PCBs AND COUNTRY LIFE

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What we didn't know was that—a week after we covered our farm with sludge—the Environmental Protection Agency would announce the names of U.S. companies which use highly toxic chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's) ... and that one of these firms would be a Westinghouse plant located in Bloomington, Indiana.

Even when we heard the news in December, it didn't really mean anything to us. We didn't realize—then—that the Westinghouse plant was dumping three to eight pounds of PCB's into the Bloomington sewer system per day ... that these poisonous chemicals would accumulate in the city's solid wastes ... or that PCB's—like DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons—are practically indestructible and remain in the environment for many decades before breaking down. All we knew was that we'd recently found a rich, inexpensive, "organic" fertilizer to put on our land ... and that the city's engineer had told us it was safe to use.

We didn't begin to suspect that anything might be wrong—in fact—until early February 1976, when the city lab announced the results of its first series of tests. Tests which, unfortunately for us, showed that Bloomington's sludge—our fertilizer—was contaminated with as much as 240 parts per million of the PCB's.

PCB'S AND MORE PCBS

At this point we—like a lot of other people in our area—began calling the city lab to find out what this meant for our sludge-treated land. Rick Peoples—the city chemist—told us to send him some samples of our sludge, soil, and grass for analysis . . . which we did.

Meanwhile, Sara and I maintained hopes that the PCB's would evaporate into the air, or that our sludge would have a much lower PCB count, or that—if the wastes were, tainted—the PCB molecules would not show up in the plants grown on it. No such luck. In early March, we were told the test results: Our sludge contained 300 parts per million (ppm) of PCB's, the soil had up to 50 ppm, and the rye grass that'd been grown on that soil contained 4.1 ppm of the chemicals.

We were dumbstruck. But there was more: In the weeks that followed, the State Board of Health tested our cow's milk ... and found that it was contaminated with 5 ppm of PCB's (twice the Food and Drug Administration's maximum limit-for milk-of 2.5 ppm). This was the same milk we'd been drinking at the rate of a half gallon per day for the previous four months!

With heavy hearts, we set out to learn all we could about PCB's and the possible impact these unwanted intruders might have upon our lives.

A GIANT PUZZLE

Our calls to the Indiana health authorities turned up nothing: No one could tell us how toxic PCB's were, or whether or not our health might be in jeopardy. Thus, we began making calls to the EPA and FDA in Washington.

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