More ominous are reports from citizen groups emphasizing the dioxin's human toll. Friends of the Earth, an environmental group based in Washington, D.C., has collected over 500 cases of injury which occurred after spraying. Many involve dizziness, nausea and skin diseases, symptoms of dioxin exposure. In most cases, their problems ceased when the affected individuals left the sprayed areas.
In one of the most well-documented cases, eight women in Oregon suffered 10 miscarriages in five years. In each instance the miscarriage occurred immediately after areas near their homes were sprayed. The women's doctors signed affadavits and provided elaborate case histories which indicate that the dioxin probably caused the miscarriages. Women in other sprayed areas have given birth to severely deformed children, and again doctors posit no causes other than the dioxin.
New evidence indicates that people who live near sprayed areas are not the only ones who may suffer from the continued use of this herbicide. Matthew Meselson, professor of Biology at Harvard, published an alarming study showing that dioxin is present in beef fat at levels that have killed laboratory animals. Cattle graze on the sprayed rangelands and ingest the herbicide. He also found disturbingly high levels of dioxin in mothers' milk which may poison nursing children. While Meselson cautions that his study involves too small a sampling to be conclusive, he is nevertheless concerned about the continued use of the herbicide: "The EPA should have insisted on getting good chemical data on how much dioxin people are getting"
THE EPA, responsible for evaluating the potential environmental and health hazards faced by Americans, has received so many complaints about the use of this herbicide that it has established a special dioxin project. The agency has also issued regulations requiring that those who want to use the herbicide prove that it does not harm people, an ironic demand in the face of available evidence. But the EPA has stopped short of forbidding the herbicide's use. In April, the agency published an elaborate defense of its policy, providing exhaustive appendices and tales of scientific studies documenting the harmful effects of dioxin on laboratory animals. The statistics drone on and on, but the EPA cops-out and fails to draw the logical conclusion.
Harvey Warnick, one of the dioxin project coordinators, says the EPA has received over 1500 letters on the regulations. Despite this evidence of widespread concern, the agency has consistently refused to invoke an emergency suspension system, which would ban the use of the herbicide pending further evidence. Instead, the agency holds to an unreasonably stringent standard of evidence. Warnick admits revised regulations will not be issued until April 1979 at the earliest. Like its bureaucratic counterpart at the V.A., the EPA plays a waiting game.
The EPA's sluggishness has drawn fierce criticism from citizen and environmental groups, prodding some congressmen into action. Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) introduced a bill to force the EPA to enforce a ban on 2,4,5-T herbicide, but the bill has never received serious consideration in the Senate. Several private citizens are sueing the EPA, the Forestry Service and the Dow Chemical Company, one of the major manufacturers of the herbicide. Dow denies any responsibility and published the results of company-sponsored experiments that deny any connection between the adverse effects of dioxin dosage in lab animals and dioxin intake in humans.
Bureaucratic indifference to human suffering is nothing new. But the continued inaction of the Veterans' Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency is criminally callous in the face of scientific evidence indicating the toxicity of dioxin. The United States is now turning a weapon of war back on its own people, tragically disregarding the available example of Vietnam.