>>> Part 1 of 2...
.	   RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #553	   .
.		      ---July 3, 1997---		       .
.			  HEADLINES:			   .
.		    LET'S STOP WASTING TIME		    .
LET'S STOP WASTING OUR TIME
The mainstream environmental movement spends its time urging
government to regulate corporations that are making people sick
while poisoning the planet's air, water, and soil.  Regulation is
what mainstream environmentalists aim to do.  They gather data,
write reports to show how bad things have gotten, and then they
ask government regulators to modify the behavior of the
responsible corporations.  In Washington, D.C., and in all 50
state capitals, hundreds or thousands of environmentalists toil
tirelessly year after year after year, proposing new laws, urging
new regulations, and opposing the latest efforts by officials
(corporate and governmental) to weaken existing laws and
regulations.  They write letters, meet with agency personnel,
publish pamphlets and hold conferences, prepare testimony for
subcommittees, serve for years on citizen advisory boards, create
"media events," mail out newsletters and magazines, organize
phone trees to create awareness and raise funds.  They pore over
immense volumes of technical information, becoming experts in
arcane sub-specialties of science and law.  They work hard, much
harder than most other people.  When they find that their efforts
have been ineffective, they redouble their efforts, evidently
hoping that more of the same will work better next time.
Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council,
Sierra Club, Audubon, National Wildlife Federation, The
Wilderness Society, The Environmental Working Group, and many
others that make up the mainstream environmental community are
well-intentioned, earnest, and diligent.  They are also, it must
be admitted, largely ineffective.
An eye-opening new book describes the nearly-complete failure of
all our attempts to regulate the behavior of the chemical
corporations. TOXIC DECEPTION, by Dan Fagin and Marianne
Lavelle,[1] is subtitled "How the Chemical Industry Manipulates
Science, Bends the Law, and Endangers Your Health."  In his day
job, Dan Fagin writes for NEWSDAY (the Long Island newspaper) and
Marianne Lavelle writes for the NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL.  Both are
award-winning investigative reporters, and this book shows why:
it is thorough and thoroughly-documented, even-handed, careful in
its conclusions, and absolutely astonishing in how grim a picture
it paints of our corporatized democracy.  Even those of us who
study chemicals-and-health full-time have never put all the
pieces together the way these two have.
The book is organized as a case study of only four dangerous
chemicals: atrazine, alachlor, perchloroethylene and formaldehyde.
** Atrazine is a weed killer used on 96% of the U.S. corn crop
each year.  Introduced in 1958, some 68 to 73 million pounds were
used in 1995, making it the best-selling pesticide in the nation.
Atrazine interferes with the hormone systems of mammals.  In
female rats, it causes tumors of the mammary glands, uterus, and
ovaries.  Two studies have suggested that it causes ovarian
cancer in humans.  EPA categorizes it as a "possible human
carcinogen."   Atrazine is found in much of the drinking water in
the midwest, and it is measurable in corn, milk, beef and other
foods.
** In 1989, Monsanto introduced Alachlor, a weed killer that
complements atrazine.  Atrazine is best against weeds and
alachlor is best against grasses.  Often both are applied at the
same time.  Alachlor causes lung tumors in mice; brain tumors in
rats; stomach tumors in rats; and tumors of the thyroid gland in
rats.  It also causes liver degeneration, kidney disease, eye
lesions, and cataracts in rats fed high doses.  Canada banned
alachlor in 1985.  EPA's Science Advisory Board labeled alachlor
a "probably human carcinogen" in 1986.  In 1987, EPA restricted
the use of alachlor by requiring that farmers who apply it must
first take a short course of instruction.  Much of the well water
in the midwest now contains alachlor and its use continues
unabated.
** Perchloroethylene ("perc") is the common chlorinated solvent
used in "dry cleaning" (which is only "dry" in the sense that it
doesn't use water).  In the early 1970s, scientists learned that
perc causes liver cancer in mice.  Workers in dry cleaning shops
get cancer of the esophagus seven times as often as the average
American, and they get bladder cancer twice as often.  A few
communities on Cape Cod in Massachusetts have perc in their
drinking water; a study in 1994 revealed that those communities
also have leukemia rates five to eight times the national
average.  Perc is ranked as a "probable human carcinogen" and we
all take it into our homes whenever we pick up the dry cleaning.
