=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #327
—March 4, 1993—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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HOW WE GOT HERE–PART 1: THE
HISTORY OF CHLORINATED BIPHENYL (PCBS)
If you had to pick one chemical that best exemplified our modern
situation, it might well be PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).
PCBs were first manufactured commercially in 1929 by the Swan
Corporation, which later became part of Monsanto Chemical Company
of St. Louis, Missouri.[1] Monsanto then licensed others to make
PCBs and the product took off. PCBs conduct heat very well, but
do not conduct electricity, and they do not burn easily.
Furthermore, they do not change chemically–they are stable–and
they are not soluble in water. Therefore they are ideal
insulators in big electrical transformers and capacitors (devices
that store electricity). As electricity came into widespread use
during the first half of this century, equipment suppliers like
GE and Westinghouse became major users of PCBs.
Many of the characteristics that make PCBs ideal in industrial
applications create problems in the environment. Like many other
chlorinated hydrocarbons, PCBs are soluble in fat, though not in
water, so they tend to accumulate in living things and to enter
food webs, where they concentrate. Larger, older predators tend
to accumulate PCBs in their fatty tissues, including their eggs
(in the case of birds and fish) and their milk (in the case of
mammals). PCBs were first recognized as an environmental problem
in 1966 when a Swedish researcher reported finding them in 200
pike from all over Sweden, in other fish, and in an eagle.[2] For
the next decade, scientists accumulated information about PCBs,
finding them disrupting food webs all over the planet. By 1976,
the destruction wrought by PCBs was so obvious and so well
understood that even the U.S. Congress comprehended the danger
and took action, outlawing the manufacture, sale, and
distribution of PCBs except in “totally enclosed” systems.
Between 1929 and 1989, total world production of PCBs (excluding
the Soviet Union) was 3.4 billion pounds, or about 57 million
pounds per year. Even after the U.S. banned PCBs in 1976, world
production continued at 36 million pounds per year from 1980-1984
and 22 million pounds per year, 1984-1989. The end of PCB
production is still not in sight.[3]
The whereabouts of 30 percent of all PCBs (roughly a billion
pounds) remains unknown. Another 30 percent reside in landfills,
in storage, or in the sediments of lakes, rivers, and estuaries.
Some 30 percent to 70 percent remain in use. The characteristics
of PCBs (their stability and their solubility in fat) tend to
move them into the oceans as time passes. Nevertheless, it is
estimated that only one percent of all PCBs have, so far, reached
the oceans.[3]
The one percent that HAVE reached the oceans are causing major
problems. As noted above, PCBs tend to concentrate in the food
chain; the higher you are on the food chain, the greater the
concentration of PCBs. Large fish, and creatures that eat large
fish, tend to accumulate thousands of parts of million (ppm) in
their flesh. Furthermore, by a cruel twist of fate, large birds
and large marine mammals (seals, sea lions, whales, and some
dolphins) lack enzyme systems to efficiently detoxify PCBs. As a
result, PCBs build up in the bodies of oceanic predators and are
passed to their offspring through eggs (in the case of fish and
birds) and milk (in the case of mammals). PCBs mimic hormones and
are a powerful disruptor of the endocrine system that governs
reproduction. Marine mammals are already having trouble
reproducing.[4] It is entirely possible that, as more PCBs reach
the oceans, all large mammals will disappear.[5]
Humans, too, are contaminated by PCBs and are passing these
powerful toxins to their infant children through breast milk. In
the U.S. and other industrialized countries, PCBs are present in
breast milk at about 1 part per million (ppm) in the milk fat. An
infant drinking milk contaminated at this level will take in a
quantity of PCBs that is 5 times as high as the recommended
“allowable daily intake” for an adult, as established by the
World Health Organization.[6]
Children exposed in the womb to PCBs at levels considered
“background levels” in the U.S. have been found to experience
hypotonia (loss of muscle tone) and hyporeflexia (weakened
reflexes) at birth, delays in psychomotor development at ages 6
and 12 months, and diminished visual recognition memory at 7
months.[7]
How did we get here?
