♦ Herald & lantern 18 July '84 51

Loose Chemical fcenie Hard to Catch, Cork

By BARBARA S. MOFFET National Geographic News Service WASHINGTON — More than a decade ago, the N.S. Congress realized that although chejmicals such as pesticides and drugs were Tegulated, the country was swimming in more than 60,000 other substances such as industrial solvents that scientists and the public knew little about. Today, they still know very little. And# it's apparent that even laws can't' guarantee automatic protection from hazardous substances. The congressional response to the gap regtfgnized in the 1970's was passage of an ambitious law called the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Enacted in 1976, the law set out to monitor new chemical products, determine the effects Jof existing substances on people and the environment, and control any that are fftund to be dangerous. SINCE THEN, the EnvironmAitalA*rotection Agency, the main agency burdened with the job, has found that once the chemical is out of the bottle, it's^hafxHo> stuff it back, in again. Almost all of me thousands of substances in existence in 1976 are still being made and sold, and at least 1,000 new ones are introduced each year. "In terms of what we're breathing, eating and drinking, it would be hard to find any measurable reduction in exposure since the act was passed," says Jackqueline Warren of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a lawyer who worked for TSCA's passage. Leading the world in chemical production, the United States makes more than 300 billion pounds of chemicals a year. Since World War II, U.S. chemical production has increased 350times. A web of chemiearfsmow supports and threatens modern lif§. Americans are surrounded by the fqjits of the industry — home furnishpgs, appliances, cars, clothes, and food products. Without fertilizers and pesticides, U.S. food production would be cut about a third, and without fumigants, preservatives and chemical-based packages, another quarter would spoil before reaching the table. \ EXPOSURE TO hazardous chemicals is virtually unavoidable, whether it's in the workplace, the air, water, food or consumer products. The pesticide ethylene dibromide ( EDB ) < recently was banned for agricultural use, but 90 percent of it will still be sold ps a gasoline additive. • TSCA attacks the chemical problem on several fronts. One is that, before a company beings to produce and sell a new product, it must notify EPA. But because the law does not require testing of the substance, many notices come in with no data on the products' effects on human health or the environment. Since the act was passed, more than 3,000 new chemical notices have flooded EPA; more than 90 percent of these chemicals have passed through with no restrictions on commercial use. TSCA also set up a system for scrutinizing substances already in use. A committee of representatives of tight government ^agencies is charged with regularly compil-

ing lists of questionmark chemicals with significant public exposure. Substances may be suspected of causing such problems as cancer, birth defects, mutations » or environmental damage. I SINCE 1977 the committee has recom1 mended about 70 substances for EPA's ; review. In seven years, not one of these ■ substances has been banned or even made t it through the regulatory process to testing. Some, however, are being tested I voluntarily by manufacturers. i The act also gives EPA powers to regulate or ban chemicals that pose an' i unreasonable risk." EPA officials point i to their two major actions, "advanced ; notices of proposed rulemaking, " meaning i that-controls are contemplated. One of the substances, a chemical widely used in the rubber industry, got officials' attention when tests showed it to be a potent animal carcinogen that caused a rare tumor of the heart. Even known human carcinogens continue to be used, some in high volume. Vinyl chloride, a colorless gas that is a staple of the plastics industry, might never > have been proved a human carcinogen if several workers had not died of rare liver tumors that matched those of test animals expose<Uo the gas. "If the workers had developed lung tfhnors or another common type, we wouldn't have been able to say what caused them to die," says Dr. James Huff of the National Toxicology Program. A'INYL CHLORIDE is still produced in hufeh quantities in this country, but workers are required to avoid direct ex posure to it. Cancer-causing substances show up in some unlikely places. DEHF, recently added to the government's list of likely _car cinogens, is used to make plastic products more flexible, including shower curtains, surgical gloves and bags for intravenous fluids. "It could be dangerous to people getting frequent bloou transfusions," says Dr. Huff. DEHP is also used in car upholstery, although there it poses no known risk. "It's probably what you smell in new cars," he says. N-Nitrosopiperidine a possible carcinogen, is used in cardiovascular implants and babies' rubber pacifiers Phenacetin, a crystalline powder found to cause cancer in animals, goes into musclepain relivers and hair bleaches. It 's almost impossible to avoid asbestos, a serious cancer -causer found almost anywhere from school ceilings to dental filungs \ LAST NOVEMBER the interagency committee recommended four more substances for consideration for iesting Assuming EPA chooses to test them, the complexities of rulemaking would friake it 1967 before experiments could even Begin, according to Steven New burg- Rinn of EPA. "After that, tests for cancer could take four or five years, 300 animals, and cost anywhere from a half -million to $1.5 million for each chemical," he says "It could easily be 10 years before we'd have a final decision on those four substances." At least one bill is pending in Congress to address the shortcomings of the Toxic Substances Control Act. But environmental groups fault EPA, such as in the case of PCBs.

