Environment: Skeptical View

Another look at Love Canal

When President Carter approved the relocation of some 700 families from the Love Canal area in Niagara Falls, N.Y., last May, he acted on the assumption that the old chemical dump site was, in the words of a New York State report, a "public health time bomb." But just how severely have the people of Love Canal been imperiled? Reviewing the scientific findings to date, a panel of distinguished doctors has now issued a surprising verdict. In its view, no scientific evidence has been offered that the people of Love Canal have suffered "acute health effects" from exposure to the hazardous wastes, nor has the threat of long-term damage been conclusively demonstrated.

The report, commissioned by New York Governor Hugh Carey, is sharply at odds with preliminary investigations. These had indicated that the rate of miscarriages, birth defects, asthma, and nerve disorders was significantly higher among people living near the runoff from the leaking dump site than among other residents. One researcher, hired by the EPA, claimed to have found a high incidence of chromosomal abnormalities. Such defects have been linked with spontaneous abortions, birth defects and cancer.

But the panel, chaired by Dr. Lewis Thomas, chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, attacks the quality of these studies. The chromosome report, it noted, involved no controls or reviews by independent scientists before it was released. That breach of standard scientific practice, said the panel, "was a disservice to the citizens most intimately concerned and to the public at large." The panel also found fault with an investigator who hinted at nerve damage among Love Canal residents: "Equivocal or ambiguous observations are likely to do more harm than good."

The authors of the challenged studies were understandably irritated. Cancer Researcher Beverly Paigen said that while her voluntary effort was only a preliminary study, "it would have been unethical to put it into a drawer and forget it." Jeered Love Canal Homeowner Marie Pozniak: "This is apparently the only place in the U.S. where you can eat, breathe and drink 240 poisonous compounds and be safe."

The panel did not deny the clear risk in living atop toxic pollutants. As Thomas put it: "Love Canal is obviously a miserable place, and I feel very sympathetic to the residents." It did say that before any rational decisions can be made about these dangers, they must be established by something more than what Thomas calls "fragmentary and poor science." ∙