Document kmrzz69r1ZN7QQDGM4n2GJvDJ

Lead and mercury, and other familiar elements, are poisoning our air and water, but it will be a knotty job, with serious economic implications, to combat fi ti'W' & Into the already crowded ranks of dangerous pollutants has lately moved a gang of the toughest villains yet-- health-impairing metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, beryllium, nickel, vanadium. Unlike most other pollu tants, they are natural substances. Over the years, man has been extracting these metals from stable minerals found in nature and spreading them around in forms that can be harmful. The flow of metallic pollutants into the environment has accelerated in recent decades to such an extent that now the public at large may be threatened with what used to be considered "occupational" health hazards inside mines or factories. Americans got a disconcerting dose of news about the toxicity and -persistence of these contaminants when the mercury scare hit last year. At about the same time, lead additives in gasoline came under an intensifying attack'. But many other metallic pollutants are becoming subjects of concern. Beryllium, emitted mainly by processing plants, can damage the respiratory system. So can nickel, which is entering our air from metallurgical plants, from the burning of coal and oil, and as an unburned fuel additive. Cadmium gets into the air through the refin ing of associated metals such as zinc, lead, and copper. Particles of cadmium are picked up from galvanized water mains and pipes, and so get into our drinking water too. There is evidence that cadmium causes high blood pressure. It can also lead to respiratory ailments and kidney damage. Vanadium, from certain types of \ 0000-NU-000020928 NV1RONMEW by Gene Bylinsky fuel oil as well as from refining and alloying, inhibits the synthesis of cholesterol, even in relatively small concentrations. People are now accustomed to think of cholesterol as undesirable, but in small amounts it is es sential in metabolism. This, of course, is far from a complete list. There are twenty or so other metals that bear watching. The special difficulty with all metallic pollutants is their persistence. A man who has done much to call attention to the haz ards of metallic pollution, Dr. Henry A. Schroeder of the Dartmouth Medical School, has stated: "Pollution by toxic metals is a much more serious and much more in sidious problem than is pollution by organic substances such as pesticides, weed killers, sulphur dioxide, oxides of C) C\il ' .0} (.. ' c*> * . . !'*<r G '0 C J ill y J *. ft. a | ft; ft; L ... Fishing for evidence of mercury pol lution, researchers work atop a nu clear reactor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. They are using the rod and reel to lower into the reactor a plastic jar containing samples of hair from Alaskan Aleuts. (The pic ture at the lower right shows a sam ple being weighed beforehand.) The Aleuts were recently found to be consuming heavy doses of mercury (apparently from contaminated fish, seals, and sea lions), and it is known that hair reflects the presence of some toxic metals in the body. In the photo graph, chemist Milton McLain shines a flashlight into a mirror to help re actor operator W. R. Pruett guide the sample into the reactor's core, while health physicist Martin Mitchell moni tors radiation. Inside, the hair is bom barded by neutrons. The quantity of morcury Is subsequently measured by moans of a gamma-ray spectrometer (above). Somo samples have shown morcury concentrations of from five to six parts por million--five to six timos the normal lovol. 0 nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and other gross contaminants of air and water. Most organic substances are degradable by natural processes; no metal is degradable." Little wonder that we are now witnessing the begin nings of restrictions on metallic pollutants. Federal au thorities will suggest criteria this year for permissible amounts of lead in the ambient air. Guidelines for beryl lium will follow next year. Later on, cadmium, copper, manganese, nickel, vanadium, zinc, chromium, and air borne mercury will come under control. Similar restric tions on disposal of these substances in water are either already in effect or soon will be. It would be unrealistic, however, to suppose that a com plete bom on any of these metals is in the making. They are too essential, too ingrained in-our life, too abundant in the natural environment. As one scientist puts it: "We cannot ban metals any more than we can ban the earth." Still, the economic damage from the coming re strictions may prove to be substantial. It may become unprofitable to mine certain ore deposits, for