The writers of the act had singled out PCBs polychlorinated biphenyles, as needing immediate attention. Common components of electrical transformers and capacitors, PCBs were released by the hundreds of millions of pounds during manufacture. They cause a variety of diseases accumulating in tissues of organisms and moving up the food chain 19 humans. The first rules EPA made exempted 99 percent of the PCBs in use, " says Ms. Warren of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Lawsuits have prompted at least two rewrites of the rules. EPA OFFICIALS maintain that, after a slow start, they are steadily plowing

through the vast fields of chemicals and seeing results But Newburg-Rinn, for one. is awed by the task : "We made 30 or 40 ac tions last year, but when you have 60.000 chemicals out there, that's not much " He defends the idea of treating a chemical as innocent until proved other wise. "You can't say don't use anything that hasn't been tested' because society would come to a halt, no cars, no food, nothing." Still in the philosophical stage is what happens when two or more chemicals mix "We're exposed to hundreds of, chemicals," says Dr. Huff, a toxicologist. "What they all do together is a veryunclear area of science "

GROUNDWATER THREAT^^^,^ I from various I I sources conUaiMU I I Oummtiomi > roundwam in this \ LJafooMMCtocKTY shoplffM Mack *a«ra«. - _ " • —

Polluted Groundwater: 4 A Potential Timebomb'

By MERCER CROSS National Geographir News WASHINGTON — Polluted groundwater represents "a potential time bomb slowly ticking and waiting to go off,' Rep. Mike Synar, D-okla .said at a recent House subcommittee hearing. Synar, chairman of the Government Operations Subcommittee on Environment, Energy and Natural Resources, rat tied off a frightening list of some of the contamination sources: • 16,000 indentified closed hazardous-waste sites, • 1,500 active hazardous-waste-disposal facilities; • 93,000 landfills, • 181,000 surface impoundments • 1.5 million to 2 million underground storage tanks ; • 20 million septic tanks , • "Uncountable accidental spills, illegal disposals, abandoned mines, oil and gas wells, and pesticide runoff And it all pours, trickles, and seeps into the ground, threatening further con Lamination of aquifers - the permeable undergrand rocks, gravel, and sand that contain half of the nation's drinking water IT IS CLEAR THAT the problem is serious and one that is, in all likelihood, going to get woc>e before it gets better " Philip Cohen, chief of the water Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey, testified at Senate hearings in 1982 It's estimated that U.S. aquifers hold as much as 100 quadrillion gallons That's 16 times the volume of the Great Lakes Only about 1 percent of that water is thought to be polluted. But low percentages can be misleading when sophisticated devices measure pollution in parts per billion or even trillion "Even a small percentage of groundwater contamination is serious," Cohen said, "because generally we find groundwater contamination in areas of densest population and/or industrial activity " SINCE 1956. HE testified, and estimated 6 billion metric tons of hazardous wastes have been disposed of in or on the land Some 40 million metric tons are now being added each year, and the rate is growing at about 5 percent a year. Cohen said At the same time, Americans are increasing their use of groundwater about 4 i percent a year. The volume of ground- ; water used in this country nearly tripled between 1950 and 1980, from 34 billion gallons a day tc 88.5 billion 1 Despite the mid-stretching magnitude of < the problem, however, groundwater con- I lamination has gone largely unnoticed un- 1 til recently. Groundwater is an important 1 component of serveral federal conserva- i tion laws of the 1970 s and '80 s, but none deals with it exclusively. | For one thing, unlike surface water, 1 groundwater travels slowly. Much of to- < day's pollution orignated with our parents I and grandparents. The wastes we add to- < day will be our children's and grandchildren's problem. < The Council on Environmental Quality i noted in a 1981 report: "With contamina j tion by toxic organic chemicals, ground- 1 water can remain polluted for hundreds or t thousands of years, if not geologic time, because nature supplies few if any cleans- ( ing or diluting forces." t MAN CAN LEND a hand, however. J States and localities have been coping with i individual pollution problems for decades, i

in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey. But it took a string of major contamination catastrophes to arouse public concern " 1 and preso the federal government to begin concentrating on long term answers to the increasingly critical dilemma. Love Canal. Valley of the Drums Times Beach Stringfcilow Acid Pita. Such locals became familiar places in the gei<graphy pollution I think it is relatively safe toassiime that groundwater issues have finally become part of our social legislative and scientific conscience, and are likly to be so for a rather long time, " Clinton W. Hall, director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Robert S Kerr labratorv in Ada Okla . said at the House subcommittee hearing in April The subject of those hearings was a proposed groundwater strategy drafted by the EPA. A final version of the strategy was expected to be released about the end of May. THE STRATEGY reinforces state antipollution programs, regulates underground storage tanks, considers fur ther controls of land disposal facilities, adopts guideliness for consistent ground wateY protection programs and creates an EPA offices of Groundwater Protection Deputy" EPA Administrator Alvin L Aim decribed the strategy as a "solid " beginning that institutionalizes a coordinated approach within EPA " But the draft proposal drew considerable criticism, pffticulary from en vironmentalists Theyi, protested, among other things, its lack Of financing provisions. and argued that it wasn't tough or comprehensive enough "The fact of the matter is. from a technical perspective those standards and regulations are really not going to be effec tive in protecting groundwater and protecting public health and environment," said Joel S. Hirschhorn, a senior associate in the congressional Office of Technology Assessment ON TllE OTHER HANI). Jay Lehr of Worthington, Ohio, executive director of the National Water Well Association, said he was "very optimistic. . If we really get our act together, we can lick it in 10 years If we don't, it might take us 20 or 25 years.. So there is every reason to believe that in 15 years, groundwater pollution need not be the high priority that it is today " Marian Mlay, director of the EPA's new Office of Groundwater Protection — it was established even before the strategy's final draft was completed — also struck an optimistic note, while acknowledging the multibillion-dollar price tag on any cleanup The EPA, strategy "doesn't mean we're going to have a plan that's going to clean every drop of contaminated groundwater in the country, because nobody in right mind could ever imagine affording something like that," she said. "But we certainly can identify those areas We can certainly clean up those that going to be used for drinking pur poses There are ways of locating and managing plumes of contamination so that they do no harm to anybody " Groundwater pollution is like an ink spot * a shirt, said Eugene E. Patton, chief of the Groundwater Branch of the Geological Water Resources Division. Once there, you never completely get rid of c it.