were used in this study, 10 4 The procedure consists of a series of steps, each of which will be discussed in some detail below. EXTRACTION: The first step in the procedure was to extract the PCBfs from the sample matrix. Exactly how that was done 5 depended upon what type of sample was being dealt with. Soil and sediment samples were first dried at room temperature, ground to a powder with a mortar and pestle, sieved to remove particles larger than 1 millimeter, and a weighed portion extracted about 8 hours in a Soxhlet extractor with 20 an organic solvent mixture (2:1 hexane-acetone). Fish (and other tissue) samples were kept frozen -until the beginning of the extraction step. They were then sawed into chunks with a frozen-food knife and reduced to a paste in a blender. A weighed portion of the paste was ground to a dry 25 powder with 4 to 6 times its weight sodium sulfate (anhydrous). This dry powder was then extracted exactly like the dried soil or sediment samples. CLEANUP: The extracts containing the PCB's also contained 904504 many other extracted materials which needed to be removed prior to the gas chromatography step later on. Removal a-f the unwanted material was done at this cleanup step. Because PCB's are very stable chemicals, a single, very rigorous step can toe used which will remove all tout the most stable chemicals. Simply stated, the extracts were treated with a mixture o-f -fuming sul-furic acid and concentrated sulfuric acid to oxidise and remove the unwanted materials. The treated extracts were then reduced to small volumes (a few milliliters) using a Kudurna-Dani sh evaporative concentrator. IDENTIFICATION: The PCB's were identified using a gas chromatograph (GC) equipped with an electron-capture detector. ' The electron-capture detector was used because it gives very strong responses to halogen-carbon bonds such as the chi orine-carbon bonds in polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's). A GC is an instrument which separates mixtures o-f organic chemicals based upon their volatilities. A particular PCB -formulation, such as Aroclor 1242, will give a particular pattern o-f peaks on the strip chart recorder output -from the GC. The location o-f each peak on the chart and the relative heights o-f the peaks are the identifying -features which are used to determine whether a sample contained PCB?s. I-f the sample contained PCB's the chart would exactly match that o-f a PCB standard or mixture o-f standards run under exactly the same GC conditions. QUANTIFICATION: Determining which PCB was present, and how much, was done by comparing the sample charts with the PCE 904505 standard charts. Which PCB or combination of PCB's was present was determined by the positions and relative peal: heights of the peaks on the charts. How much PCB was present was determined by comparing the peak heights on the sample chart to the peak heights on the PCB standard charts. Using the known concentrations o-f the standards, the concentration of the PCB's in the sample extracts could be calculated and then the concentrations in the original samples. CONFIRMATION: The identification of the PCB's was confirmed by running the extracts and standards on a GC with a different separation column which would give a different pattern to the peaks and these charts used to verify the initial identifications. QUALITY CONTROL: To make sure that the procedure was working-- finding no PCB's in samples which did not contain PCB's, and finding the right amounts of PCB's in samples which did contain PCB's, quality control samples w er e .run. Some samples were run twice to see that the same result was obtained each time. A blank sample containing no PCB's was run with each group of samples to make sure that the analytical procedure was not adding PCB's to the samples (for tissue samples a sample of beef liver was run, and for sediment samples a sample of clean sand). Known amounts of PCB's were added to some samples to see that it was not lost during the analytical process. 904506 1 Who Knew About The PCS Survey Data And By What DecisionMaking Process WAs It Decided Not To hake It Public? By T. 0. Munson, PhD <8/11/88) At the outset there was no question that the information which would be generated by this survey would be highly sensitive and pot ent ial 1y damaging if released prematurely before remedial actions could be taken. Some of these sites had used PCB's long before any environmental concerns were attached to it-- it had been treated like motor oil. One could expect trouble for pouring it into streams in large quantity but it was fine for settling the dust on roads. I was instructed by Dr. Kelly (manager of the Westinghouse Ocean Research Laboratory) that-all of the reports would be stamped "Company Proprietary, Class 1" -inred ink, and they were. This designation meant that the reports were to be distributed inside the company only on a need-to-know basis, and not at all outside of the company. I was not to show the results from one site to the personnel from another site. As you can see from the distribution list on the front of the Bloomington report, the report was fairly widely distributed within the ccmpanv: four