from state and local law enforce ment agencies, postal inspectors, and the FBI. Now EPA will have a staff of prosecutors with criminal prosecution experience and trained investigators to help them. Under this new system, the agency expects to be able ίο develop stronger cases to send to the Justice Department for prosecution. The office will in vestigate industrial violations as well as "midnight dumpers," those haulers of waste who dispose of it wherever they can. The Office of Management and Budget has proposed cutting the DOE funds for conservation pro grams and solar research sharply in the next fiscal year. Last year the conservation programs were funded at $712 million. For next year the proposed funds are $19 million. Solar research programs that were funded at $500 million in 1981 will get only $70 million in 1983. In ad dition, O M B wants the utilities to bear much of the cost of research on nuclear waste storage. The total budget cuts at DOE, if passed by Congress, would mean a loss of about 4000 jobs.
PCBs from its storage site made it necessary to use a receiver. Each day up to 400 000 cubic feet of New York City sludge is dumped into a square mile of ocean water 12 miles from the New York and New Jersey coasts. A 1977 amend ment to the Federal Marine Protec tion Sanctuaries Act banned ocean dumping after Dec. 31, 1981. How ever, in April 1981 New York City won a court case challenging the amendment, and ocean dumping continues in this area, where the water is only 78 feet deep. A recent study conducted by the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmospheres said that more research was needed on the longterm effects of ocean dumping in contrast to those of land disposal.
AWARDS His research on chromatographic separation and analysis of environ mental pollutants brought Robert Sievers of the University of Colora do the Tswett Chromatography Medal. The prize, recognizing
STATE A decision to open five national rec reation areas run by the National Park Service to mine for minerals and drill for oil and gas has been made by the Interior Department. The areas are Lake Meade in Ari zona and Nevada, Glen Canyon in Utah and Arizona, Whiskeytown in California, and Ross Lake and Lake Chelan in Washington. The Interior Department has sent pro posed regulations for mining and energy leasing to O M B , which is expected to approve them. The Carter administration proposed that energy leases be sold in the five areas; the Reagan administra tion is going further by allowing mining for such minerals as copper, gold, and silver. A receiver has been appointed to displace the corporate management and clean up a hazardous waste storage facility at the Chem-Dyne Corporation in Ohio. In the first appellate decision of this kind, the Court of Appeals for Ohio's Twelfth Appellate District upheld the appointment of a receiver to perform the cleanup. The court de cided that the corporation's failure to remove drums of flammable sub stances, pesticide residues, and 88A
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Sievers: chromatography prize winner "outstanding research in chroma tography," was given at Barcelona, Spain, and shared with Arnaldo Liberti of the University of Rome, Italy.
SCIENCE Mixtures of pollutants can cause greater reductions in crop yields than ozone alone, according to pre liminary results of experiments car ried on at the Plant Physiology In stitute in Beltsville, Md. When sul fur dioxide was added to ambient air already containing ozone, snap bean and tomato yields decreased as the sulfur dioxide concentration increased. Open-top chambers were used for the experiments. Artificial atmospheres, pumped into the bot tom of the chambers, escaped through the top, keeping the sur-
Open-top chambers rounding air out during fumiga tion. In snap beans, the two pollu tants combined caused more loss than the cumulative effect of each separately. Tomato yields dropped as if the effects of the pollutants had been added together. It was also found that doses of sulfur dioxide above 0.12 ppm increased soil acidity significantly. Haloethers in water can be ana lyzed without gas chromatography/ mass spectrometry ( G C / M S ) , ac cording to EPA's Environmental Monitoring and Support Laborato ry (EMSL, Cincinnati, Ohio). In stead, one can employ liquid/liquid extraction with methylene chloride, an evaporation step, column chro matography cleanup with Florisil, another evaporation step, and G C analysis with an electrolytic con ductivity detector. Under contract with Monsanto Research Corp., E M S L studied this analysis meth od with 2-chloroethyl vinyl ether; èw(2-chloroisopropyl) ether, and several other haloethers. Different methods of solvent extraction and sample preservation were evaluated. To collect 20 "significant probable or possible atmospheric carcinogens" from ambient air, EPA's Environmental Sciences Research Laboratory (ESRL, Research Triangle Park, N.C.) developed a sampling system using solid sorbent materials. These comprised TenaxGC, Porapak R, and Ambersorb XE-340 in series. Samples were drawn through a Nutech Model 221-1A pump. Most analyses of Los Angeles, Niagara Falls, and Houston air were done by capillary G C / M S , though some also used flame ionization detection and other methods. One recommendation was that the sampling technique should be mainly a "screen"
