News of the Week Berg of Stanford University, for fundamental contributions to understanding the mechanisms of gene expression; and Wendell L. Roelofs of Cornell University, for his fundamental contributions to basic and applied biology in the field of insect pheromones. D
Benzidine import ban proposed in Congress A bill that would ban the importation of benzidine and benzidinebased products has been introduced in the House by Rep. Donald J. Pease (D.-Ohio). Pease calls the continued use of these chemicals a "slowmotion, Bhopal-type health hazard" and says that a ban on imports to the U.S. would "demonstrate U.S. concern over workers' deaths [from benzidine exposure] in developing countries." Benzidine, carcinogenic to humans, has a long record of health problems and has been in declining use in the past few years. Essentially all benzidine and benzidine products used in the U.S. are imported, primarily from France and the Netherlands, and they are of little or no economic importance in the U.S. Pease introduced his bill, H.R. 1256, following a study by the Collegium Ramazzini that, in effect, rec-
ommends an end to all human exposure to benzidine. The Collegium Ramazzini is an international network of environmental and occupational health scientists who assess potential injury or disease in the environment or workplace. It was founded by Irving J. Selikoff of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. Regulations by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration in 1973 effectively banned the manufacture of benzidine. Since then its use has dropped dramatically. About 6.7 million lb of benzidine-based dyes were used in 1973. In a recent report the Congressional Research Service noted that in 1973 only about 437,000 lb of the chemical and its derivatives were imported, and the amount is falling. This equals just 0.2% of the synthetic dye market in the U.S. Officials of the AFL-CIO estimate there are about 80,000 workers who handle these dyes in the U.S., most of them in the manufacture of textiles. Probably about 2000 workers handle benzidine itself. International figures are impossible to get, but it's assumed that workers in South Korea, Yugoslavia, and Taiwan, which export benzidine dyes to the U.S., do not have the same protections as U.S. workers and that these foreign workers are in danger. No one has attempted to estimate the economic impact a ban would have on the exporting countries. D
Alloy phase diagram project gets private funding A joint project by the American Society for Metals and the National Bureau of Standards to provide continuously updated alloy phase diagrams to metallurgists has passed a major milestone. The project has reached its goal of raising $4 million from companies, institutes, agencies, and individuals to support the project. Begun as a pilot program in 1978, the project involves collecting and critically evaluating phase data from around the world and compiling them in a single, continuously revised, comqputer file. The file can be accessed by means of an interactive computer program developed at NBS. Printed versions of the data 8
March 4, 1985 C&EN
also will be available in the form of a bimonthly bulletin. Overall cost of the program is expected to reach $14 million, of which about $4 million will come from the U.S. government, about $4 million from industry and other private sponsors in the U.S., and the remainder from support raised by national committees in nine other participating countries. Once the system for evaluating data and incorporating them into the computer file is set up, the project's expenses are expected to decrease substantially. At that point the sponsors expect that revenue generated from use of the data will support the costs of maintaining the system. D
Agent orange fund payment plan filed Nine months after a $180 million fund was established to compensate Vietnam veterans and their families for injuries attributed to exposure to the wartime defoliant agent orange, a plan for distributing the money to claimants has been filed in federal court. Under the plan, claimants would not have to prove that the dioxin contaminant in agent orange caused their injuries, but very few of the 200,000 or so claimants would get cash awards. The plan, filed last week in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, dispenses with unresolved questions about dioxin's toxicity to human beings. To be considered for a cash award, a claimant would have to provide only medical evidence of injury and information that, when correlated w i t h Defense Department records on agent orange spraying, indicates exposure to the herbicide. Although easing the burden of proving causation, the proposal— provisions of which are expected to be contested by some attorneys for the veterans—sharply limits the number of awards. Only those totally disabled and the families of deceased veterans would be eligible. Of those claimants, only the fifty percent who were most exposed to agent orange would get any cash. Furthermore, the biggest payments, to be doled out over 10 years, would be $25,000 for disability and $5000 for death. As a result, only some 5% of current claimants could receive any money. The eligibility criteria were narrowed sharply because nearly four times as many people have filed claims as was anticipated when a settlement was reached last May between the veterans and the seven companies that made agent orange for the government (C&EN, May 14, 1984, page 6). After a public hearing in court March 5, Judge Jack B. Weinstein, who appointed a lawyer to devise the payment plan, will have the choice of rejecting or revising it. D