example. And we can expect increasing use of expensive substitute materials where metals might present a health hazard. Is there a "safe" level? The sudden increase in public awareness of metallic pollution raises a number of serious questions about howsociety should proceed in weighing potential, iand some times ill-defined, health hazards against real and imme diate economic dislocations. IIow, for example, can government help smooth over such disruptions? How can it avoid a pseudo-scientific and panicky blacklisting of sub stances at levels that have always been present around us? How can we determine the "safe" level for a pollu tant, or whether there is such a safe level? Says Dr. Harriet Hardy, a respected worker in occupational health: "Great care must be taken not to pass laws that are un enforceable, not only because of economic cpnsiderations, but because they are not based on sound data." The search for sound data about metallic pollutants and their effects encounters a peculiar complication in that metals have been part of the human environment, and the human body, ever since man evolved. No fewer than fifty-one metals, from aluminum to zirconium, are now known to be present in the body in varying amounts. Without some of them, in trace amounts, no plant or ani mal could live. Iron, magnesium, manganese, molybde num, calcium, chromium, cobalt, copper, and zinc are known to be essential to life, and vanadium, nickel, and tin are thought to be. Metals, often incorporated into pro teins, serve as catalysts that initiate or assist in biological reactions. Each of the four iron atoms in a hemoglobin molecule, for instance, is a "handle" to which oxygen mol ecules become attached, to be carried throughout the body in the red pigment of the blood. In plants an atom of mag nesium serves as the structural hub of every molecule of chlorophyll, Research associate: Sally Shaver 0000-NLI-000020929 ' Over the miNennia, organisms developed delicate bal ancing, or homeostatic, mechanisms to regulate the rate at which essential trace metals are incorporated into their tissues. But in general, organisms, including man, failed to develop comparable defenses against the heav ier metals that perform no beneficial biological function. These metals are toxic in their elemental form, especially if they are absorbed as small particles. They become even more hazardous in organic compounds; these are more rapidly absorbed into the body and tend to concentrate in nerve tissue. A notable example is methyl mercury, which is far more dangerous than mercury in its famil iar metallic form. Another is tetraethyl lead, which being readily soluble in fats is particularly damaging to nerve centers and to the brain. The fait of an empire Lead affords a relatively well-documented example of how a metal can be both exceedingly useful and hazard ous to health. Like other metals, lead played a vital part in the development of industrial civilization, but absorp tion of even a small quantity into the human body can cause severe illness. Some scientists have implicated lead in the downfall of the Roman Empire. The Romans, according to some calculations, produced an average of 60,000 tons of lead a year for four hundred years. Some of it went into the making of pots for boiling grape juice to make a syrup used as a preservative and sweetener of wine. This greatly increased the intake of lead, which was also used in cosmetics and medicines. The upshot, the ar gument runs, was a gradual poisoning of the upper classes (but not of the lower classes, who could not afford as much wine). The poisoning is said to have brought about widespread stillbirths, deformities, and brain damage. One support for this theory is that high lead content has been found in the bones of ancient Romans. That severe reactions can result from excessive expo sure to lead has long been known. Hippocrates described colic in a lead worker. But danger levels weren't deter mined until the past few decades. Instruments were lack ing. Tests on animals can be inconclusive. "Even if we study them to the nth degree," says biochemist Hans Falk, an associate director of the new National Institute of En vironmental Health Sciences, "we will never be able to say he's just like Uncle Joe, because he isn't quite." The pio neering research on the danger levels of lead in the blood was done by Dr. Robert A. Kehoe and his associates at the University of Cincinnati's Kettering Laboratory, originally set up with industry funds. In his experiments, Kehoe found no overt poisoning if the initial exposure resulted in lead levels below 80 micrograms (millionths of a gram) per 100 grams of blood. But there's nothing magic about that 80-microgram line. For one