The Poisoning of America

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Experts may debate just how bad the problem is. Robert A. Roland, president of the Chemical Manufacturers Association, attacked the Surgeon General's report for exaggerating the threat of toxic wastes. But one thing is certain: the rapid accumulation of chemical-waste products poses one of the most complex and expensive environmental control and cleanup tasks in history. Says Douglas M. Costle, administrator of the EPA: "We didn't understand that every barrel stuck into the ground was a ticking time bomb, primed to go off." Predicts Dr. Irving Selikoff, director of the Environmental Sciences Laboratory of New York City's Mount Sinai Medical School: "Toxic waste will be the major environmental and public health problem facing the U.S. in the '80s." The EPA estimates that the U.S. is generating more than 77 billion Ibs. of hazardous chemical wastes a year and that only 10% are being handled in a safe manner. At least half of the wastes, says Gary N. Dietrich, an EPA official, "are just being dumped indiscriminately."

There may be no greater threat than the steady rise in the number of wells found to be contaminated by chemicals. Fully 50% of all Americans depend on ground rather than surface water for their drinking supply. Water that may have fallen to earth as long as a century ago has percolated slowly down through soil and porous rock to collect in vast underground aquifers that were virtually void of chemical and bacteriological impurities. Now substances, mostly petrochemicals thought to have been harmlessly disposed of years ago, are beginning to show up even in the deeper U.S. wells. This contamination will grow as those forgotten chemicals of the past steadily reach more of the underground reservoirs from which Americans will drink in the future.

After two years of investigation, the New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc., a respected private organization, charges that 66 companies dump nearly 10 million gal. of contaminated waste water each day into eleven municipal sewerage systems on Long Island. Since none of these systems can treat toxic wastes, claims the report, the drinking water for some 3 million residents is "in danger of deteriorating into a severely contaminated industrial sewer."

In a lovely wooded area of New Jersey known as the Pine Barrens, more than 100 wells have been poisoned by chemicals leaching from the 135-acre Jackson Township dump. James McCarthy, who had drunk well water for ten years, had one kidney removed in 1977, and now has trouble with the other. Tara, his daughter, died in 1975 of a kidney cancer when she was nine months old. A 16-year-old neighbor lost a kidney to cancer; another neighbor is on dialysis for kidney problems; a third also has a kidney ailment. No scientific link has been established between the chemicals and the illnesses, but, McCarthy says, "you can't tell me that all our kidney problems and the poisons in our water aren't connected."

Water supplies in 22 Massachusetts towns have been contaminated by chemicals. In Michigan, inspectors have found 300 sites where wastes have polluted ground water. Residents of some 90 homes near Muskegon now use bottled water supplied by the county. The polluted water there, says Tom Spencer, a county health official, "looks just like bock beer. It even has a head on it."