Suit aims at blocking agent orange study Studies proposed by the Veterans Administration and the Air Force to determine whether veterans exposed to the dioxin-contaminated herbicide agent orange have suffered adverse health effects are running into trouble before they are even started. A group of Vietnam veterans and their families has filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., against the Veterans Administration, seeking to block that agency's health effects study. The suit claims that the re quirements that VA has placed on the study "will not result in a scientifi cally valid and objective study and will deter potential qualified [re searchers] from submitting propos als." And a committee of the National Research Council, asked by the Air Force to review its proposed study of health effects related to exposure to the herbicide, has drawn similar conclusions about that study. The suit was brought by the Na tional Veterans Task Force on Agent Orange, a coalition of organizations that claims to represent thousands of former servicemen who were exposed to agent orange and believe that they are suffering disabilities because of this exposure. The group objects to the method VA is using to select a protocol for its study. For one thing, VA wants to use its own personnel to collect data in the study and compile it. The task force questions whether these personnel have the expertise
needed to do this, since none of them are epidemiologists, and whether they will be impartial since VA has pub licly stated that it does not think tnat agent orange adversely affects health of soldiers exposed to it. The task force also claims that VA is putting too much emphasis on the cost of the study rather than its quality. VA issued a request for proposals to design a protocol for the study in March. The closing date for proposals was May 8, and the agency has said it will select a proposal within the next six working days. The task force asked for a temporary restraining order to halt this procedure which was denied last week by district court judge Harold H. Greene. The task force also filed a protest with the General Accounting Office hoping to stop the study from getting under way. GAO has not responded to this action. The National Research Council, acting independently, has raised its own objections to a study proposed by the Air Force to look at the effects of agent orange exposure to Air Force personnel. In a report to' the Air Force, the council said that the pro posed study probably would not identify adverse health effects, if there were any, because the group to be studied would be too small and the time that it would be studied too short. Also, the council is concerned that a study conducted by Air Force personnel that found no hazard or reached equivocal conclusions would not be believed by veterans or the general public. Π
Pressure experiments yi Id data on Earth The ability to duplicate in the labo ratory the extremes of temperature and pressure that prevail in the Earth's interior is leading scientists to revamp theories of how the Earth's layers formed. "Pressure-induced differentiation seems far more significant than tem perature," says Peter M. Bell of Car negie Institution, Washington, D.C. He and his collaborators, Ho-Kwang Mao and Takehiko Yagi, have been using a diamond-cell apparatus to achieve static pressures of as much as 1.7 megabars (more than one and a half million times greater than at mospheric pressure). Such pressures prevail far below the Earth's surface at depths of about 2900 km, ap proximately the juncture of the mantle and core layers. These high pressures exert ex traordinary influences on the prop erties of materials and, among other things, have allowed the Carnegie group to crystallize methane gas (at
room temperature) and measure several phase changes; to crystallize and to obtain density measures of nitrogen, hydrogen, neon, and am monia; and to cause plastic flow of diamonds. In studying more complex minerals that make up the bulk of the Earth, Bell and his colleagues find that an unusual and previously unsuspected chemical disproportionation process may have determined the planet's current composition. At high pres sures, most materials will crystallize into a perovskite structure, Bell ex plains, but with one important ex ception—iron. 'Only about 20% of the iron will go into this material," he says. "The rest goes into an oxide phase. "We believe this oxide phase worked its way to the core of the Earth by gravity," he continues. "And at higher temperature and pressures [deeper in the Earth], the iron itself precipitated from the oxide." This
Bell: disproportionation process
explanation is consistent with certain seismic measurements that indicate a sharp discontinuity in density about 800 km below the surface of the Earth. This process probably occurred in a cycle in which iron gravitated downward to form the Earth's core and oxygen-rich materials formed the planet's upper mantle. It's possible, Bell says, that the oxygen liberated from iron oxides contributed to the atmosphere. But it's also conceivable that some of the oxygen remains dis solved in the Earth's core, he points out. "These reactions are so funda mental that they probably control the bulk chemical composition of the whole Earth," Bell says. He and his colleagues believe that such highpressure measurements also can help to determine the composition of other planets in the solar system. D
Harvester plans to build technology center Chemistry will figure importantly in the work of an $80 million, 270,000sq-ft science and technology labora tory that International Harvester Co. plans to have ready at Burr Ridge, 111., in 1982. The firm already has begun hiring the 200 scientists and engineers among the 400 people who will staff the laboratory. The laboratory itself will be one of 10 buildings in a technical center Harvester plans to finish on the 440-acre site in the 1990's. Among the 21 departments in the new laboratory will be those of chemical, biological, environmental, paint, and composite materials technology. The laboratory May 12, 1980C&EN
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