The Poisoning of America

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Coal-tar residues have drained into an aquifer under the metropolitan area of Minneapolis and St. Paul. While the Twin Cities draw water from the Mississippi River, many of their suburbs depend on the threatened underground supply. Near Charles City, Iowa, some deep wells 30 to 40 miles downstream from a chemical dump have shown traces of contamination. At the waste heap, state analysts have found some 6 million Ibs. of arsenic, as well as large quantities of other dangerous chemicals. Says Larry Crane, director of the Iowa department of environmental quality: "It's an organic chemists' cauldron."

Growing recognition of the menace of chemicals has produced a series of state laws that make the casual disposal of wastes a criminal offense. Under a 1979 New Jersey statute, for example, offenders can be fined up to $50,000 a day for every day they leave wastes unprotected and may get jail sentences of up to ten years. As a result of such new rules, careless dumping has been declining—until recently. The reason for the upsurge: a tough set of federal regulations that will go into effect on Nov. 19 requiring dangerous chemical wastes to be tracked "from cradle to grave"; each person or company receiving any chemical wastes on the list will have to account for what happens to them and will be held responsible if the substances are not properly handled. To beat the deadline, some companies have been taking chemical refuse they have stored on their property for months or even years and simply getting rid of the stuff as swiftly and as surreptitiously as they can, often dumping by night and running.

One day a field in Illinois was empty; a week or so later, it contained 20,000 bbl. of dumped wastes. Kentucky state police staked out a site just outside Daniel Boone National Forest, where some 200 containers loaded with dangerous solvents had been discarded. They arrested three Ohio truck drivers. Hundreds of toxic drums were found on three sites near historic Plymouth, Mass. State troopers and other authorities set up roadblocks to stop illegal dumping operations in New Hampshire, which, like the other New England states, has no legal disposal site. Declared New Hampshire acting Attorney General Gregory Smith: "We know toxic waste is being hauled through the state. We have to find out where and when."

The upcoming federal regulations and new state laws will surely help, but what haunts the EPA'S Costle and other environmentalists is the scope of the problem. In 1941 the American petrochemical industry produced 1 billion Ibs. of synthetic chemicals. By 1977 that rate had soared to 350 billion Ibs.

In evolutionary terms, the rapidity and scale of this chemical creativity are frightening. Through the ages, most of the earth's varied organisms, from single cells to plants, animals and early humans, usually had ample time to adapt to the pace of natural change. They evolved protective mutations to meet the gradual shifts in the earth's vital balance between acids and alkalines, in the salinity of water, in levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. But man cannot patiently wait through the centuries for his body to develop a genetic defense against these chemicals if, indeed, such a defense is possible.