Environment: Of Mice and Men: Alarm over Plastics

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The consumer-oriented federal agencies that have been born in the past four years have quickly learned how to show their muscle. Instead of allowing scientists employed by industry to continue setting their own safety standards, federal scientists are rechecking those standards—and frequently disagreeing with them. Last week two different agencies acted on different fronts to limit threats to human health. In each case the reason was the same: man-made chemicals in wide usage were implicated in causing cancer. If the new rulings stand up to court tests, they promise to have important consequences for the national economy.

The Environmental Protection Agency forbade the use of the pesticides aldrin and dieldrin on corn and citrus crops. Because such spraying accounts for 90% of the chemicals' usage, EPA'S action is a virtual ban. Shell Chemical Co., the sole U.S. producer, is appealing the decision in federal court. The pesticides now protect the crops from cutworms and other insects. But they are so long-lasting that they get into animal feed, water supplies, and thus into human food as well. What the pesticides do to people is still unknown. But they have been found to trigger cancers in laboratory mice.

Was that sufficient evidence to ban the agricultural chemicals? No, argued Shell: cancer in the mouse alone cannot predict the likelihood of cancer in man. But Administrative Law Judge Herbert L. Perlman, who reviewed all testimony and scientific evidence gathered during EPA's hearings, had a different view. "Dieldrin has probably accumulated in the body tissue of every individual" in the U.S., he said. It would therefore be "irresponsible in the extreme" to wait until a wave of human cancers provides proof of the chemicals' suspected danger. The EPA agreed, noting that slightly more expensive substitutes are available to control the pests.

Trouble with VC. Although the EPA's decision sets a precedent for protecting human health from potentially toxic substances, it hardly compares in impact to the action by the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The agency established final limits for workers' exposure to vinyl chloride (vc), a colorless gas derived from chlorine and petrochemicals. It is the major ingredient in polyvinyl chloride (PVC)—the material from which seat covers, phonograph records, credit cards, detergent containers, floor tiles, shower curtains, and a vast number of other familiar plastic products are made. In total, a recent Arthur D. Little study reveals, about 2.2 million jobs in industries selling up to $90 billion worth of goods annually depend on PVC.

This gigantic segment of the U.S. economy rests, like an inverted pyramid, on the production of VC, and OSHA's new standards threaten that production. The agency ruled that starting Jan. 1, workers cannot be exposed to more than one part of vc per million parts of air (v. the present 50 p.p.m.), averaged over an eight-hour day, or to more than 5 p.p.m. for any period longer than 15 minutes. The new rule applies only to the some 6,000 workers who handle VC directly in 50 U.S. plants.