thing, different people respond differently to lead in their blood. Some adults display visible but non specific symptoms of poisoning with a blood lead level as low as 60 micrograms, while others remain apparently un affected with twice as much. In children, symptoms of lead poisoning have been observed at blood lead concentrations of 60 micrograms, and suggestions have been made to lower the danger line for children to 40 micrograms. Many experts now consider the 80-microgram standard too high for adults. Some European countries have set the industrial exposure threshold at 70 micrograms. These yardsticks are only partially useful where ex posure of the general public to lead in air, food, and THERE IS LEAD IN US ALL Everybody has some lead in his blood. Most oi us gel i! n ingestion of lead particles in food and water and inh.i'.:*. ,r, gasoline additives. The level of lead in the blood reboots . \ the intensity of recent exposure, and as might bo people living in cities generally display higher lead lew:-, v people living in the country. The chart at the right, utiluii : ;, from the U.S. Public Health Service, indicates that the , people work or live to automobile exhausts, the more lead ti.e/ .e got in their blood. For each sample the horizontal bl.v.r i,.u shows the range that included all or most of the poop:., ir, iho sample. The vertical white line in each bar shows tho moan Each of the black dots stands for a person who showed an excep tional reading, low or high. For example, in the second One bom the top, `'Cincinnati parking attendants," the dot to t ->; ;Bft indi cates that one of the parking attendants (there wen, forty-eight in all) had a concentration of between 20 and 29 rr :-. -.grams of lead per 100 grams of blood. The dot to the right of tr e same bar shows that the reading tor one attendant was between 60 and 69 micrograms. The ranges labeled normal, occupational, and danger are approximations because different people respond dilferontly to lead--some can cope with more than others. In some Industrial plants in the U.S., workers are removed (rom areas o( heavy ex posure il lead in their blood reaches 60 mlcrograms. Symptoms ol poisoning are most often evident above 80 mlcrograms. water is concerned. Even in cities, most people encounter much smaller amounts of poisonous contaminants than workers in the metal-producing or using industries. For instance, average lead content of the air of representa tive U.S. cities, at about 2 micrograms per cubic meter, is only l/100th of the concentration considered accept able for industrial plants. But lead concentrations run much higher in dense traffic and in tunnels; concen trations as high as 54 micrograms have been meas ured in Los Angeles traffic. Most of us, moreover, breathe air with lead in it twenty-four hours a day, instead of the seven or eight hours on which industrial standards are based. Therefore, standards for lead in the ambient air are expected to call for about 2 micrograms per cubic meter. At that rate it would take an average citizen about seventy years to inhale what would amount to approxi mately a birdshot pellet of lead. Evidence in the ice The most tragic examples of non-occupational lead poi soning today occur among children, particularly children who live in slums. The youngsters eat the deceptively sweet flakes of old lead-based paint peeling from walls and windowsills. This problem persists even though paint manufacturers discontinued the use of lead in interior paints about thirty-five years ago. Painting over old paint doesn't help. The walls must be covered by wallboard, and this hasn't been done in many old houses. Much more widespread, of course, is the threat posed by increasing levels of lead in the air. Surveys of the gen eral population in the U.S. and elsewhere have revealed that concentrations range from about 5 to 40 micrograms of lead per 100 grams of blood, with an average of about 25 micrograms--nearly one-third of the concentration con sidered dangerous in industrial exposure in the U.S. One scientist has estimated that if it weren't for man's massive use of lead--1,200,000 tons in the U.S. alone each year-- blood concentrations would be only l/100th of the cur rent typical levels. There is no way to know for certain, however, since blood lead levels today are unexpectedly 0000-NLI-000020930 fujjvoJL iT*--c/yd...-st&^.^tijtL- ir. Cincinnati garage mechanics ^Cincinnati parking attendants " r ~ - !1 ... ir ' i ...-~"Y"... t... i .::i'ui"'.,, t~ i .z i c ii : )Cincinnati traffic policemen Cincinnati service-station attendants T All Cincinnati policemen .-1 Downtown Philadelphia residents 0 :>Cincinnati post-office employees 1 Los Angeles policemen znzzzi: Pasadena city employees i..