Document omdv22KzZXZ1011Lw9rrXLz7o

THE SPREADING MENACE New reports make it e/ear that tha prasanca of this man-mada chemical in food and wjfaA/* a nationwidyfiant damanding quick action, not anappy-pattar rout/nos by soma hesitant bureaucrats bysJJOeERJ^H; BOVLI There was ironic laughter in the cof fee shop of Chicago's Pick-Con isms, ranging from invertebrates to man (SI. Sept. I). In 1968 an estimated 1.200 gress Hotel last Friday when NathanielJapanese came down with Yus/w disease P. Reed, Assistant Secretary of the In after using rice oil heavily contaminated terior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, with PCBs. The clinical effects included glanced at the menu and said, "Ah, fresh stillbirths, undersized infants, bone and salmon sandwich!*' Only an hour before, joint deformities and various neurolog at the concluding session of tlte Nation ical disorders including loss of libido. al Conference on Polychlorinated Biphe In this country, in a recent experiment nyls (PCB?), Reed had delivered a blis on laboratory rats, PCBs caused liver tering speech on PCB contamination of cancer. Last week in Chicago the scien fish, including Great Lakes salmon, tist in charge of that experiment. Dr. `The problem is a national problem," Renate D. Kimbrough of the U.S. Pub Reed had emphasized to some 400 sci lic Health Service, delivered a paper in entists, bureaucrats and conservationists. which she warned, "Because of these "I am deeply shocked by the pervasive findings in experimental animals, inges ness of PCBs; they are literally every tion of PCBs in humans must be cur where. I am very troubled by the exceed tailed." The EPA estimates that about ingly high levels found in fish in all our half the American public now carries drainage systems, and 1 do not mean just around with it from one to three parts the Hudson and the entire Great Lakes per million of PCBs in its fatty tissues. system, but the Merrimac and Connect Another speaker at the Chicago meet icut riven of the Atlantic Coast, the Mis ing was Dr. James R. Allen of the Uni sissippi and Ohio rivers of the Midwest, versity of Wisconsin Medical School, the Columbia River system in the north who fed eight female rhesus monkeys a west, the Sacramento in the West, the Rio diet that included 2.5 ppm of Aroclor Grande and other Gulf Coast streams 1248 (one of the nine trademarked PCB ... even the Yukon In Alaska " compounds made by the sole domes Reed called for the elimination of all tic manufacturer, Monsanto Industrial sources of PCBs in the U.S. environment Chemicals Company) for six months. within three years. With a candor unusu They were then bred to normally fed al for a federal official, he criticized the male rhesus monkeys. Two females re sponsor of the conference, the U.S. En sorbed their fetuses, one suffered a still vironmental Protection Agency, which birth, and the five infants born were all has done little protecting, and the U.S. undersized. Two of the infants died while Food and Drug Administration, which nursing. The three survivors are now has established a "tolerance" level offive eight months old, and although they have parts per million of PCBs in fish for hu been on a PCB-free diet for four months, man consumption. preliminary observation* by Dr. Diane "Quite frankly," Reed ended his H. Norback, a colleague of Dr. Allen, speech, "1 am thoroughly disgusted by indicate that the youngsters are hyper- the gnashing of teeth, wailing and rub ative. bing of hands. To the agencies which The PCB problem, which has been have the enforcement responsibilities, a growing for years, began to receive na word on behalf of the bewildered but tionwide attention last summer when concerned American people--get on with ur PCBs are chlorinated hydrocarbon Ogden R. Reid, commissioner of the New York State Department of Environ mental Conservation, warned the public compounds used by industries through against eating striped bass from the Hud out the world because of their resistance son River or salmon from Lake Ontar to heat. More durable than DDT, PCBs io. Reid issued his warning after receiv are a proved menace to animal organ ing a report from EPA scientists who noted that (wo General Electric plants at Hudson Fails and Fort Edwutd were discharging at least 30 pounds of PCBs per day into the river. In September. Reid brought action against G.E. to force the company to reduce it<> discharge to two pounds a day by Dec. 3) and to zero by Sept. 30 of next year. The action is now before a state bearing officer. und G.E. is contesting it all the way. It Is w orh not ing, however, that in response to a state interrogatory before the hearir.p begun. G.E. admitted, "During the past 15 years, 49 cmplojccs have reported to the dispensaries complaining of allergic der matitis, diagnosed as having beer rjurd by contact with PCBs." No one really knew that PCB> ".^re present in tire world environment u.tt.J 1966 when Sweden's Dr. Soreu fcr.scn isoluted and identified the compou*-,!., that had been battling researchers w>j,- . ing on DDT residues. i'Chs were * tv i commonly used in a wide variety of ev eryday products, such as paints, sculan.; and caulking compounds. In 1971 Mon santo announced it would restrict sale of PCBs to use in so-called "closed c>cie" systems, such as capacitors and transformers. U.S. industry (tuny cm more than 100 million capaei'ers a year, inctuding those for buna, air c-jmlbton ers. When junked, such an item ts com monly taken to a dump, w hv-re inc chance exists that PCliv can leach through the soil to bodies of water. In western Ne" York stale several companies ha\e beer draining PCBs from old transformer*, mixing them w ill) crankcase oil and see ing the gunk to municipalities to pul on roadsas a dust suppressor. There is also* 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 ran rupture or teak. According to EPA records available in Chicago, a transformer leak occuncd on April 16, l974onaraifrcsuiirainry<i' ninp belw'cci^PhiludcIphw and Paoli, I't From 10 to 100 pounds of PC3a wete spiiled. The same type of spillage **- 20 HONS 068225 currad on July 5 oflast year from a (ram* former Ink in Stamford, Conn. On March 8. 