FEDERAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS CONCERNING HANDLING, TRANSPORTATION AND DISPOSAL OF TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS Authorizes the Atomic Energy Commission to set standards regulating the possession and use of nuclear materials including the granting of licenses; also authorizes AEC to cooperate with the States. Authorizes the establishment of national air quality standards, performance standards for new and modified stationary sources, hazardous emission standards for new and existing stationary sources, emission standards for new motor vehicles and aircraft emission standards. Regulates the transportation of hazardous materials by air. Requires precautionary labeling for products defined as hazardous in containers intended as suitable for household use; authorizes the banning of toys or articles where a child may secure access to the hazardous substances and provides for the banning of a hazardous substance where necessary for health and safety. Requires registration of economic poisons (pesticides) with the Administrator, EPA; requires submission of proof of safety and efficacy of product and label to be used; also authorizes Secretary to establish specific coloration requirements for certain products. Provides for Federal-State standards covering the quality Authorizes the regulation of food labeling, food additives, Makes nonmailable certain poisons and other materials and provides for the regulation of certain permitted articles by the Postmaster General. Labor sets standards based upon criteria developed by Establishes board to advise the Secretary of Defense on Senator SPONG. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your testi mony. Dr. Robert Risebrough, we are very pleased to have you with us this morning. We will accept your statement for the record in its entirety, and you may testify from it as you wish. STATEMENT OF ROBERT RISEBROUGH, ASSOCIATE RESEARCH ECOLOGIST, BODEGA MARINE LABORATORY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Mr. RISEBROUGH. Thank you, Chairman Spong and members of the subcommittee. For several years I and a number of my colleagues have been studying a group of chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls, one of the chemicals that might be regulated by the proposed bill. I would like, therefore, to outline briefly to you some of the properties of these chemicals and some of their possible effects upon the environment and I would also like to discuss some priorities in research. Briefly, PCB's are very much like the DDT compounds in their chemical properties. They are very resistant to degradation more so than the DDT compounds. In fact, it is this property that makes them useful in many industrial processes. In the past, they have been widely used as additives to sealants and plastics, even to some insecticides at times, but their major use has been as insulating fluids in electrical equipment. Whenever there are high voltages that might constitute a fire hazard, it is desirable to add a substance that will not burn. Their other major use, and continues to be, is as heat exchange fluids in factory equipment. These latter two uses, that as an insulating fluid and, as a heat exchange fluid, are considered to be closed systems in that under careful use PCB would not be released into the environment. Now, when the studies were published of results obtained first in Sweden and then in other parts of Europe and then in North America that PCB was very widespread and a locally abundant environmental pollutant, the Monsanto Co., which is the sole manufacturer here in North America, recognized the ecological hazard of the substances and instituted a number of voluntary controls that they hoped would cut down on all uses that were not in closed systems. They recommended, for example, that all use as plasticizers be suspended. This was done last year when they also constructed a hightemperature incinerator unit to burn waste PCB. Relatively little research has been done about their effects upon man or upon other organisms. Earlier workers in factories making PCB developed a severe skin disease, "chloracne," and this disease was also common among workers in factories making other chlorinated organic compounds. This phenomenon was studied extensively in Germany, and the conclusion that emerged was that there were contaminants in the preparation that turned out to be the chlorinated dioxins, which are also contaminants in the herbicide 2,4,5-T. In the course of those studies, it was discovered that another group of compounds which are chlorinated dibenzofurans were also potent introducers of this skin disease and were very poisonous. In my written report, I have given the structures of PCB, chlorinated dibenzofuran and chlorinated dioxin. Two years ago in Japan a number of people came down with a severe skin disease. It was traced to a PCB leaking out of a heat exchange fluid in a factory making rice oil which is used for cooking in Japan. There are many studies published from this and one of these reported that the oil contained approximately 200 p.p.m. PCB, and that symptoms were detected in families as little as 1 month after consumption, and from a rough calculation one can conclude from their figures that each person might have consumed a half liter of cooking oil over a month and that this amount of PCB was sufficient to produce the minimum effect. From this we can make some rough calculations and then figure out how much fish or poultry we would have to eat to get the same amount of PCB which turns out to be on the order of a tenth of a gram. However, there is a very serious uncertainty here because we do not know whether the toxicity of the PCB comes from the PCB itself or from small amounts of these contaminants present in the preparation. One of the desirable features of the proposed bill might give us some data on the amounts of contaminants in a preparation and hopefully with these we would be able to start studies that might indicate whether these highly poisonous compounds are formed in the environment as well. Perhaps the most conspicuous environmental effect that has been documented is the thin egg shell phenomenon, something that started in the late 1940's. When the PCB's were first discovered it seemed that this might be one of the possible causes of this phenomenon. A number of studies have been carried out in several laboratories and the consensus is they do not contribute to this particular phenomenon. Late last year studies were published from Holland on the toxicity of PCB, and these workers compared three PCB preparations that had virtually the same amount of chlorine. Therefore, they should nave been exactly the same with respect to toxicity biological effects. In fact, they were very different. The French one was much more toxic than the German which in turn was much more toxic than the American. These data suggest to us that the real toxicity problem of PCB comes from these contaminants. For example, the Bureau of Sports Fisheries and Wildlife has carried on a number of studies on the reproductive effect of PCB on several species of birds. In general, the effects are not very great. However, a poultry farmer recently found that his flocks were hatching fewer chicks than usual and this was traced to the PCB that was a contaminant in the fish meal which in turn had received the PCB's from the heat exchange fluid in the factory. At first these results would appear to be inconsistent because the chicken suffered the reproductive effects from the PCB in the heat exchange fluid and