Week's Watch

Reports from three different regions of the U.S. last week starkly demonstrated the potential for environmental disaster in a technological society:

> BEEF ALERT. Michigan farmers, who last year lost thousands of cattle to poisoning when a fire retardant called polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) was accidentally mixed with feed, were faced with a new nightmare. Alarmed by the open sores developing on his cattle and the growing number of stillborn calves, Dairy Farmer George LeMunyon of Cedar Springs called in investigators. They discovered that cattle in his herd, and those on at least seven other farms in the state, have been ingesting a wood preservative called pentachlorophenol (PCP)--probably when the animals licked the sides of their feed bins. Because the preservative contains dioxin, a substance related to the highly toxic chemical that has made the Italian town of Seveso uninhabitable, state officials banned sales of PCP and quarantined suspect cattle. No PCP-contaminated milk has reached the state's consumers. But some stores in Michigan have begun advertising that they sell only out-of-state beef.

> ROAD SCARE. A Mankato, Minn., waste-oil dealer discovered that, without his permission, a trucker had been transporting fuel in his tanks to Iowa, where it was to have been sprayed on the state's gravel roads to keep down the dust. Trouble was that some of the fuel, a solvent, was heavily contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a class of highly toxic chemicals that have been implicated in birth defects and nervous disorders. Environmental officials were notified; they located the contaminated solvent in Cedar Falls and Fort Dodge, Iowa, before it had been used. Had the solvent been spread on Iowa's roads, it could have found its way into animals, food and water supplies. The result, said officials, would have been an ecological catastrophe that could have endangered the health--and perhaps lives--of thousands of lowans.

> LAKE LEAK. Plutonium from improperly handled wastes of the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant near Broomfield, Colo., has leaked into the town's Great Western Reservoir. Federal officials insist that the plutonium, one of the most lethal of all nuclear products, is harmless as long as it stays on the bottom of the 40-acre reservoir. But residents of Broomfield--aware that even the tiniest amounts of plutonium in the body can cause cancer--are unconvinced. They have asked the Federal Government for the $30 million the town will have to spend to create a new water supply. Meanwhile a few residents are taking no chances; they are buying their drinking water in bottles.

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