-- o X. "IXZciEI 10 X_ 4____ 20 30 40 so Micrograms of lead per 100 grams of whole blood __________________________ Normal Occupational Suburban Philadelphia residents 60 70 Danger X i l high even among primitive people living far from civiliza tion. There are no "lead-free" people. Even newborn babies have lead in their blood, absorbed from their mothers. As might be expected, the closer people get to exhaust fumes, the more lead shows up in their blood. In a survey of three cities, published in 19G3 by the U.S. Public Health Service, garage mechanics, parking attendants, and traffic policemen showed particularly high concen trations (see chart above). And people who live near busy highways were shown, in that and subsequent stud ies, to have more lead in their blood, too. Lead content in the ambient air and in the blood of residents of those three cities--Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles-- was recently resurveyed. Analysis of the data will not be completed for some months, but partial results show a 50 percent increase in atmospheric lead in Los Angeles area communities since the first survey. In the mid-IGGO's, braving Arctic and Antarctic bliz zards, a team lead by geochemist Clair C. Patterson of the California Institute of Technology showed how omi nously lead concentrations have risen in the air over the Northern Hemisphere. The investigators collected samples of both ancient and more recent ice and snow from near the North and South poles. Many of the samples were ob tained from deop- tunnels at undisturbed sites. The lead content of Arctic snow and ice, the scientists found, went up fourfold between 1750 and 1940, and then nearly tripled again since 1940. The first increase reflects the great expansion of lead smelting that followed the in dustrial revolution, and the second, the use of lead addi tives in gasoline. In Antarctica, in sharp contrast, the scientists found that the highest lead levels were one-tenth of those found in the northern snowpack. One reason why not much lead has been deposited in Antarctica yet is that atmospheric circulation is largely confined to the separate hemispheres; also, most of the world's industry is con centrated above the equator. This rise in the lead content of air in the Northern Hemisphere is reflected in man, too, particularly in bone and soft tissue. These are considered more reliable indi cators of accumulated lead than blood because, being a medium of transport, blood mainly reflects the intensity of recent exposure. Comparing lead content in bones of Peru vian Indians who lived six centuries ago with what mod ern man carries in his bones, scientists found three years ago that Americans had ten times as much lead in their skeletons. The investigators concluded that the increased lead burden is a "striking reflection of modern air pollu tion." People still take in more lead through their diet (about 300 micrograms a day) than by breathing, but only about one-tenth of the ingested lead is absorbed and re tained by the tissues as against at least one-third of the inhaled lead. Further evidence of a rise in lead deposits in tissue was established a few years ago by physicist Isabel Tipton of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee and Dr. fechroeder of Dartmouth. They found that lead accumulates in the tissues of Americans at a far greater rate than in the tissues of Africans living in prim itive settings. For example, lung tissue of Americans con tained twice as much lead as that of Africans. Looking for a dime under a lamppost The big unsettled and unsettling question is what the increasing body burden of lead is doing to human health. Early symptoms of lead poisoning are very nonspecific and it can be easily mistaken for any of a number of maladies. The symptoms may include loss of appetite and weight, fatigue, headaches, and anemia. Continued absorption of lead can lead to irritability, lack of coordination, vague pains in the arms, legs, joints, and abdomen. In advanced cases, the victims suffer elevated blood pressure, convul sions, Coma, and brain damage. Given to mice and rats in doses sufficient to reproduce the amount of lead now found in human tissues, the nietal has significantly shortened the animals' lifetimes by in ducing'general weakness and fatigue. Considering the differences in size, this would be a large dose in human terms, of course. But animals respond to smaller amounts of lead, too. Soviet scientists have reported that rats continued page 125 OOOO-NLI-000020931 me t a l l ic me n a c e s IN THE ENVIRONMENT continued from page US exposed for six hours a day to 11 micrograms of lead per cubic meter of air (or about five times the average