Word: dioxin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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EVERY TIME it rains, an industrial landfill near Niagara Falls turns red with leaking chemicals. One of those chemicals is called dioxin; three ounces of it, properly distributed, would destroy the entire population of New York City. There are two thousand pounds of dioxin in the landfill...
There are other dumps. Only a few miles away, near a barren field called the Love Canal, 240 families had to be evacuated last year when state officials found enough dioxin buried beneath their homes to kill half the earth's population. Several other industrial dumpsites in New York may also be feeding the chemical into nearby rivers; and from Maine to Arkansas to California and Oregon, dioxin has left a trail of sickness, fetal miscarriages and death wherever it has entered the environment...
...dioxin is only one of hundreds of poisonous chemicals that have been seeping out of more than 40,000 industrial dumpsites across the nation And, although many of the exact sites and chemicals have already been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the vast majority of cases the federal agency has done nothing to stop the pollution. Instead, reports one EPA official, "There's been a cover...
...Government, which still allows sprays to be used on rangelands and rice fields, is ambivalent about dioxin. Thomas Whiteside, a British-born journalist who writes regularly in The New Yorker, is not. Whiteside's early articles on dioxin started a move that led, back in 1970, to a ban on the practice of spraying herbicides containing the substance on the jungles of Viet Nam. His newest book may help to create a climate for domestic restrictions. Such action seems appropriate. Everything that is known about dioxin, associated with skin eruptions, liver damage, cancers, mental problems, miscarriages and birth defects...
...Pendulum does not create a soothing rhythm in the mind; it sounds with the terrible urgency of a time bomb. The explosion is near, says Whiteside, the message is clear. The U.S. has already seen what dioxin has done to Viet Nam. There is no earthly reason for Americans to keep bringing the war home...