Word: dioxins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...safeguarding the environment has not exactly been one of its highest priorities, the Reagan Administration last week began a refurbishing of the Environmental Protection Agency. First, EPA Administrator Anne Burford showed up in Missouri with a dramatic offer to buy out the homes and property of residents of the dioxin-poisoned town of Times Beach. Then, after Burford left for speaking engagements in California and Arizona, the Administration put the broom to the EPA, sweeping out of office two top officials who were under investigation and appointing five top deputies. Democratic congressional leaders dubbed it the "Wednesday-night massacre...
With toxic wastes posing health hazards to hundreds of thousands of Americans, the EPA has a task crucial to the nation. Just last week the Agency had to spend over $30 million to buy the entire town of Times Beach. Mo., to protect its 2500 former inhabitants from poisonous dioxin, a suspected carcinogen. With 14,000 dumps to monitor and clean up, the EPA has its work cut out for it. Yet Burford has been remarkably reluctant to begin the task in earnest...
...been exacerbated by recent actions of the Reagan Administration. As part of its deregulation craze, the current Administration lately took steps to ease the control of cancer-causing substances. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ostensibly the watchdog of the environment, markedly loosened its regulations in dealing with the recent dioxin contamination crisis at Times Beach, Mo. The FPA established much higher acceptable exposure levels after the crisis than those dictated by previous risk assessments. This recent backslide in the regulation of carcinogens reflects the same problem manifested in the misdirection of cancer research--a dangerous lack of attention...
...epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control, advised residents who had left Times Beach after the flooding to stay away. He told those who had returned to avoid exposure to soil and debris until new tests were completed. Falk said that scientific studies with animals show that dioxin, an acutely toxic substance that is produced as an unwanted byproduct in the manufacture of herbicides and other chemicals, can have extremely adverse effects on the skin, liver and immune system. Many of the residents attending the session told Falk about persistent rashes and other medical ailments that may be related...
...concern, many of the spirited residents, or "river rats," as they call themselves, were busy last week cleaning and rebuilding, helping one another with fatalistic good humor. In the makeshift emergency center sits a tiny bronze trophy with a paper sign: "1st place, Times Beach, highest contamination of dioxin award for bravery." Many residents, reluctant to desert the town, plan to wait to see if the Government will provide relocation funds, as it did for the residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, N.Y., which was also polluted with dioxin. "I have no place else to go," said former Mayor...