Document eEdozX9BJ0kRKbY5Eqzn14gp

THE SPREADING MENACE OF PCB Maw raporta maka ft olaar that tha praaanca of thia man-mada chamfcaf In food and watar la a nationwida parit damand/ng quick action, not anappy-pattar routinaa by aoma haaitant buraaucrata by ftOlMT H. NfU ^"here wi ironic laughter in tha cofI faa thop of Chicago's Pick-Con gress Hotel last Friday when Nathaniel p. Reed, Assistant Secretary of the In terior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, glanced at the menu and said* "Ah, fresh salmon sandwich!** Only an hour before, at the concluding session of the Nation al Conference on Polychlorinated Biphe nyls (PCBs), Reed had delivered a blis tering speech on PCB contamination of fish, including Great Lakes salmon. "The problem is a national problem," Reed had emphasised to some 400 sci entists, bureaucrats and conservationists. "I am deeply shocked by the pervasive ness of PCBs; they are literally every where. I am very troubled by the exceed ingly high levels found in fish in all our drainage systems, and I do not mean Just tha Hudson and the entire Great Lakes system, but the Merrimec and Connect icut rivers ofthe AtlanticCoast, the Mis sissippi and Ohio rivers of the Midwest, the Columbia River system in tha north west, theSacramento in theWest, the Rio Grande and other Gulf Coest streams ... even the Yukon in Alaska.** Reed called for tha elimination of all ourcaaofPCBs in the U.S. environment within three yean. With a candor unusu al for a federal official, ha criticized tha sponsor of the conference, the Ud. En vironmental Protection Agency, which has dona little protecting, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has established a "tolerance** level offive parts per million of PCBs in fish for hu man consumption. "Quite frankly,'* Reed ended his speech, "I am thoroughly disgusted by the gnashing of teeth, wailing and rub bing of hands. To the agencies which have the enforcement responsibilities, a word on behalf of the bewildered but concerned American people--gtt on with ur PCBs era chlorinated hydrocarbon compounds used by industries through out the world because of their resistance to heat. More durable than DDT, PCBs are a proved menace to animal organ isms, ranging from invertebrates to man (SI, Sept. 1). In 1961 an estimated 1,200 Japanese came down with Yutho disease after using rice oil heavily contaminated with PCBs. The clinical effects included stillbirths, undersized infants, bone and joint deformities and various neurolog ical disorders including lorn oflibido. In this country, in a recent experiment on laboratory rats, PCBs caused liw cancer. Last weak in Chicago tha tciao- tlst in charge of that experiment. Dr. Renew D. Kimbrough of the UJL Pub lic Health Service, delivered a paper in which she warned, "Because of these findings in experimental animals, infec tion of PCBs in must be cur tailed.** The EPA estimates that about half the American public now carries around with it from one to three parte par million of PCBs in its fatty tissues. Another speaker at the Chicago mast ing was Dr. James R. Attn of the Uni versity of Wisconsin Medical School, who fed eight female rhesus monkeys a diet that included 2J ppm of Arodor 124S (one of the nine trademarked PCB compounds made by the sole domes tic manufacturer, Monsanto Industrial Chemicals Company) for six months. They were then bred to normally fad mala rhesus monkeys. Two females re sorbed their fetuses, one suffered a still birth. and the five infants born were all undersized. Two ofthe infants died while nursing. The three survivors are now eight months old, and although they have been on a PCB-free diet for four months, preliminary observations by Dr, Diane H. Norback, a colleague of Dr. Allen, indicate that the youngsters are hyper- ative. The PCB problem, which has been growing for years, began to receive na tionwide attention last summer when Ogden R. Reid, commissioner of the New York State Department ofEnviron mental Conservation, warned (he public against eatingstriped bass from the Hud son River or salmon from Lake Ontar io. Reid issued his warning after receiv ing a report from EPA scientists who noted that two General Electric phase at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward wen discharging at least 30 pounds of fCta perday into tbcriver. In September, Raid brought action egeinet GJL to force the company to reduce its discharge to two pounds a day by Dee. 31 and to awo by Sept. 30 of next year. Tha action ia now before a state hearing officer, and QM. itcontesting it til thaway. It isworthnob ing, however, that m response to a state interrogatory before the hearing begM, O.E. admitted, "During tha peat 13 years, 49 employees have reported to the dispensaries complaining of sllargli dm mathia, diagnosed as having beeu cuuwd by contact with PCBs.** No one really knew that PCBa wan present in the world wwironmeat uotfl 1966 when Sweden's Dr. Soren Jnsea isolated and identified tha compound that had been baffling leaaarthete work ing on DDT resMure. PCBa aura tha commonly used in a wide variety of ev eryday products, soch at pemts, rnleats and caulking compounds. In 1971 Mow aanto announced it would restrict salat of PCBs to use in so-called "dosed cy cle" systems, such aa capacitors ad. transformer*. U.S. industry tuns out. more than 100 million capacitors a year, including those for home air rnniHtlon era. When junked, such an ham is com monly taken to a dump, wherethecfaanre exists that PCBs can leach through the oil to bodies of water. In wsitarn New York state several companies have been draining PCBs from old transformer*, mixing them with crankcase oil and sell ing the gunk to municipalities to put on roads as a dust suppressor. There is alsoa report the PCBs have been spread on air port runways in Maryland to prevent skidding in wet weather. Beyond such practices, there is the danger that transformers can rupture or leak. According to EPA recordsavailable in Chicago, a transformer leak occurred on April 16,1974 on a railroad train run ning between Philadelphia and Paoll, Pa. From 10 to 100 pounds of PCBs ware spilled. The same type of spillage oc- [ I l l i-' i i 20 M0NS 070293 r?TTZTTFK7T3TST5T curred on July 3 oflast year from a Irene- nounced they were dropping edible fish terfowl. The mean value for black duck former leak in Stamford. Conn. tolerance levels from 3 ppm to two ppm wings is 1.36 ppm, while mallards aur- On March 8. 