Word: epas
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...economy in myriad ways by stimulating the creation of new products. There is, however, a price to pay for an industrial society that has come to rely so heavily on chemicals: almost 35,000 of those used in the U.S. are classified by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as being either definitely or potentially hazardous to human health. Although cause-and-effect relationships between many chemicals and specific illnesses are still difficult to prove, the danger is clearly growing. Long concerned about the more familiar pollution problems of nuclear wastes, dirty air and befouled lakes and rivers, the nation...
...future remains a problem, so does the past. The immense task of cleaning up the accumulated wastes still remains. A bill is slowly working its way through Congress to create a "superfund" to be used by the EPA to neutralize hazardous waste spills and dumps as they occur or are discovered. The legislation, now in various forms, could create a fund of up to $4 billion in the next six years. But there are bitter fights under way over just how to split the costs between the general taxpayer and the various industries that generate the wastes. The Carter Administration...
...Association, attacked the Surgeon General's report for exaggerating the threat of toxic wastes. But one thing is certain: the rapid accumulation of chemical-waste products poses one of the most complex and expensive environmental control and cleanup tasks in history. Says Douglas M. Costle, administrator of the EPA: "We didn't understand that every barrel stuck into the ground was a ticking time bomb, primed to go off." Predicts Dr. Irving Selikoff, director of the Environmental Sciences Laboratory of New York City's Mount Sinai Medical School: "Toxic waste will be the major environmental and public...
...upcoming federal regulations and new state laws will surely help, but what haunts the EPA'S Costle and other environmentalists is the scope of the problem. In 1941 the American petrochemical industry produced 1 billion Ibs. of synthetic chemicals. By 1977 that rate had soared to 350 billion...
...accurate count of all the toxic-waste dumps is possible. Many reveal themselves only when a flash flood or gradual erosion exposes rusting and cracking drums. Searching for clandestine sites, some 100 EPA agents are tracking down reports of midnight dumping, or seeking out acrid odors permeating wooded acres or strange colors staining rivers and streams. So far, the EPA estimates that there are some 50,000 sites where chemicals have been dumped. The EPA believes that 2,000 of these dumps may pose serious health hazards...