The Disease of The Century

Like Thornton Wilder's Mr. Antrobus, man has survived ice ages, more subtle climatic changes and, thus far at least, his own inventions. Now his adaptability is facing a new challenge. Industrialization and expanding technology are radically altering the environment and exposing man to growing amounts of harmful pollutants, some of them chemicals that did not exist a century, a decade or even a year or two ago. Result: an increase in many old ailments and the emergence of new ones--all traceable to substances in air, water and food. Says Dr. Irving Selikoff of New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine: "Environmental disease is becoming the disease of the century."

In other centuries, doctors have known that miners, stone cutters and lens grinders (including the philosopher Spinoza) often developed respiratory disease from inhaling large quantities of dust; hatters suffered brain damage and went mad from absorbing toxic vapors from the mercury used in making felt. A London surgeon named Percivall Pott reported in 1775 that the soot-covered sweepers who cleaned Britain's chimneys had a far higher rate of cancer of the scrotum than the rest of the population.

But in the past 50 years, environmental diseases have spread beyond those in a few specialized trades. Among the most serious:

CANCER. The U.S. has one of the world's highest incidences of cancers associated with environmental pollution. A recent National Cancer Institute study (TIME, Aug. 11) shows that the industrialized and highly air-polluted Northeast has a particularly high incidence of lung cancer, as do areas where copper and lead smelters are located. The highest rates of bladder and liver cancers are found in counties with plants producing rubber and chemicals, perfumes and cosmetics, soaps and printing ink. One Ohio community, most of whose workers are employed by chemical plants, had a high rate for all three cancers.

Though cigarette smoking is responsible for at least 80% of all lung cancers, asbestos fibers are also taking an increasing toll. It has long been known that workers exposed to high levels of airborne asbestos fibers developed more lung malignancies than people in other occupations. But doctors have recently suggested that others are also vulnerable: painters or homeowners sanding asbestos-based compounds used for covering rough areas on walls or ceilings; mechanics who work on asbestos-insulated brake linings.

In Russia, researchers have found that workers exposed to chloroprene (the base for several synthetic rubber products) have higher rates of skin and lung cancer than the rest of the population. Vinyl chloride, a colorless gas that is the basic ingredient of the widely used plastic poly vinyl chloride (PVC), has been identified as a cause of angiosarcoma of the liver. Until recently, this cancer was so rare that one Los Angeles hospital found only one case in 52,000 autopsies. Since last year, however, doctors have confirmed 19 cases of the cancer in the U.S. alone, 17 of them in people who worked in plastics plants. There is growing sentiment to ban the use of PVC for containers and plastic wraps for food and drinks; some doctors fear that the compound leaches into the food and could cause cancer.

Even drinking water is suspect. Researchers studying the New Orleans and Cincinnati water supplies found that chlorine, added to water to kill harmful bacteria, can combine with certain pollutants to form compounds that may cause cancer; cancer rates in the New Orleans area, which draws its water from the lowermost--and thus most polluted--part of the Mississippi, are among the highest in the nation. More carcinogens may soon be added to the environment. Studies have shown that the extraction of oil from shale and gas from coal--processes that could eventually be used on a large scale--produces polycyclic hydrocarbons, compounds that can cause cancer in man. Says the National Cancer Institute's Dr. Umberto Saffiotti: "Cancer in the last quarter of the 20th century can be considered a social disease, a disease whose causation and control are rooted in the technology and economy of our society."

BIRTH DEFECTS. The Ohio department of health has found that women in three communities with PVC plants--Painesville, Ashtabula and Avon Lake--bore more children with birth defects and other malformations than women in other communities in the state; laboratory research has shown that vinyl chloride can cause chromosomal damage in humans. Anesthetic gases also appear to be teratogenic, or capable of causing birth defects. Russian, Danish and U.S. studies all show a high miscarriage rate among women anesthesiologists and operating-room nurses.

HEAVY-METAL POISONING. Once considered largely a problem of the urban slums, where children eat paint flaking off the walls of old buildings, lead poisoning is turning up more frequently in other areas. High levels of lead in the bloodstream have been found in children living near lead smelters in rural

Kellogg, Idaho, and El Paso. (Children are metabolically more susceptible to lead poisoning than adults.) Elevated lead levels can also be found in people who live near freeways, where auto exhausts pollute the air. High arsenic levels have been detected in children living near a copper smelter in Ruston, Wash. High levels of lead and other heavy metals, such as arsenic and mercury, are potentially lethal. Mercury poisoning, caused by industrial dumping of toxic compounds into a harbor, killed an estimated 300 people in the area around Minamata, Japan, and crippled almost 1,000 more.

RESPIRATORY DISORDERS.

Britain had a frightening vision of the future back in 1952, when a combination of pollution and weather produced a killer fog that caused 4,000 deaths, in many cases by aggravating existing respiratory ailments. Communities in the eastern part of the Los Angeles basin have had fre quent "smog alerts" during summer months; when an alert is issued, residents with heart or lung problems are warned to avoid unnecessary activity and mothers are told to keep small children indoors. Chicago officials issued warnings 15 times last summer when levels of ozone (a highly active form of oxygen produced, among other ways, by auto engines) rose to the point where they could cause eye and throat irritations. But the prime suspects in the high incidence of respiratory ailments in urban and industrial areas are sulfur dioxide and other pollutants given off by automobile tailpipes or industrial smokestacks. The Environmental Protection Agency's National Environmental Research Center has found that acute bronchitis occurs 20% more frequently among children in communities with high pollution levels than it does among those who breathe cleaner air.

Strict Standards. Action to eliminate or at least reduce environmental pollution has generally been spotty. Enforcement of the federal Clean Air Act, which regulates excessive air pollution, has resulted in some improvement. Installation of pollution-control devices on cars has begun to show some effect in reducing the contaminants in urban air. But despite the tough 1972 amendments to the federal Water Pollution Control Act, a recent study of water supplies in 80 cities showed that most contained contaminants.

The plastics industry has drastically lowered vinyl chloride levels in plants but has challenged federal requirements that they be brought down to one part per million or less, arguing that the costs of full compliance would force many firms out of business and put thousands of employees out of work. Other companies share their concern, pointing out that the costs of combatting pollution will make their products uncompetitively expensive. Part of the hefty jump in auto prices--and the resulting sales slump--stems from the required installation of antipollution devices.

Doctors and environmentalists nonetheless insist that new antipollution laws are essential. "What is an acceptable risk for cancer?" asks Dr. Selikoff. "One out of a hundred? More? Less? With cancer, any risk is too high." To reduce these hazards even further, Selikoff and his colleagues are urging enactment of even stricter new regulations on the manufacture and use of substances known to be toxic (see box) and better screening to keep those suspected of causing cancer or other illnesses out of the environment.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.