Word: toxicants
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...years ago, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig publicly accused the Soviet Union of conducting chemical warfare by proxy in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. According to the State Department, the Soviet Union was manufacturing substances with the highly toxic chemical tricothecene mycotoxin and selling it to its allies for use against "resistance fighters" in those areas of the world. In addition, the U.S. government has reports from members of the Hmong tribe in Laos who claim to have seen this chemical dropped in the form of "yellow rain" from airplanes. If these charges are correct, the Soviet Union would...
Schwartzstein: That's true. And neither do toxic substances come out of bees...
Meselson: I would use it to mean the alleged agent of toxic warfare in Southeast Asia. The test of a good definition is whether it applies consistently to something out in the real world. In this case there is such a test. It is this: There have been sixteen cases of which I'm aware where people have brought samples of something to embassy officials--the U.S. embassy, the Canadian embassy, the Australian embassy--or Thai government officials, United Nations officials, British officials. Every one, with no exception, turned out to be pollen, but people alleged that this...
...real need for EPA action lies in the area of toxic wastes. In deed Mr. Ruckelhaus owes his current job to a failure to meet this need. Such problems as are and, to a lesser extent, water pollution have been addressed in the last decade, and great progress has been made. But Congress realized three years ago that contamination of our world by deadly chemicals could dwarf all previous environmental problems combined. To battle this growing disaster, they created the so-called "Superfund," a $1.6 billion appropriation to the EPA for locating toxic waste, prosecuting law-breakers, and enforcing clean...
...fault of his own, Ruckelshaus seems to have helped break a log jam in Congress on environmental legislation. Last Thursday (significantly just a day before the Labor Department's asbestos action) the House passed on to the Senate a bill closing many of the remaining loopholes in existing toxic waste law. This is the first major antipollution move made by Congress since the Reagan Administration took office. In addition to the absence of Mrs. Burford, analysts believe that the departure of Secretary of Interior James Watt also aided proponents of the legislation to overcome conservative resistance...