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Figures published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) show the US Forestry Service sprayed over five million pounds of 2,4,5-T over the U.S. in 1976. It defends the use of this herbicide on the grounds that it defoliates selectively, killing hardwoods without harming softwoods, which accounts for the bulk of the lumber produced in the U.S. The Forestry Service also uses the herbicide to clear land for telephone lines, railroads, and highways, as well as to clear weeds from rice fields...
...sprayed rangelands and ingest the herbicide. He also found disturbingly high levels of dioxin in mothers' milk which may poison nursing children. While Meselson cautions that his study involves too small a sampling to be conclusive, he is nevertheless concerned about the continued use of the herbicide: "The EPA should have insisted on getting good chemical data on how much dioxin people are getting...
...EPA, responsible for evaluating the potential environmental and health hazards faced by Americans, has received so many complaints about the use of this herbicide that it has established a special dioxin project. The agency has also issued regulations requiring that those who want to use the herbicide prove that it does not harm people, an ironic demand in the face of available evidence. But the EPA has stopped short of forbidding the herbicide's use. In April, the agency published an elaborate defense of its policy, providing exhaustive appendices and tales of scientific studies documenting the harmful effects of dioxin...
Harvey Warnick, one of the dioxin project coordinators, says the EPA has received over 1500 letters on the regulations. Despite this evidence of widespread concern, the agency has consistently refused to invoke an emergency suspension system, which would ban the use of the herbicide pending further evidence. Instead, the agency holds to an unreasonably stringent standard of evidence. Warnick admits revised regulations will not be issued until April 1979 at the earliest. Like its bureaucratic counterpart at the V.A., the EPA plays a waiting game...
...miners want relief under an amendment to the 1977 Clean Air Act sponsored by Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum. This empowers the President, on an EPA recommendation, to force utilities to burn local coal and still meet pollution standards when other measures (like using out-of-state coal) would cause "economic disruption." Whoever finally wins, someone must lose: either electricity users, miners or the living, breathing residents of Ohio...