Word: toxication
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...TIME correspondents who visited dozens of toxic dumps and waste sites across the country to get material for this week's cover, the story entailed some eerie hazards. "If you are reporting a riot and get hit with a bottle," says New York Bureau Chief Peter Stoler, a veteran of the science and environment beat, "you either come home well or you don't. But with hazardous waste, you become acutely aware of every sneeze, every rash. You wonder about being well 20 years from now." Chatting with fire fighters near a blazing Elizabeth, N.J., dump site...
Awkwardly confined in the hot body suits and encumbered with heavy cameras, photographers found their job doubly difficult especially when they were trying to compose a picture while wearing goggles. Says Photographer Bill Pierce, who surveyed toxic dumps in New Jersey, as well as farms and woodlands that hide chemical waste sites: "Hazardous waste does not always look ugly. Quite often these dumps are neat rows of beautifully colored drums shining against a gorgeous, air-pollution sunset. We found too that some of the most photogenic slime was harmless. We had to get precise shots of the right slime...
Last week, sounding the most authoritative warning yet, Julius Richmond, the Surgeon General of the U.S., declared that throughout the 1980s the nation will "confront a series of environmental emergencies" posed by toxic chemicals that "are adding to the disease burden in a significant, although as yet not precisely defined, way." Said the Surgeon General's report to the Senate: "The public health risk associated with toxic chemicals is increasing, and will continue to do so until we are successful in identifying chemicals which are highly toxic and controlling the introduction of these chemicals into our environment." His report...
Right now there are enough safe disposal facilities in the U.S., including incinerators and detoxification plants, to handle the toxic wastes, if the companies would go to the trouble and expense of using them. But as federal regulations governing the dumps become more stringent, and as the volume of wastes increases, the nation will need additional sites. Where to put them? "Everybody is in favor of safe disposal," says Costle. "They say, sure, let's have a safe landfill, but not in my town." Howard Tanner, chief of Michigan's Department of Natural Resources, goes even further...
Experts may debate just how bad the problem is. Robert A. Roland, president of the Chemical Manufacturers 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...