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f RADIO TV REPORTS, INC. 41 EAST 42nd STREET. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10017.697,5100 FOR HILL & KN0WLT0N, INC. PROGRAM CBS REPORTS: "THE POLITICS OF CANCER" DATE JUNE 22, 1976 10:00PM STATION WCBS-TV AND THE CBS TELEVISION NETWORK CITY NEW YORK BROADCAST EXCERPT LESLEY STAHL: Two years vinyl chloride industry, in a Of The Plastic Peril. It was cancer caused by working with ago, CBS News reported on the documentary called. The Case a story of people dying of cancer, vinyl chloride. MAN: Dr. Treat finally shook me, and says, Ray, I hate to tell you this, but you got angiosarcoma. STAHL: Two years ago the cleanup of the industry looked like a long, expensive project. Later, when the health standards were written, the plastic industry testified that the new regulations would put them out of business, and cause workers to lose their jobs. But three weeks after regulations, all the major companis were on their way to compliance. Today, government, industry, and labor are cautiously certain that the danger from vinyl chloride gas has passed. At this new chemical plant in Houston, Texas, the system is completely closed in three hundred thousand feet of pipe. Automation has taken over. The process is remote-controlled, and the deadly gas that might have escaped is captured, and turned into more plastic. In the air outside the plant, there's only an occasional trace of vinyl chloride in the range of parts per billion. One of the things the plastic industry did was hire William Ruckelshaus, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency as its spokesman. That's a practice that sometimes raises eyebrows. But these days, Ruckelshaus gets good grades from both government and industry. WILLIAM RUCKELSHAUS: I think it's important to remember that there is a need for government to regulate, even if you assume the vast majority of industry is in good faith, because 22355001 OFFICES IN: NEW YORK DETROIT * LOS ANGELES * WASHINGTON, D. C. CHICAGO AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES Va'e-a. '-a/ "e jse3 for r.e and reference curccses only it may not De reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhiDited [2] all It takes is one of, say, a twenty-three member companies, who are competing with one another in the production of a product, to say: I'm not going to spend the money to reduce the emissions, to protect the air of the water, or the workers, and the rest of them are forced to follow that line, because he gets a tremendous competitive advantage. If he hasn't expended those costs. And therefore, the government's got to come in, and say: All of you are going to have to do it. As a citizen, I'm not going to be satisfied to permit the industry to decide whether or not they're going to be good citizens. I want the government to have the responsibility in the event the industry doesn't do it. *0 CO Cfl c* o [2] all it takes is one of, say, a twenty-three member companies, who are competing with one another in the production of a product, to say: I'm not going to spend the money to reduce the emissions, to protect the air of the water, or the workers, and the rest of them are forced to follow that line, because he gets a tremendous competitive advantage. If he hasn't expended those costs. And therefore, the government's got to come in, and say: All of you are going to have to do it. As a citizen, I'm not goinq to be satisfied to permit the industry to decide whether or not they're going to be good citizens. I want the government to have the responsibility in the event the industry doesn't do it. 'It. ' ru.^ \x .v A ': .<. , t Cancer: The Bureaucratic Malignancy By Frank Getlein Washington Star Staff Writer t \>^ /?b You may think a check and a check-up are all you can do about cancer, but CBS Reports, tonight at 10 on WTOP-9, points up that the malignancy can be politi cal as well as carcinogenic. ``The Politics of Cancer" examines the work of three government .agencies concerned with the social and economic aspects of the disease, as distinct from the strictly medical aspects. The agencies are the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occu pational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). IN WHAT MAY be called pedestrian electronic jour nalism, correspondent Lesley Stahl trudges dutifully up the steps and down the corridors of the three agen cies to talk with officials responsible and with former Officials critical of the agencies' reluctance to meet -responsibility, exercise authority, fulfill their protec tive functions. The reasons for the reluctance become clear as Stahl talks with representatives of affected industries, factory owners, union leaders and even workers. As the tobacco industry's sympathetic journalists have said so often, there's money in cancer and the govern ment should be chary of interfering with any citizen's chance to make a buck. Such, at least, is the conclu sion the viewer draws, more or less on his own. CBS refrains from explicit conclusions. The program does ;ndeed strike that sought-for "balance" that people as lisparate in motive and make-up as the non-contend ing Spiro Agnew and the highly contentious Eric Sevareid favor. THE COMPLEXITY ARISES from the obvious fact that there is a lot of money riding on what seem to be some of the causes of cancer. For one thing, spokes men for that cashbox never refer to the money, always to "jobs," something a little closer to sacrosanct status. For another, the cancerous connection for a lot of the chemicals simply is not fullyy proved. There is reasonable suspicion, but not final proof. In short, there are open questions and CBS is scrupulous in acknowledging them, always doing so with no hint of deferring to economic motives. The factory chosen for inspection, for example, is that of a small-time free enterpriser in West Virginia who would certainly be driven out of business if forced into total compliance with existing regulations, let alone those being