concentra tion in the air of some U.S. cities) showed a slowdown in .their conditioned responses--to the sound of a bell, for example-- after exposure had continued for three months. After com pleting the experiments, the scientists found a bit more lead in the rats' bones than people carry in 'theirs. No overt symptoms of lead poisoning, such as "wrist drop" caused by neurological damage, have been traced to the levels of exposure that now prevail in the general environment. But looking for such gross symptoms may make as much sense as "looking under a lamppost for a dime you lost a block away," . to quote one scientist. If damage is being done to the public at large, it is probably being done very subtly. Dr. Jesse L. Steinfeld, Surgeon General of the U.S., warned recently that a hazard may already exist for people who are particularly sensitive to lead. Trouble in the enzyme switchyard Investigation of the effects of low-level lead contamination, therefore, must descend into the deeper, more complex bio chemical mechanisms of the body. One of these processes is the synthesis of heme (pronounced heem), the iron-contain ing component of hemoglobin. This synthesis takes place, in bone marrow and elsewhere, in what might be visualized as a miniature railroad assembly and switchyard. Along a central track, seven switches arc operated by seven different en zymes, those busy catalysts of the body's biochemistry. Out of basic building blocks, starting with glycine, the enzymes put together the iron-containing heme train. It is then joined with a protein, globin, to form hemoglobin, the stuff red cells are made of. _ _______ A relatively heavy exposure to lead impairs the production of red blood cells. Signs of anemia can be observed in people whose blood lead concentrations hover around that 80-micro gram danger line. The evidence for inhibition of heme synthe sis by lead goesjback as far as 1880, when scientists spotted abnormal amouhts of porphyrin--an intermediate of red-cell synthesis--in the urine of people suffering from lead poison ing. It was as if a malfunctioning switch somewhere along that heme assembly line were shunting porphyrin onto a sidetrack. More recently, another intermediate substance in the making of heme, delta-aminolevulinic acid (ALA), was found in the urine. This discovery suggested interference with the functioning of the enzyme delta-ALA-dehydrase, one of the switchmen in heme synthesis; this enzyme uses ALA to further the' production of heme. The ALA starts spilling over from the blood into the urine at lead concentrations of about 50 micrograms, thus providing a "preclinical" sign that excessive exposure to lead has occurred. The new concern about lead has expanded the scare', for evidence of damage to the general population. Out of this search came only last year a startling but little noticed report by a group of Finnish researchers. Activity of the enzyme ALA-dehydrase, they discovered, is depressed not only in workers who come in contact with lead, but in everyone. Moreover, the scientists, led by Dr. Sven Hemberg of the University of Helsinki, could find no well-defined level of lead in the blood below which inhibition of ALA-dehydrase did not occur. The Finnish finding, which has been recently confirmed by studies done in the U.S., indicates that at least some degree of biochemical disturbance is taking place in all of us at sup posedly normal levels of exposure to lead. But whether de pression of ALA-dehydrase activity has any effects on health is not known at present. In most metabolic functions there is usually one "rate-limiting" enzyme that sets the pace for synthesis of a particular substance, and luckily ALA-dehy drase is not rate limiting in heme production. In other words, ALA-dehydrase at what are now considered normal levels of lead in the blood can slow down its work without creating a noticeable effect on red-cell production. As intake of lead increases, however, it begins to interfere with a number of other enzymes in the synthesis of hemp, including the one that is rate limiting, ALA-synthetase. Because of this interference with heme synthesis, the 125day average life span of red cells is reduced in at least some people at the still "normal" level of 60 to 70 micrograms per ,100 grams of blood. At 70 micrograms, according to the Fin nish study, ALA-dehydrase activity is reduced by about 90 percent. At that point, symptoms of anemia may already be visible. Heme and its precursors are widely distributed throughout the body, serving in such vital functions as activation of enzymes that control cell respiration. What interests many scientists now' is whether formation of heme is being sup pressed in some organs of the body