PCB's and Country Life

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The State Board of Health, for instance (a body that most people naively believe is dedicated to protecting the population from health hazards), has done little or nothing to safeguard Bloomington's residents from PCB exposure. One SBH official—when questioned about further PCB testing in the Bloomington area—stated, "What Bloomington area residents feel is necessary is not what we deem to be necessary .... I think that we have our finger on the known problems right now." (He went on to say: "If we increase sampling, we may find we have more of a problem than we think.")

The State Board of Health does test Indiana milk for PCB's, and they've known since 1972 that dairy products in various parts of the state are contaminated with PCB's. (The contamination has been traced to silage stored in silos treated with a sealer containing PCB's.) Still, the SBH has done very little to prevent this contamination at its source . . . although they have quarantined (and, in at least one case, shut down) dairy farms.

Earlier this year, the Indiana State Legislature passed a bill restricting the use of PCB's in the state, but it's not worth the pulp it's printed on. Under this statute—which went into effect as an "emergency" measure on May 1, 1976—the legal upper limit for PCB's in any product made in the state is now an incredible 250,000 parts per million! The acceptable content decreases over time until—in 1979—PCB's cannot exceed a concentration of 100 ppm in any product . . . unless the industry manufacturing that product has a permit (granted by the state) to allow them to use PCB's in such amounts. In other words, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation—as long as they have the appropriate permit—will be allowed to go on using PCB's forever.

On a local level, the city of Bloomington has had—for some time—an ordinance that says something like: "No substance may be put in the city sewer if that substance interferes with the normal disposition of the city's solid wastes." Last spring, the Utilities Service Board decided that Westinghouse—by discharging PCB's into the sewer—was violating this ordinance. As a result, the Board scheduled a public hearing for June 30, 1976, to decide whether and how Westinghouse should be made to come into compliance with the rule.

Two days before the hearing—on June 28—the Westinghouse plant manager called the factory's 400 employees out onto the lawn for a special announcement. He told the workers that the Utilities Service Board had scheduled a meeting for June 30 . . . at which the Board would decide on a rule that might cause Westinghouse to have to lay off its employees.

Come the night of June 30, hordes of angry Westinghouse employees packed the USB meeting hall. And, for a time, the scene was an emotion-ridden one. An ugly one. Once things had simmered down a little, however, representatives of both sides of the PCB issue were given a chance to air their views, and the meeting proceeded peaceably. (The entire session, incidentally, was televised by a local TV station.)

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