the birds at the wildlife center showed no effects with the test samples of PCB. Again this inconsistency could be explained if the real effects were coming from the contaminants. Briefly, the chief research problem that we as pollution ecologists face and which we think is the most serious is what will happen in the future given the present amounts of PCB now on the land and the amounts added each year. We would like to be able to construct an equation that would tell us how fast PCB will accumulate. Already in the Northeast, around Long Island Sound, the levels are quite high. If they were to go up by a factor of 10, then we could say that the fishing in that area would be wiped out. We assume that most of the PCB that has been in this country is still on the land and it is constantly reaching into the atmosphere or into municipal sewage or the rivers and gradually entering the sea. We cannot estimate what proportion of this PCB will enter the sea. If we are to seriously protect the oceans as a food source, we badly need to know certain kinds of data, production figures of PCB and good data on the relative amounts used for one thing or another, and in this way we would be able to come up with some kind of prediction for the future. We know that much PCB is getting into the environment through municipal sewage, probably the sum total of leaks from heat exchange equipment and various manufacturing processes in which PCB has been used. That concludes my oral presentation. Senator SPONG. Thank you very much, Doctor. That buzz means they are having a rollcall on the floor. I am going to recess for about 10 minutes while I vote, and then I would like to ask you some questions. Thank you. (Recess.) Senator SPONG. Let the committee come to order. Doctor, your statement is one which should give all of us pause for concern and one which argues strongly for legislation of the kind the committee is presently considering. Before responding to your testimony may I ask your reaction to some data received late yesterday regarding the presence of PCB's in some Alabama fish? Mr. Sam Spencer, the assistant chief of fisheries of the Alabama Department of Conservation, has written the following letter to the subcommittee. I am going to have this letter admitted to the record along with a telegram from Mr. Spencer authorizing our doing this. I hope the fish samples we sent you will give some of the information you need. Enclosed you will find copies of the laboratory reports of fish samples collected in 1970 from some areas in Alabama. I am sending you copies of some of the higher PCB and insecticide results. The PCB results are as high as 365 parts per million, 72 times the FDA tolerance limits. All these results are on an edible portion basis which is much less than a fat basis. You ask if FDA is cooperating with the states. I think they are cooperating to the extent they have to. We assisted them in collecting fish samples from Choccolocco Creek. They later sent us copies of the mercury analysis which were not high enough to be greatly concerned about. I later wrote FDA asking for the results of their PCB analysis of these samples because I heard a rumor that they were very high. FDA then sent me the results, a copy of which I have attached. These results indicate PCB levels up to 277 parts per million in a catfish. Yet FDA apparently did not intend to advise us of this contamination problem. You will find enclosed copies of several letters between FDA and this office concerning pesticide and heavy metal contamination. As you can see, mercury is the only heavy metal they have established tolerance limits for. I hope this information will be helpful to you. If possible, I would prefer to remain anonymous. He has left that cloud of anonymity. However, I feel the consumers of fish or any other food product are entitled to know what they are eating. If this letter or the enclosed material is necessary to ensure the American fish consumer of a safe, wholesome product, please feel free to use it. He has further related to us, Doctor, that the average concentration for these fish was about 90 parts per million. Additionally, he has told us that although the tests revealed in these letters were conducted approximately a year ago, no one has informed the public of the results. Can you comment both on the danger involved here and on the propriety of failing to disclose these levels to the public? Mr. RISEBROUGH. The only documented case in which PCB has produced an effect in people who have ingested the PCB's is this instance in Japan with the disease by the name of yusho. To go back to the amount of PCB that they ingested and in my written testimony I calculated that if a person were eating fish containing 5 parts per million of PCB, how much fish, or poultry, would he eat until he had ingested the same amount. I think I came out with 45 pounds of fish. Ninety parts per million is 18 times as high. So we divide 45 by 18 to get something like 211⁄2 pounds of fish. So if the toxicity of the PCB in the fish in Alabama were the same as the toxicity of the PCB in Japan, then we might start seeing the same symptoms if one ate only 21⁄2 pounds. Again the real question is the toxicity coming from the PCB itself or from very small amounts of highly poisonous contaminants. This we just cannot say until the tests have been done. Now, what has in fact happened here is that huge amounts of this chemical have been released into the environment before any tests were made at all, and only within the last year or perhaps the last 2 years have both public and private agencies begun toxicity studies. They are far from complete. So I would certainly not advise eating those fish. As for the propriety, those of us who are working in the universities, of course, have to get out our results and we work on a principle of free exchange of information, and we have many complaints about Government agencies who for some reason hesitate to make data such as this public. Senator SPONG. Well, I have grave questions about there not making the data public, and it has been more than a year since these results have been known to those responsible for the protection of public health. We are going to be writing both the FDA and the Alabama State Health Department to inquire further into the facts of this matter and to request immediate action to remedy what appears to be a very dangerous situation. You mentioned the situation in Japan. How much consumption there caused "chloracne?" Mr. RISEBROUGH. Unfortunately the papers were in Japanese, and I was only able to read the English summaries. The leakage occurred one day in February of 1968, and the first cases reported were in March, and then additional ones were reported throughout the summer. It was in rice oil, the oil used for cooking. One paper estimated that a family of four consumed about 2 liters in a month. That would be half a quart per person approximately over a month which contained about 200 parts per million of the PCB's. Senator SPONG. What would that be in grams per month? Mr. RISEBROUGH. That would be about a tenth of a gram. Senator SPONG. In your statement you mention PCB in sewage. It is my understanding that the Monsanto Co. has placed restrictions on the sale of PCB to prevent its use in other than closed systems. If this is the case, how can you account for the presence of PCB in sewer outfalls? Mr. RISEBROUGH. Well, there are at least three well-documented cases now of leakage from so-called closed systems. The first is the one in Japan. The second is the one that was reported in the press recently |