beyond those organs' adaptive ability. Last October a group of British scientists reported that activity of ALA-dehydrase is abnormally low' in the blood and brain of lead-poisoned baby rats. Professor Abraham Goldberg and his colleagues wrote in the Lancet, a British medical journal: "It is, therefore, possible that chil dren with blood-load levels greater than 20 micrograms, in whom there is a significant decrease in blood ALA-dehydrase activity, also have similar decreases in brain enzyme activity." Such studies, concentrating on young animals and children, on people especially susceptible to anemia, and on thousands of lead workers who may have undetected signs of disease, are expected finally to implicate, or exonerate, prolonged low-level exposure to lead as a cause of ill health. Some scien tists think that definite answers should be forthcoming in about five years. More painful than it should have been By then the level of lead in the air should be reduced sig nificantly as a result of the campaign against gasoline addi tives. Before the recent commotion started, the use of tetra ethyl lead to alleviate engine knock had gradually risen to more than 400 million pounds a year to become the No. 1 source of lead in the air. About 80 percent of the lead is emitted from the exhaust as aerosol particles that can pen'etrate the deep recesses of the lungs. The rather abrupt and largely unplanned move against lead in gasoline will be economically painful--more so than it should have been. The anti-lead campaign was kicked off in earnest last January not by Ralph Nader but by Edward Cole, president of General Motors, when he said that the auto makers would have a much better chance of coming up with effective exhaust-control devices if lead-free gasoline were available. Researchers had found that a single tankful of leaded gasoline, containing about a teaspoonful of the additive per gallon, can ruin some types of catalytic mufflers, the devices considered most likely to succeed in control of automotive pollution. The manufacturers of lead additives, for their part, have been arguing that the proposed federal standards for ex haust emissions be met by means of a trap to capture lead continued page 12G FORTUNE January mi 125 METALLIC MENACES IN THE ENVIRONMENT continued and other particles and (instead of a catalytic muffler) a thermal reactor to bum up exhaust pollutants. This line of argument, however, is a last-ditch defense. Lead is on its way out. Auto makers have now adjusted most of their new cars to run on 91-octane gasoline with re duced lead content, or none at all. To motorists, the change over to lead-free gasoline will probably mean paying from half a cent to one and a half cents more per gallon, or about $5 to $15 more a year. But, according to a technical panel convened by the Commerce Department, motorists will prob ably wina up with a saving on maintenance costs because low-lead and lead-free fuels will extend the life of spark plugs and exhaust systems. Complete removal of lead from gasoline could damage valves on some high-compression cars, the panel said, but this problem can be avoided in the future by redesigning the valves. The adverse economic effect is expected to be felt most acutely by small gasoline refiners, some of which may be forced to shut down, and by lead-additive manufacturers, whose market will gradually disappear. Industry sources estimate that 10,000 workers may lose their jobs. The $400million-a-ycar U.S. market for lead additives is dominated by Du Pont and Ethyl, each accounting for an estimated 40 percent. Nalco Chemical Co. and the Houston Chemical division of PPG Industries, Inc., share equally in the re maining 20 percent. Lead additives make up only about 5 percent of Du Pont's nearly $4 billion in annual sales, and the company can be expected to take the ban in stride. "We'll feel this, but we'll survive," an executive says somewhat facetiously. Since lead additives have accounted in recent years for about 40 percent of Ethyl's total sales and 60 percent of its profits, that company has a much tougher joh ahead. President Bruce Gottwaid ticks off a number of areas where Ethyl can expand, such as plastics, detergent additives, synthetic alcohols, and chlorinated solvents, but of the struggle over lead he says: "I don't look forward to an out come with any glee at all." Into a toxicological fire Toxic metals can get into our food, air, or water by devious and unexpected paths. A disturbing case in point has to do with the introduction of nitrilotriacctic acid (NTA) as a substitute for phosphates in detergents. The toxicity of phosphates to people is very low, hut they foster the growth of algae in lakes and rivers. NTA alleviates that problem but creates another. Being a chelating, or binding, agent, it can "lock up" metal ions and carry them from metallic surfaces, such as those of water pipes, into the tap water. NTA also may be capable of mobilizing heavy metals such as mercury from lake sediments. The possibility of such dangerous intrusion into environmental processes is leading some scientists to conclude that we may be better off not replacing phosphates. Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, a Harvard pathologist, recently summed up the matter before a con gressional committee: "Concern for protection of environ mental quality is no reason to replace a relatively defined and otherwise controllable ecological problem by potential hazards to.human health of undefined dimensions. We may well be jumping from an ecological frying pan into a toxico logical fire." Another unexpected hazard--transformation of a metal into a form much more dangerous than its ok...... ,|t is illustrated by the seemingly sudden emeiy/v. , mercury as a potent threat to public hcak! .; hatters" of yesteryear suffered mental instability .. i as a result of inhaling vapors from metallic morem./, n m processing fur and felt. Today's concern about u, chiefly has to do with exposure of the public to organic com pounds of mercury in fish and other foods. Among Lln-m or ganic compounds, methyl mercury is the worst offender be cause it can penetrate biological barriers with great eaw. Reaching the brain, it can cause insidious damage that im; not show up for months or years. Methyl mercury has been manufactured for some time ai;; broad-spectrum fungicide for use on seeds. It came as j, shock to most scientists, however, when they discovered nature can make methyl mercury too. Scientists had thougi. if they thought about this problem at all, that metallic me- cury discharged by industrial plants would sink to the bottom of bodies of water and harmlessly stay there. But anaerobic microorganisms that thrive in sludge on the bottoms of lakes and rivers, where oxygen is limited or completely absent, can transform mercury into methyl mercury. The microorgan isms release the soluble compound into the water, and it is then taken up by successively larger organisms. With each upward step in the food chain, methyl mercuiy becomes more and more concentrated, so that the tissues of some fish high up in the chain show a 3,000-fold concentration com pared with the surrounding water. The culprit identified The dangers of methyl mercury first became starkly evident in Japan, where, starting in 1953, more than a hundred people have died or suffered serious neurological damage after eating niercuiy-contaminated fish. For a number of years the culprit remained unidentified--it was then difficult to detect mercury in minute quantities, particularly in biological specimens. Finally, Japanese scientists pin pointed methyl mercury. Despite the danger signals from Japan, and later from Sweden, government authorities in the U.S. took no action against inethyl mercury for an inordinately long time. Federal researchers found mercury-contaminated shellfish in the badly polluted Houston Ship Channel but failed to follow up. Now that a burst of belated scientific sleuthing is uncovering the dangerous organic compounds of mercury in nil kinds of places and organisms, there is danger of exaggerating-the hazards. For one thing, the use of better measuring instru ments that became available only recently can lead to dete tion of the metal where it was previously not known to exist. Dr. Schroeder, who observes that "you can always overdo these things," believes that the Food and Drug Administra tion has been -too cautious in setting a limit of 0.5 parts per million on mercury in fish (usually it occurs in the form of methyl mercury). This limit is about l/100th of the average mercuiy level in fish in Japanese poisoning incidents, and half the limit set in Sweden--though the Swedes in addi tion have boon cautioned not to eat fresh-water fish more than once a week. Moreover, about 5,000 tons of mercuiy are estimated to circulate through the global environment each year in the course of natural processes such as erosion from rocks; that is about as much mercuiy ns nian introduces into the environment each year. "There has been mercuiy in fish ever since there were fish," says Dr. Schroeder, "and the same is true of air and water." In some species of ocean fish, natural concentrations are believed to approach the FDA's limit. Last month there was a stir when authorities continued page 130 0000-NLI-000020933 METALLIC MENACES IN THE ENVIRONMENT continued The Pacific has always had a special meaning for us. f Sr "mm O'; ~^Qy- - H c\> - <* 22^. .