** Formaldehyde is a naturally-occurring substance present in the
human body in very small quantities.  Mixed with urea,
formaldehyde makes a glue that handily holds plywood and particle
board together.  Mixed with a soap, urea-formaldehyde makes a
stiff foam that has excellent insulating properties.  After the
oil shortage of 1973, Americans began to conserve fuel oil by
tightening and insulating their homes, and it was then that
people discovered that formaldehyde can be toxic.  In tens of
thousands of individuals, urea-formaldehyde has caused flu-like
symptoms, rashes, and neurological illnesses.  In some people, it
triggers multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), a life-long,
debilitating sensitivity to many other chemicals, including
fragrances and perfumes. In recent years, scientists have
confirmed that formaldehyde causes rare nasal tumors in mice and
in industrial workers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde gas.
It is also linked to brain tumors in people exposed to it on the
job (embalmers and anatomists).  It is ranked as a "probable
human carcinogen" in humans, and we are all widely exposed to it
through cabinets, furniture, walls and flooring.
TOXIC DECEPTION documents how the manufacturers of these
chemicals --and thousands of others like them --have managed to
keep their dangerous, cancer-causing products on the market
despite hugely expensive government regulatory efforts, civil
litigation by citizens who feel victimized, investigative news
reports, congressional oversight of the regulators, right-to-know
laws, and hundreds of scientific studies confirming harm to
humans and the environment.  The book documents how corporations
buy the complicity of politicians; offer jobs, junkets and
sometimes threats to regulators; pursue scorched-earth courtroom
strategies; shape, manipulate, and sometimes falsify science; and
spend millions of dollars on misleading advertising and public
relations to deflect public concerns.  In sum, the book shows how
corporations have turned the regulatory system --and those who
devote their lives to working within that system --into their
best allies.
After reading this book, one realizes that the purpose of the
regulatory system is not to protect human health and the
environment. The purpose of the regulatory system is to protect
the property rights of the corporations, using every branch of
government to thwart any serious attempts by citizens to assert
that human rights should take precedence.  "At the most
fundamental level," write Fagin and Lavelle, "the federal
regulatory system is driven by the economic imperatives of the
chemical manufacturers--to expand markets and profits--and not by
its mandate to protect public health."(pg. 13)  Why are so many
of us still defining our environmental work entirely within the
confines of this hopeless system?
After 27 years of unremitting, well-meaning attempts to regulate
corporate polluters, here is our situation:
** The government does not screen chemicals for safety before
they go on the market.
** Chemicals are presumed innocent until members of the public
can prove them guilty of causing harm.  Naturally this guarantees
that people will be hurt before control can even be considered.
After harm has been widely documented, then government begins to
gather data on a chemical, but "the agency usually relies on
research conducted by or for manufacturers when it is time to
make a decision about regulating a toxic chemical."(pg. 14)
** Industry manipulates scientific studies to reach the desired
conclusions.  According to Fagin and Lavelle, when chemical
corporations paid for 43 scientific studies of any of the four
chemicals (atrazine, alachlor, perc or formaldehyde), 32 studies
(74%) returned results favorable to the chemicals involved, 5
were ambivalent, and 6 (14%) were unfavorable.(pg. 51)  When
independent nonindustry organizations --government agencies,
universities or medical/charitable organizations (such as the
March of Dimes) --paid for 118 studies of the same four
chemicals, only 27 of the studies (23%) gave results favorable to
the chemicals involved, 20 were ambivalent, and 71 (60%) were
unfavorable.(pg. 51)
** As of 1994, after 24 years of trying, EPA had issued
regulations for only 9 chemicals.(pg. 12)  EPA has officially
registered only 150 pesticides, though there are thousands of
others in daily use awaiting review by the agency.(pg. 11)  The
Occupational Safety and Health Administration has done only
slightly better, setting limits on 24 chemicals after 18 years of
effort.(pg. 81)
** Close to 2000 new chemicals are introduced into commercial
channels each year in the U.S., virtually none of then screened
for safety by government prior to introduction.  When screening
does occur, it occurs AFTER trouble has become apparent.  All
together, about 70,000 different chemicals are now in commercial
use, with nearly 6 trillion pounds produced annually in the U.S.
for plastics, solvents, glues, dyes, fuels, and other uses.  All
six trillion pounds eventually enter the environment.
 >>> Continued to next message...
___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30 [NR]
--- QScan/PCB v1.16b / 01-0507
---------------