Word: problems
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...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...
...public got an inkling of the seriousness of the problem last year with the revelation of the horror that had occurred in New York's Love Canal. Contamination from a landfill laced with chemicals seeped into the area on the outskirts of Niagara Falls. A total of 1,200 houses and a school had been built near the site. Alarmed by studies of damage to the residents' health, the Federal Government finally paid for the temporary evacuation of families. At present, 710 families have been declared eligible to move, and about half have left the area. Researchers...
...have to be careful about judging the 1950s by 1980s standards. I grew up thinking that if you put something in the ground it was safe. But that thinking was in error. If you don't do something about it now, you'll have an eternal problem." Indeed, much of the unsafe dumping occurred before the companies had a firm idea of how serious the waste problem was, and many disposed of material in ways they thought were safe at the time...
Irving S. Shapiro, chairman of Du Pont, reports that his company is recycling waste material to reduce the disposal problem and keeps a watchful eye on the contractors it uses for disposal. The most critical problem, as he sees it, is to clean up widely scattered "orphan waste sites" that no one has supervised. Says he: "Let's start with today, not worry about who did what in the past. Government and industry should work together rather than get emotional. We've got to get going rather than sitting around trying to figure out who's wearing...
...accidents. By this means, scientists have established some cause-and-effect links-for example, between prolonged inhalation of asbestos particles and mesothelioma (cancer of the lining of the chest or abdomen). But often the results of such epidemiological studies are not entirely convincing. The problem: scientists must trace effect back to probable cause ratherthan identifying cause and looking for effects. Says Dr. Irving Selikoff, of Manhattan's Mount Sinai Medical Center, who established the asbestos-cancer connection: "You're always working backward in this field...