1973, a truck developed a leak In Kingston, Tenn., and 630 gat* Iona of PCBs were spilled. The content* tnatad soils were recovered in 11,300 drums and sealed in concrete at a cost of 51.7 million. It was paid by G.E., which was shipping the chemical. Local resi dents also brought damage suits against G.B. and last October a judge awarded them a total of 5120,000. The U.S. Department of Defense was involved in a Calch-22 PCB episode with other government agencies in Seattle. On Friday, March 13, 1974 an electrical transformer destined for an Air Force ra dar station in Shcmya, Alaska fell on a pier in Seattle and 205 gallons of PCBs Mad Into the Duwamish River. Defense refilled responsibility; so did the U.S. Coast Guard, which has the primary obHgstinn to dean up oil and other harbor epMs. The Coast Guard said PCDs were not among the chemicals it was required to recover. The EPA had to hire divers who brought up 70 to 90 gallons of the oompound, and in February or this year Iht Dafbnse Department finally agreed to pay the coal, 5148,000. But recovery from the Duwamish spill Is hr from ended. EPA officials estimate 80 to 10 gallons remain in the riverbed, and Defense has assigned the job to the U.8. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps Is scheduled to begin dredging 30,000cubic yards of river bottom some time around the first of the year. Esti mated coat of the project is between a quarter and half a million dollars. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Ad ministration allows up to five parts per milkm of PCBs in fish, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regards the presence of a MTpart per million (.3 ppm) in a fish egg as a sure sign of trouble in a water way. According to Charles R. Walker, Senior Environmental Scientist with the Service, who delivered two papers in Chi cago, trouble spots on the Atlantic Coast range from the Merrimac River in Mass achusetts to the St. Johns in Florida. On dm Gulf Coast afflicted rivers extend from the Rio Orande east to the Apa lachicola in the Florida panhandle. The Misstssippi-Mitsouri system has its hot spots. On the West Coast, the Sacramen to, Rogue, Columbii and Snake rivers have problems and they abound in the Oreat Lakes region and in the St. Lawranee. Last week, Canadian officials an nounced they were dropping edible fish tolerance levels from 3 ppm to two ppm and might well close the eel fishery in the St. Lawrence. Obviously, some rivers ate in worse shape than others. Here are some PCB values for fish sampled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: carp, Cincinnati, Ohio River, 133 ppm; two channel cat fish, Marietta, Ohio, Ohio River, 38-77 ppm; walleye pike, Natrona Heights, Pa.. Allegheny River, 35 ppm; white perch, Camden, N.J., Delaware River, 19 ppm; gizzard shad, Elizabethtown, N.C., Cape Fear River, 23 ppm; small-mouth buf falo, Redwood, Miss., Yazoo River, 73 ppm; yellow perch, Lowell, Mass., Mer rimac River, 98 ppm; goldfish, Pough keepsie, N.Y., Hudson River, 213 ppm. The Fish and Wildlife Service does not sample every stream in the country--it extends itself to maintain even (lie 100 monitoring stations in existence--but re search by other agencies reveals other trouble spots. Half the lake trout ana lyzed from Lake George, N.Y. have more than 3 ppm. And eggs of striped bass tak en in 1972 from the Namicoke and Choptank rivers on the supposedly unspoiled eastern shore of Maryland had PCB lev els that ranged from 2.8 to 20 ppm. For a number of years the Fish and WildlifeService also has been monitoring birds. Every starting tested has contained PCBs. Examination ofmaHard and black duck wings show the Atlantic Flyway has the most severe problems, at least for wa terfowl. The mean value for black duck wings is 1.36 ppm, while mallards aver aged 1.26 ppm. The values are slightly lower for the Mississippi Flyway, and lower still for the Central and Pacific. For all the damning dala produced in Chicago, some bureaucrats acted in bi zarre fashion when their turns came to speak. Walter C. Barber, director of the Standards and Regulations Evaluation Division in the EPA. said, "I don't know what we're going to do." Dr. Albert C. Kolbye, associate director for Sciences, Bureau of Foods, FDA, said, in all se riousness, "We are the straight men in a bad joke." Dr. Kolbye is the FDA of ficial who sets iIk PCB tolerance levels for human foods. The weeks ahead doubtless will reveal even more grim news about PCBs. A hearing by the House Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation and the Environment is scheduled to start this month in Washington; and in New York, Ogden Reid continues to push his state hearing. If there is any measure of comfort in all this, it is that Soviet bureaucrats must be more inefficient than most of ours. Just recently a delegation of Soviet sci entists visited one of (he finest labs in this country. They were sltown everything the lab had on PCBs and left loaded down with papers. Before returning home, they stopped at the Soviet embassy in Wash ington, where ail the papers were taken away from them. asso Shown in rob nr* Iho principal aroaa whoro oMcoaaivo PCB Iwvfa have boon dfacovorod. HONS 068226 21