News of the Week have been almost undetectable af ter shipping. Although regulatory action on EDB has just about finished, Con gress is investigating how such an allegedly dangerous situation per sisted so long. Two House subcom mittees on government operations held joint hearings recently to ques tion why the government has been so slow to regulate EDB. Under the gun was not only EPA, which had been working on regulating EDB for more than six years, but the Food & Drug Administration and the De partment of Agriculture. Early evi dence, some going back to 1965, shows that FDA knew EDB left high residues on fruit and that USDA was reluctant to release the data be cause it might lead to a ban of the pesticide. Rep. Ted S. Weiss (D.N.Y.), chairman of one of the sub committees, opined that it was USDA's attempts to keep EDB on the market that slowed the search for suitable substitutes. EPA may have learned a lesson from the EDB episode. Ruckelshaus told a news conference that the agency will be looking into other high-volume pesticides that may show up later in foods. These would include chemicals that may not have had the tough testing currently re quired to be registered or that have gaps in their safety and health test ing data. Some EPA officials have mentioned atrazine, butylate, carbaryl, cyanazine, metolachlor, and methomyl as candidates for more attention. D
Auchter resigns post as OSHA head After three years as head of the Occupational Safety & Health Ad ministration, Thorne G. Auchter has decided to move on. He will be come president of Β. Β. Andersen Cos., a major Kansas construction firm, after his resignation takes ef fect on March 30. His post will be filled temporarily by OSHA's depu ty assistant secretary Patrick R. Tyson. Auchter, 39 and a former FLorida contractor and state director of spe cial events for Reagan during the 6
March 12, 1984 C&EN
Auchter: streamlined its operations 1980 Presidential campaign, brought little experience to his post. But he promised to streamline the agency's management and make its opera tions more efficient in line with the Administration's policy of mini mizing the burden of federal reg ulations.
He has generally accomplished that goal by focusing inspection on high-hazard industries, stressing voluntary efforts to improve work place safety and health, and turn ing the agency away from its previ ous policy of requiring the use of engineering controls, rather than respirators, to control airborne con taminants. His actions have garnered dismay from the labor and environ mental communities but general ap proval from industry management. During Auchter's tenure, OSHA issued only two major new rules. One dealt with hearing conserva tion and the other required employ ers to warn workers of hazardous chemicals present in the workplace. However, a Carter Administration policy detailing how the agency would set standards for workplace carcinogens was vacated and, de spite three years of study, never reissued. Similarly, a standard low ering the permissible worker expo sure to benzene was vacated on court order in 1981 and n e v e r reproposed, although last July Auch ter said the agency was giving it high priority. D
Dow, EPA settle waste disposal dispute Dow Chemical and the Environmen tal Protection Agency have settled a minor part of their major dispute over dioxin contamination. The two parties have reached verbal agree ment that disposal of certain wastes is regulated under the Toxic Sub stances Control Act. As a result Dow's Michigan division has signed and mailed a consent order agree ing to pay $48,450 in settlement fees to EPA's Region V office in Chicago, which says it expects the order to be signed within a few days. The dispute arose over Dow's discovery, during a self-initiated en vironmental audit, that it had inad vertently treated and disposed of secondary wastes—paper towels, rags, and filters used to clean up a spill during packaging of its 2,4,5-T products—and water contaminated with 2,4,5-T in its wastewater treat ment facility and incinerator be tween May 1980 and December 1981. Dow says that it voluntarily brought this matter to EPA's atten-
tion and asked the agency to inter pret whether TSCA regulations ap plied to the disposal of secondary wastes—those generated after a sub stance has been processed into a finished product. EPA at first acknowledged that this was a gray area, since TSCA does not regulate disposal of dis carded products. (Ordinarily, dispos al of hazardous wastes is regulated through the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act.) However, it deter mined that TSCA does regulate the disposal of product discarded dur ing the repackaging of finished product and therefore the agency should have been notified before any disposal took place. The ap propriateness of the methods used to dispose of the wastes was not an issue. Dow says it agreed to the settle ment because it wanted to resolve the issue rather than tie up its re sources in a l e n g t h y litigation process. D