1973. a truck developed and might well close the eel fishery in tged 1.26 ppm. The values arc %|,^hi!> a leak In Kingston, Tenn., and 630 gal the St. Lawrence. lower for the Mississippi Flya>. and C lon! of PCBi were spilled. The contam inated soils were recovered in 11,500 drums and sealed in concrete at a cost of Obviously, some riven ere in worse shape than others. Here are some PCB values for fish sampled by the U.S. Fish lower still for the Central and I'acitk-. For all the damning data produced in Chicago, some bureaucrats acted in bi SI.7 million. It was paid by G.E., which and Wildlife Service: carp, Cincinnati, zarre fashion when their turns came to was shipping the chemical. Local resi Ohio River, 133 ppm; two channel cat speak. Walter C. Barber, director of the dents also brought damage suits against fish, Marietta, Ohio, Ohio River, 38-77 Standards and Regulations Evaluation O.E. and last October a judge awarded ppm; walleye pike, Natrona Heights, Pa., Division in the EPA, said, MI don't know them a total of $120,000. Allegheny River, 35 ppm; white perch, what we're going to do." Dr. Albert C. The U.S. Department of Defense was Camden, N.J., Delaware River, 19 ppm; Kolbye, associate director for Science*. involved in e Catch-22 PCB episode with gizzard shad, Elizabethtown, N.C., Cape Bureau of Foods, FDA, said, in ull other government agencies in Seattle. On Fear River, 23 ppm; small-mouth buf riousness, "We are the straight men in a Friday, Match 13, 1974 an electrical falo, Redwood, Miss., Yazoo River, 73 bad joke." Dr. Kolbye is the FDA of transformer destined for an Air Force ra ppm; yellow perch, Lowell, Mass., Mer ficial who sets the PCB tolerance levels dar station in Shemya, Alaska fell on a rimac River, 98 ppm; goldfish, Pough for human foods. pier in Seattle and 263 gallons of PCBs keepsie, N.Y., Hudson River, 213 ppm. The weeks ahead doubtless will reveal bled into the Duwemish River. Defense The Fish and Wildlife Service does not even more grim news about PCBs. A refesed responsibility; so did the U.S. sample every stream in the country--it hearing by tha House Subcommittee on Coast Guard, which has the primary ob ligation to dean up oil and other harbor spills. The Coast Guard said PCBs were not among the chemicals it was required to recover. The EPA had to hire dtven extends itself to maintain even the 100 monitoring stations in existence--but re search by other agencies reveals other trouble spots. Half the lake trout ana lysed from LakeGeorge, N.Y. havemore Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation and the Environment is scheduled to start this month in Washington; and in New York, Ogden Reid continues to push hto state hearing. who brought up 70 to 90 gallons of the than 3 ppm. And eggs ofstriped ban tak If there is any measure of comfort in compound, and in February of this year en in 1972 from tha Nantfeoke and Chop- all this, it is that Soviet bureaucrats must the Defense Department Anally agreed to tank riven on the supposedly unspoiled be more inefficient than most of ours. pay the ooet, $148,000. eastern shore of Maryland had PCB lev Just recently a delegation of Soviet sci But recovery from the Duwemish spill la (hr from ended. EPA officials estimate 60 to 80 gallons remain in the riverbed, and Defense has assigned the job to the UJ. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps to scheduled to begin dredging 30,000 cubic yards of river bottom some els that ranged from 2J to 20 ppm. For a number of years the Fish and WDdlifc Servicealso has been monitoring birds. Every starling tested has contained PCBs. Examination ofmallard and black duck wings show the Atlantic Flyway has the moet severe problems, at least for wa> entists visited one of tha finest labs in this country. They were shown everything tha lab had on PCBs and left loaded down with papers. Before returning home, they stopped at the Soviet rmbaesy in Wash ington, where all the papers were taken away from them. mb time around the first of the year. Esti mated ooet of the project to between a quarter and half million dollars. Although the XJJk Food sod Drug Ad ministration allows up to five parts per mHtton ofPCBs In fish, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regards the pmurs of /T ' i .. a P*rt P* million (J ppm) in a fish B at a suns sign of trouble in a wamr- < . way. According to Charles R. Walker, Senior Environmental Scientist with the Service, whodelivered two papers in Chi cago, trouble spots on the Atlantic Coast rang! from the Merrimac River in Mass achusetts to the St. Johos in Florida. On the Oulf Coast afflicted riven extend rr from the Mo Grande east to the Apa lachicola in the Florida panhandle. The Mtoatoaippi-Misaotiri system has its hot spots. On tha West Coast, the Sacramen to, Rogue, Columbia and Snake riven have problems and they abound in the Great Lakes region end in the St. Law rence. Last week, Canadian officials an r- 'jbT*' ' , N-\ si tttmwn In retf are AS* prlnclpml arte* wftare *ca*/r* PCB Itvi* *ara eaaa UtoaarW** W M **-* M0NS Q7Q294 21