-a Detail jron: the 1828 woodblock prwi "Namiur(i"iy HokCnsiii Hokusai was only one of many Japanese arlisls whose depictions of it over the centuries have demonstrated how inseparably the vast ocean and this liny nigged land arc bound. The Pacific. This July in Tokyo there will be still a further interpretation of it when a thirty-story hotel of rare beauty and graciousness opens its doors in Tnknnawa. The Pacific will soar up from a spacious, restful Japanese garden. It will offer 15-minute access to all of Tokyo. It will offer six gourmet restaurants, five elegant lounges and bars, a prestige shopping arcade, a swimming pool and all those personal little services for which Japan is famous. Plus a panoramic view of Tokyo Bayfrom a vantage point Hokusai never enjoyed. If your plans call for being in Japan anytime after July 27, The Pacific may also have a special meaning for you. Tokyo's most prestigious hole! H vVs/ 7hts President: Haruo Salo/General Manager: YoshikMsu Camo IDA 3 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo/Cablc: HOTELPACIF1C TOKYO Representatives: 7Z?7 O George R. Smith & Company Inc./Helland & Sievcns Inc./International Hotel Representatives Reservations World/American Express-Space Bank found concentrations exceeding 0.5 parts per million in some brands of canned tuna. How much, if any, of these levels was a result of man-made contamination? No one could say with any assurance. Still, sinre it is not clear whether there is a "safe" threshold for organic mercury, it may be better for public-health authorities to err on the conservative side. The diversification recipe Even though exposure to low levels of toxic metals may do no visible damage to healthy adults, there's a possibility of adverse long-range effects on children. Surgeon General Steinfeld said recently that the concern today "is that we do not, by our shortsightedness, condemn future generations to irreversible hazardous health effects." Lead, for instance, is an unerring bone seeker and may be interfering with calcium metabolism in the young. But this possibility has hardly been looked into; it should become an active field of investigation. A number of other questions should be looked into. We must find out, for example, what is happening to metallic wastes, to see if metals other than mercury can be trans formed into highly hazardous chemical states by microorgan isms or in some other ways. For highly industrialized coun tries, such knowledge is vital, particularly for the U.S., which uses about one-third to one-half of the free world's metals; Use of some metals will at least quadruple by the end of this century, multiplying the problems associated with their use. Recycling is obviously the answer, both to avoid pollution and to conserve the metals. When a ban on a metal's use becomes necessary, we should, employ hardheaded planning so as to avoid putting people out of work and companies out of business. Companies can help themselves by avoiding heavy reliance on a single prod uct that is a potential pollutant. That recipe--diversifica tion--also holds for individuals who want to reduce the risks of accumulating metallic and other pollutants. Here, says Hans Falk, the answer is to stick to a well-rounded diet and not rely too much on any single food item such as fish. There are some hopeful signs, to be sure. Disposal of mer cury into U.S. rivers and lakes by industry has now been effectively curtailed. Unfortunately, the mercury already there is not going to go away. It will continue to circulate through food chains, perhaps for centuries, until the organic compounds return to chemically stable forms. With the merger of some of the splintered pollution con trol organizations into the newly formed Environmental Pro tection Agency, there's hope now that much better monitor ing of new health hazards will emerge. The President's Coun cil on Environmental Quality will present a plan for such surveillance within the next few weeks. The new monitoring will focus on heavy metals and hazardous organic sub stances, and will include sampling of our air, water, and food for such contaminants. A worldwide pollution watch under U.N. auspices is being planned, too. It would include utiliza tion of "sentinel" organisms--plants and animals that would be watched for adverse effects of pollutants. The most hopeful sign is that, out of the current sometimes inept efforts to cope with the new pollutants, there may yet emerge what one scientists calls "a dimension of foresight." That would enable us to meet similar future hazards more effectively, and to spare ourselves and our descendants a great deal of pain, physical and economic. en d 130 FORTUNE January J97I 0000-NLI-000020934