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...contained dangerous concentrations of PCBs, a class of highly toxic industrial chemicals. That startling discovery in 1981 eventually led the Environmental Protection Agency to launch a major investigation of Texas Eastern, the Houston-based firm that supplied the gas to LILCO. Last week, in the largest settlement of an EPA case in history, Texas Eastern (1986 revenues: $4.1 billion) agreed to undertake a massive cleanup of PCB contamination along the company's 10,600-mile network of pipelines, which runs through 14 states, from Texas to New Jersey. The cleanup will cost Texas Eastern some $400 million, plus...
...retardant to reduce the risk of fires and explosions. Texas Eastern, for example, long ago put PCBs into the compressors that drive natural gas through the company's pipelines, and the stubborn residues of the chemicals are still present. The firm is only one of 14 pipeline companies the EPA has been investigating for PCB leakage. Less severe problems may exist at hundreds of other enterprises, from electric utilities to railroads. Industrial users have scattered an estimated 1.2 billion lbs. of PCBs throughout the world. As a result, most people have absorbed at least tiny amounts of PCBs...
Indeed, the experiment represents an attempt by Monsanto to accommodate regulatory guidelines that many scientists think are too strict. It is also aimed at mollifying public fears. Monsanto had originally planned to test a strain of Pseudomonas altered to produce a natural insecticide. The EPA nixed the field test, mainly because its formal evaluation was incomplete. Still, worried residents living near the Missouri test site protested loudly...
...EPA agreed to the new test, primarily because of the innovative mechanisms for tracking the bacteria. In addition to turning blue, the bugs have been engineered to resist the antibiotic rifampicin -- a combination of properties that makes it possible to detect the presence of a single Pseudomonas among the billion or so microorganisms that may exist in a thimbleful of soil. Explains Margaret Mellon, manager of the National Wildlife Federation's biotechnology project: "This system is an important advance. In and of itself, it doesn't answer questions about whether bioengineered organisms are in general more or less safe than...
Indeed, the ability to track recombinant bacteria through the environment has become a crucial factor in getting EPA approval for a release. The lack of an effective marker has, for example, held up a test by Biotechnica International, a Cambridge, Mass., firm, of Rhizobium bacteria altered to boost their ability to fix nitrogen in the soil. In one of the California ice- minus tests, however, scientists have been able to monitor the spread of anti- icing bacteria on potato plants. The marker system in this case was rifampicin resistance, less sensitive than Monsanto's multiple indicator but still able...