copies to Bloomington (Brittain, McClain, Shoaff and 5aw/e.r.), one to the RS-.D Lab (Shoupp), one to my boss (Kelly), one to the Environmental Systems Department (Terrill), and two to headquarters (Kerns and Boquist). Including mv copy, there were then only ten original copies made, each with its big red stamp on the front. The red ini. did net *ero:: we 11 and is not visible on 904507 the copy you sent me. At the time these reports were generated, it seemed right and proper that this information be held closely within the company so that appropriate actions could be taken in the same way that the developmental data on a new product would not be discussed or published outside of the company. Why the data were not released later, if not to the public, at least to the Environmental Protection Agency, I do not know. Clearly, Mr. Wills, the attorney for Westinghouse who responded to the EPA interrogatory concerning the Westinghouse Electric Corporation's use of PCB's did not even allude to the existence of the PC'S survey V data. Since responding untruthfully to such an interrogatory from EPA was a rather serious offence, I would like to assume that Mr. Wills either did not know about the PCB survey or had forgotten about it in the ensuing years. I believe I have met Mr. Wills, but I cannot remember the context. As a matter of fact, some of the data were made public, and various people in EPA knew of the existence of the PCB survey conducted by me. Consider: -- In 1972 sometimed can't find the reference right now), EPA proposed some effluent standards for PCB's and held a hearing (in Washington, D.C., I think) at which time various interested parties testified. At that hearing, on behalf of the company, I testified that Westinghouse had done a PCB survey around some of their plants and mentioned some of the data. -- About 1973, the Westinghouse plant in South Boston VA was 904508 contacted by State of VA officials because high levels of RGB's had been found in fish in the John Kerr Reservoir which received water from the Dan River near the plant. They showed the officials my report which showed the levels of PCB's in the Dan River sediments were Just as high upstream from their plant as they were downstream, indicating a source upstream from the Westinghouse plant. The officials went on their way and found the source upstream (a furniture manufacturer. I think). On August 18, 1976, I provided Mr. Ridgway M. Hall, Jr., then Special Assistant to the General Counsel of the \ USEPA (by whom I was then employed), a sworn affidavit concerning the detection limit for PCB's in water. As part of the description of my experience, the following information was included in that documents "From that time until I left Westinghouse in 1976, my principal research interest was chlorinated hydrocarbons in the environment-- parti cular1y polychlori nated biphenyls (PCBs). This work involved primarily four general areas: ... 4). a study to determine the leakage to the environment of PCB's from Westinghouse Electric Co. transformer and capacitor manufacturing facilities. (All of the results of this program are of a proprietary nature. Prior to the preparation of this affidavit I mentioned the proprietary nature of this study to the ERA attorney, Mr. Ridgway Hall, and we agreed that I should not disclose the substance of it to anyone at EPA or anyone else, or discuss it in this testimony without the express permission of Westinghouse)." 904509 4 5 10 *5 20 25 30 At my level in the corporation, I was not a part of any decision-making process concerning anything other than my small group of people. The management process was done strictly by chain-of-command, very much top-down management The ability to keep information to yourself and not discuss higher-level information with lower-- level people with whom you worked was one of the personal attributes considered for being promoted up the management ladder. It seems likely to me, based upon my experience with management in private industry and with the government, that a decision was never made not to make this information public. I think the specific responses to the reports at the sites where the samples were taken were left to the manager of the particular plant to decide. In my opinion, some of the responses were appropriate and some were not. I spent some late-night hours agonising over whether I should make some of the information public but decided not to. Even if I were not sent to Jail for violating the Industrial Secrets Act (if such a thing existed), at the very least, I would have lost my Job. Obviously, those inside EPA who knew about the existence of the PCB survey data did not convey the information to the appropriate persons, or the EPA interrogatory would have specifically requested it. Apparently, the reports were not shown to the appropriate people inside Westinghouse or hr. Wills would have given them to EPA, and hr. Westlake, the new plant manager at Bloomington would have known about them. 904510 What started as a noble mission with the sanction of the Westinghouse CEO did not have the beneficial effects that it could have had for all concerned. It's an imperfect wor1d ! 904511