Document jmbZ0MKedn9km46JLOrO1Oqay

^pi State Must Curb PCB Threat THE LATEST entry on the danger list of alphabetical poisons is the widely used and insidious group of industrial chemicals known as PCBs. They rapidly are becoming a threat to human and environmental health exceeding even that posed by the now-out lawed DDT. i 1 / PCBs are far more resistant than DDT to degradation by nattral forces, and have accu mulated in the environment to a greater de gree than that pestieme! Further. PCBs have been in popular use*siace 1929, a decade pnger than DDT. ` nd because man has not shown the same alarht over this industrial pollutant, it liter ally has infested the world. "It's all over the place---we find PCBs everywhere we look." the toxic substances director of the Environ mental Protection Agency said recently. Yet. strangely. PCBs continue to flourish unregulated by law, despite every evidence the danger they present is real and near. Though tltf, Monsanto Co., the sole U.S. manulacl urcr, has sliced production in half volun tarily. the effect on the pollution rate has hern negligible. Forty million pounds still are sold annually to some 40 PCB outlets. The ubiquitous chemicals are used in elec trical transformers and capacitators. and in such diverse products as various lubricants, waterporofing chemicals and "carbonless" du plicating paper. The awful effect of the PCB buildup has been particularly felt in Michigan. The federal Food and Drug Administration set maximum safety levels for human con sumption of fish at five parts per millionlevels that current research suggest may be too high. "But recent samplings from Lake Michigan show the decimated bloater chub with an av erage of 5.6 parts per million, the coho salmon with JO-5 parts per million, and large lake trout with 229 parts per million. Since 1972 the state has warned consumers not to eat more than one salmon meal a week. And the PCB contamination doesn't stop with fish. Culls have been declining at an abnormal rate aroond Saginaw Bay and Grand Traverse Bay recently, with one dead herring gull from the latter site showing an astounding 2,600 parts per million of Aroclor 1254 (a PCB) in its liver and brain. PCBs have turned up in Wisconsin snow falls. They've been monitored in polar bear flesh. Mink fed Great Lakes fish containing PCBs have failed to reproduce, and PCB pol lution has been blamed for forcing some mink growers out of business. And, finally, there are grim indications that PCBs could cause cancer in man, just as they have caused liver cancer in laboratory rats. It is known that more than 1,000 Japanese suf fered a disfiguring skin disease that later was traced to rice oil that had been contaminated by PCBs. The case for severely restricting the use of PCBs in clear. While this theoretically could be achieved by passage of the Iederal Toxic Substances Control Act, the PCB threat is too great to leave its control to a proposed law that consistently has been shovedf to the congressional back burner. It's clear that if Michigan is to get relief from the PCB peril, state action is required. Rep. David Bonior's HB 5619 would ban the manufacture, sale or use of items containing PCBs in quantities of more than one part per million after Jan. 1, 1978. The sole exception would be PCBs employed in a closed system as a dielectric fluid for electrical transformers and capacitators. Disposal of liquid or solid wastes resulting from PCB use would be tightly restricted after the first of next year. This ^critical, since there currently are no laws or guidelines impeding the discharge of PCBs from facto ries. ; , ^inhe-WmjugTlace LAST the DemocratslnCott* gress ry&edftf every vote they could get to ov^fftcle President .Ford s veto of a strong Strip-mining bill. Rep. John Conyers staved Mr. Bonder's House Marine Affairs Com mittee is holding hearings on the bill now. Reason dictates it should be enacted as quickly as possible. izmmm .<: = c * t * 0*25568 PCB-ARCH0744451