Document gELaMqDYEg9vNVqJ56VybVnGV

PUEBLO, COLO. STAR-JOURNAL D. 17.311 _ i AUG 31 1978 jAnother worry: PCB ^ The 1976 TOXIC SUB- STANCES Control Act give the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power for I the first time to control and even to stop production and use I of any chemical that presents ' an unreasonable risk of injury I to health or the environment. The law also specifically ; required EPA to draw up . regulations for the banning of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a group of industrial ; ' pollutants that have been in use ; since 1929. PCBs currently are not manufactured in this country because Monsanto, the I sole American PCB producer, ! voluntarily stopped making j them last year. But the EPA i still must promulgate a formal | ban on PCB manufacture, processing and commercial ' districution. I PCBs are used as Insulating ' fluids in electrical equipment ! such as transformers and : capacitors, but also are em ployed in the production of : adhesives, sealants, printing i inks, coatings and waxes. Concerns about PCB pollution have been voiced since 1969, . when some 1,000 Japanese citi2ens were severely affected after Ingesting PCBcontaminated rice oil. Japan has prohibited all production and importation of PCBs. In 1972, the U.S. government took its first action against the chemical. At the time EPA recommended production curbs, and MonsVnto volun tarily stopped selling'PCBs to those customers who released them Into the environment. Later studies showed that salmon, striped bass and other fish in American waterways still contained high con centrations of the chemical. Traces of the millions of pounds of PCBs that have been released into the environment have been found far from in dustrial areas -- in the Hudson River, the Great Lakes, the upper Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, among other places. The main worry is that PCBs may take many years to disappear from fish tissues and bottom sediments. They have been proved to cause reproductive defects and death in fish, birds and mammals and |hey ma^s^read further up thet HONS 008943