American Notes Arkansas

For more than a month, agriculture officials in six states have been monitoring cattle for contamination from feed tainted with the pesticide heptachlor, which has caused cancer in laboratory animals. Milk has been recalled in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, and heptachlor traces have also turned up in beef. Last week the disaster took on a new dimension: tests showed low-level concentrations of heptachlor in the breast milk of some 70 Arkansas mothers. The women were among several thousand who brought samples of their breast milk to laboratories around the state. As more than 1,000 additional women clamored for tests, doctors tried to assess the risk of continued breast feeding. While the effects of the heptachlor have yet to be determined, nursing mothers face the unsettling prospect of having contaminated their children.