Word: dioxin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...night of Jan. 10, 1979. A tank car on a Norfolk & Western freight broke a coupling and derailed, spilling 19,000 gallons of orthochlorophenol. Sturgeon was evacuated for two days while the spill was cleaned up. Then Monsanto announced that the spilled chemical contained a minute amount of dioxin, the type designated as 2,3,7,8-TCDD and described as the most toxic synthetic chemical known to man. A mere thimbleful was involved. But because the compound has been linked to cancer, fear swept Sturgeon, and the Kemner case took shape...
Over another Monsanto objection, Carr got all the spill cases consolidated, so the proceedings involved 65 plaintiffs, each with multiple medical complaints from alleged dioxin exposure. More than 80,000 pages of testimony from 167 witnesses have been transcribed so far. The case file is already five feet thick. Over 6,000 exhibits have been entered into evidence...
...knows where else, say the minority of townspeople who are upset. A water main that runs right under the site still supplies a thousand homes. Last spring the Cochato's sediment was found to include arsenic and naphthalene. Then last summer even the EPA seemed jolted: high concentrations of dioxin were discovered at Baird & McGuire...
Toxins like organic solvents, PCBs and dioxin will be broken down ^ completely only when burned at temperatures exceeding 2,400 degrees F. Some conventional incinerators can generate such heat, but without careful controls to maintain high temperatures they may spew toxic gases into the air. People fear the fumes may prove as perilous as the chemicals from which they come. But new technologies may overcome these obstacles...
...Times Beach, Mo., J.M. Huber Corp. has used a mobile electric reactor that heats up to 4,000 degrees F to destroy the dioxin in several hundred pounds of soil. Also tested at Times Beach is the EPA's mobile incinerator. It got rid of 99.9% of the dioxin in 1,750 gal. of liquid waste and 40 tons of soil in six weeks. Another movable unit is Westinghouse Electric's plasma arc furnace, which is housed in a 46-ft. trailer. The furnace reaches temperatures of 20,000 degrees...