In 1937–just eight years after Swan Chemical began manufacturing
PCBs in commercial quantities–the Harvard School of Public
Health hosted a one-day meeting on the problem of “systemic
effects” of certain chlorinated hydrocarbons including
“chlorinated diphenyl” (an early name for PCBs).[8] The meeting
was attended by representatives from Monsanto, General Electric,
the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Halowax Corporation,
among others.
Before World War I, the Halowax Corporation began manufacturing
chlorinated naphthelenes as a coating for electric wire and
companies like General Electric began using it. The president of
Halowax, Sandford Brown, told the meeting that they had observed
no problems in their workers until “the past 4 or 5 years… Then
we come to the higher stages [greater number of chlorine atoms in
the mixture], combined with chlorinated diphenyl and other
products, and suddenly this problem is presented to us.”[8] By
the mid-1930s, workers at Halowax and at GE, and even some of
their customers, were breaking out with chloracne–small pimples
with dark pigmentation of the exposed area, followed by
blackheads and pustules. In 1936 three workers at the Halowax
Company died, and Halowax then hired Harvard University
researchers to expose rats to these chlorinated compounds, to see
if they could discover the underlying cause. The Harvard
researchers made “a number of estimates of chlorinated
hydrocarbons in the air of different factories,” then designed
experiments to expose rats to similar levels. They reported that
“the chlorinated diphenyl is certainly capable of doing harm in
very low concentrations and is probably the most dangerous [of
the chlorinated hydrocarbons studied].”[8] And, they said,
“These experiments leave no doubt as to the possibility of
systemic effects from the chlorinated naphthalenes and
chlorinated diphenyls.”[8]
From a brief report on the one-day conference, we can gather that
problems caused by PCB exposures were serious and widely known.
Mr. F.R. Kaimer, assistant manager of General Electric’s
Wireworks at York, Pa., said, “It is only 1 1/2 years ago that we
had in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 men afflicted with various
degrees of this acne about which you all know. Eight or ten of
them were very severely afflicted–horrible specimens as far as
their skin conditions was concerned. One man died and the
diagnosis may have attributed his death to halowax vapors, but
we are not sure of that….”[8]
GE’s medical director, Dr. B. L. Vosburgh of Schenectady, N.Y.,
attended the meeting. He said, “About the time we were having so
much trouble at our York factory some of our customers began
complaining. We thought we were having a hysteria of halowax
mania throughout the country.”
Monsanto Chemical Company was represented at the meeting by R.
Emmett Kelly. Mr. Kelly told the meeting, “I can’t contribute
anything to the laboratory studies, but there has been quite a
little human experimentation in the last several years,
especially at our plants where we have been manufacturing this
chlorinated diphenyl.” He went on to describe the results of
Monsanto’s human experiments: “A more or less extensive series of
skin eruptions which we were never able to attribute as to cause,
whether it was impurity in the benzene we were using or to the
chlorinated diphenyl.”[8]
GE’s F.R. Kaimer described the HUMAN reaction of GE executives to
the disfigurement and pain of GE workers exposed to PCBs: “[W]e
had 50 other men in very bad condition as far as the acne was
concerned. The first reaction that several of our executives had
was to throw it out–get it out of our plant. They didn’t want
anything like that for treating wire. But that was easily said
but not so easily done. We might just as well have thrown our
business to the four winds and said, ‘We’ll close up,’ because
there was no substitute and there is none today in spite of all
the efforts we have made through our own research laboratories to
find one.”[8] And so GE executives–contrary to their personal
ethics–reached a business decision to continue using PCBs.
[To be concluded next week.]
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
[2] Soren Jensen, “Report of a New Chemical Hazard,” NEW
SCIENTIST Vol. 32 (1966), pg. 612.
Descriptor terms: pcbs; ge; chlorine; sandford brown; halowax
corp; usphs; westinghouse; electricity; monsanto; wildlife; fish;
mo; landfills; oceans; swan corp;