854 PCBs AND ASSOCIATED AROMATICS
EPA, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office
of Science and Technology. The OST took the lead role and
the work was conducted under what became known as the
Interdepartmental Task Force on PCBs. The Task Force was
announced on September 5, 1971 in a joint FDA–USDA
press conference.
September 15, 1971: The OST Panel on Hazardous Trace
Substances and the Governmental Task Force met jointly
with representatives of the Monsanto Co. The principal
agenda item of this meeting was a request for information
concerning the amounts and usage, and estimates of losses
into the environment.
October 1, 1971: Norway enacted regulations which
came into effect on October 1, 1971 which required prior
authorization for the use of PCBs.
December 1971: Monsanto adopted a policy not to
sell any more dielectric fluids to its customers before they
entered into an indemnity agreement.
December 20–21, 1971: National Institute of Envir-
onmental Health Sciences symposium on PCBs held at
Durham, NC on December 20–21, 1971. Members of the
press, especially science writers, were invited to attend.
Thus, the aims of the conference were to educate both
scientists and the public about the science of PCBs and its
interpretation.1972PCBs were the subject of an increasing number of papers
reported in the scientific literature dealing with the environ-
ment between 1970 and 1971. A conference which dealt with
the environmental problem of PCBs was held in September
1970 in Sweden and in August 1971, an environmental qual-
ity workshop was convened in Durham, New Hampshire by
the National Academy of Sciences.
The lay press, prompted by the newsworthiness of several
accidental PCB spills and the widespread finding of PCBs
in the environment, published many articles in 1970–1971
which dealt with PCB contamination. Many PCB reports
involved the contamination of foodstuffs.
The Federal Department of Agriculture made an exten-
sive surveillance of food in cooperation with the Department
of Agriculture and established ‘Action Levels’ for PCBs in
milk, poultry and fish. Action levels are temporary thresh-
olds for regulatory decision pending the establishment of
regulatory policy and procedure. During 1970 and 1971, the
FDA used these guideline values in several seizures of foods
found to be contaminated with PCBs.
Following announcements in the public press in 1971
there began to be political enquiries made by Senator
McGovern and Governor Miliken of Michigan (Figure 9).
By August 1971, the FDA was being pressured into
taking a position in which public pressure and advocacy
demanded a stronger position against the use of PCBs. FDA
initiated a meeting to discuss the scientific issues concern-
ing PCBs which involved several Government agencies and
Federal research laboratories. Following this meeting the
FDA asked the President’s Science Advisor to provide afocus for the Government’s actions and decisions concern-
ing PCBs. The request was made because:- the PCB issue cut across several Federal agencies;
- the issue was becoming politically stressful for
the FDA; - the Office of Science and Technology (OST)
had already started a scientific review of PCBs
(October 1970).
The OST review committee became known as the Panel on
Hazardous Trade Substances and had as its goal the identi-
fication of the needs for information by the Government in
making judgments concerning trace hazardous substances.
On September 1, 1971 the FDA met with the USDA,
EPA, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and
the OST to explore options concerning PCBs. The OST
adopted the lead role and this group became known as the
Interdepartmental Task Force on PCBs. The Task Force met
with Monsanto, the only US producer of PCBs to request
information concerning the amounts of PCBs produced, pat-
terns of distribution and usage, and estimates of losses into
the environment.
A model was developed for the rates and routes of envi-
ronmental transport of PCBs based on Monsanto’s informa-
tion. The model coefficients were tested wherever possible
by physical measurement and analytical monitoring. The
exercise pointed up gaps in the knowledge base. In particu-
lar, analytical methods for PCBs were not well developed
and biological effects were not well defined.
The final Interdepartmental Task Force report, in addi-
tion to being a review of the scientific information of the time
also dealt with the benefits of PCBs derived from a National
Bureau of Standards (NBS) report. This review became the
basis for the rule-making decision to maintain electrical uses
of PCBs and to restrict other applications.
The Task Force report reviewed the Federal regulations
for their applicability to PCBs in part to determine the power
of the Government to control and limit the manufacture, dis-
tribution, use and disposal of PCBs. Regulatory authorities
were capable of responding to specific incidents of contami-
nation but the Government had no power to prevent more
PCBs from entering the environment.
Despite mounting public pressure calling for an outright
ban on PCBs the Commissioner of the FDA held a press
conference in which he deferred the decision making pro-
cess until further review and deliberation of perspectives had
been accomplished.
During this time period, the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences had initiated its own review
of scientific knowledge concerning PCBs and it brought
together the scientific community and the public in a confer-
ence to discuss the findings in December 1971. The result of
the information exchange was to reduce the sensationalism
surrounding PCBs and to reduce the newsworthiness of the
now more scientific issues. The result was that a dramatic
decline occurred in the number of sensational newspaper
reports concerning PCBs.C016_003_r03.indd 854C016_003_r03.indd 854 11/18/2005 1:12:24 PM11/18/2005 1:12:24 PM