proposed. A particular feature of the enforcement of stand ards, regulations, whatever, is the delay involved. If the environmentalists are right, of course, each delay is respoonsible for a calculable number of deaths from cancer. On the other hand, if the money-job interests are right, it all amounts to is good old due process. AT ANY RATE, "The Politics of Cancer" is elec tronic journalism at its best -- nothing flashy, just a methodical laying out of many of the varied elements in a complex and extremely important area of knowl edge unknown to most of us. Stahl is a good interviewer, asking the right questions, making the right second questions after the first ones are parried. She illustrates nicely one of the great advantages of women in this line of work. She has no compulsion to take on her subject for two or three rounds or to show how tough she can be. She just keeps on coming, quietly presenting facts that make a Hash of the last answer, not distracting our attention from those facts and that evasion by pugilistic posturing. , ; . , . ,v .. ...._ ir'% **-**, .i" V* , v -w ' ' (y;.' --- ' * \)t r ,, ,* ' - ' " u\ v\ o rr~9* IIILi. and KNOWLTON, Inc. THE WASHINGTON TOST 13 <5 TuC!'<iayJune22,1076 Poll tics of Cancer By Stuart Auerbach It hardly seems like pood television, yet one of the strongest moments in tonight's CBS Reports on cnncr conies when three former government attorneys unroll a long chart showing all the steps it takes to try to .gel can cer-causing chemicals of! the market. The three attorneys who had re cently resigned from the Environment al Protection Agency because they think it gives in too much to industry, used the chart to prove their point. A man at one end of the table start ed to unroll it. He passed if on to the other two until finally the chart readi ed CBS correspondent Leslie S'ahl at the other end of the table. The chart. TV Preview they said, represents one to Hi years--- 'and those are just the steps leading to hearings on the chemicals. No wonder tile cancer rate is going up. And no wonder Jimmy Colter's anti-Washington campaign to reform government is winning voles. For the fourth time in two years CBS has done a prime lime special on cancer--10-11 p.m. This one focuses on its politics-- the clashes between government and business with, it ap pears, the general public the loser. The program is solid. Judy Crichton, who produced it and wrote most of the script, is one of the .journalistic experts on cancer in the environment and the workplace. The show zooms in on throe federal agencies sot up to orolcd the con sumer--the EPA, the lesser-known Ocetipalloiial Safety and llealln Ad ministration (OSHA) in tlie Depart ment of Labor, and tlio Food and Drug Administration nliich, in the words-of one 1 ormor employee, has switched from an adversary relation ship with iwluslry to one of "working with industry to solve their mutual problems." Some of the strongest footage is' material ordinarily not considered exciting enough lor television--just- people talking, either mak ing points or hanging them selves with their words. The chart unrolling by the three lawyers is one of those strong points. In another that just precedes it, an EPA official, Edwin John son, tries to explain why it hasn't pushed for bans on 100 pesticides suspected of causing cancer. The list, Johnson first said, is an EPA "internal working document that has been in the agency some time," as if that matters. When correspmidcnt Stahl presses him to explain why action taken on those pesti- >" cities is nil--"delayed, hear ing pending, decision unde cided"--Johnson EPA is working. insists One-fourth, he said, are arsenic compounds "and a - decision will come out very shortly on those." Others arc mercury products and '"`these in fact have been in a hearing for a year and a half." So Stahl, by lolling EPA official Johnson talk, has proven the lawyers' point: It fakes too lone to get canccr- causing chemicals off the market. Grover Wrcnn, an OSHA official, also has trouble ex plaining why it takes so long to control canccr-cnus- ing substances in the work place. A million-and-a-half workers are exposed to ar senic, which is still unregu lated, said Stahl. "Well of course we have proposed to do so," an swered Wrcnn, "We bad a scries of written comments, public bearings, and are nrcscntlv concluding the in flationary impact state ment." What about Trichloro ethylene? Asbestos? Coke oven emissions? "Again the nroccss continues," said Wrcnn. "OSHA lias pursued the development of the coke oven emission standard as -anidlv as it has been possi ble to do so, within the constraints of the regulatory process as we have come to know it." Interviews with industry representatives show that one man's sellout is another man's due process or bal anced procedure. One thing docs come across, though: The problem of cleaning up the work place is not as great as in dustry would like the public to believe. Industry, for ex ample. said it could not meet the stiff government regulations for the vinyl _ chloride. Yet companies did, and the cost of the plastic product has not gone up as industry predicted. More over. environmental regula tion has created an entirely new industry--a point big business doesn't usually mention--with 1 million new jobs. Still, there ore small chemical businesses such as the one run by Elmer Fike in Nitro, W. Va.--"the messi est place we've ever seen." Stahl said--which may not be able to afford to meet government standards. Fike, who knows his plant is sloppy but doesn't tlnnk it is dangerous, thinks it would cost millions of dollars to bring his plant up to snuff. Which raiser, questions barclv hinted at in the CBS Reports: With an estimated 1(H).POO people a venr dving from work-related diseases, should a man such as Fike he allowed to stay _ in business" Or is it more im portant to preserve some ec onomic balance between small business and the eco nomic giants,1 Or should he be the stalkin'.: horse for big business' anti-government complaints? CO in o