Dioxin

State environmental officials yesterday relaxed their warning about eating fish caught in the upper Potomac River, saying there have been "substantial decreases" in dioxin contamination downstream from the Westvaco Corp. paper mill in Luke.The move was immediately criticized by environmentalists, who contend that Maryland's limits on dioxin, a suspected human carcinogen, are too lax.Citing new sampling results, the Maryland Department of the Environment dropped its nearly 2-year-old advice to limit consumption of bass and most other surface-feeding sport fish caught in the 40-mile stretch of the Potomac between Luke and Paw Paw, W.Va.

State environmental officials have relaxed their warning about eating fish caught in the upper Potomac River, saying there have been "substantial decreases" in dioxin contamination downstream from the Westvaco Corp. paper mill in Luke.The move yesterday was immediately criticized by environmentalists, who contend that Maryland's limits on dioxin, a suspected human carcinogen, are too lax.Citing new sampling results, the Maryland Department of the Environment dropped its nearly 2-year-old advice to limit consumption of bass and most other surface-feeding sport fish caught in the 40-mile stretch of the Potomac between Luke and Paw Paw, W.Va.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- Diamond Shamrock Chemical Co. intentionally polluted a Newark neighborhood with toxic dioxin over an 18-year-period, an attorney charged yesterday at the opening of a trial of a civil lawsuit.Diamond Shamrock, which operated a chemical factory along the Passaic River from 1951 to 1969, is being sued by 72 former workers, neighbors and local businesses seeking unspecified damages.

After more than a decade of urgent warnings about the effects of toxic chemicals on everything from the foods people eat to the towns they live in, scientists are taking a contentious second look at the way they decide the health risk of hundreds of chemicals.There is by no means agreement among experts that it is time for an across-the-board lowering of official concern about the safety of chemicals. Depending on who you talk to, dioxin, which caused a whole Missouri town to be evacuated a decade ago, could either be as deadly as the plague or in low doses as non-threatening as the common cold.

WASHINGTON -- For years, the federal government has ranked the chemical compound dioxin as toxic enemy No. 1 and has required industrial companies to invest billions of dollars to prevent its release into the environment and to clean up what is already there.In 1982 and early 1983, in the most dramatic move to protect citizens, the government permanently evacuated all 2,240 residents of Times Beach, Mo., where the dirt roads had become contaminated with dioxin.Now, in a rare official reassessment, several top federal health authorities are backing away from the position that dioxin is so dangerous.

If you believe Westvaco Corp. officials, the small quantities o dioxin their paper mill discharges into the Potomac River will have little or no effect on the fish that live there.But if you believe most environmentalists, you would be foolhardy to fry up a bit of freshly caught trout and pop a morsel in your mouth.Whom do you believe? Both sides can cite scientific evidence to support their positions.Such is the confusion that now surrounds dioxin. Once thought to be the most potent cancer-causing chemical, dioxin has come under scrutiny recently as new evidence suggests it may not be as dangerous as was first believed.

ANNAPOLIS -- A House committee overwhelmingly defeated legislation yesterday that would have cut the amount of the toxic chemical dioxin that is allowed into rivers -- a change that could have cost a Western Maryland paper mill as much as $100 million.Delegate Ronald A. Guns, D-Cecil, chairman of the Environmental Matters Committee, said after the 19-3 vote that a pending lawsuit by environmental groups challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approval of Maryland's standard for dioxin levels had left the issue "up in the air."

To reduce the estimated risk of extra cancer deaths in Maryland fromone in 100,000 to one in 1 million, a Carroll delegate argued Thursday for raising the state water standard for the toxic chemical dioxinto the federally recommended level.Environmentalists supported the bill introduced by Delegate Lawrence A. LaMotte, D-Carroll, Baltimore, saying Maryland's current water quality standard is one of the most lenient in the nation, underestimates the degree to which minute levels of the chemical accumulate in fish and poses an unacceptably high human health risk.

ANNAPOLIS -- A bill to raise Maryland's standards for the emission of dioxin, a toxic chemical, would cost more than $100 million to meet, according to Westvaco Corp., one of Western Maryland's largest employers and practically the only company affected by the bill.But the higher standard would lower Marylanders' risk of developing cancer to one case per 1 million people, down from one case per 100,000 people, according to environmentalists.The bill, heard by the House Environmental Matters Committee, would raise the allowed level of dioxin in Maryland rivers from 1.2 parts per quadrillion to the 0.013 parts per quadrillion standard recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Maryland lets too much cancer-causing dioxin find its way into the state's rivers, environmental groups charged in a suit yesterday, and they say the fault lies with the federal government for allowing the state to get away with it.That is the gist of the suit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approval last fall of a Maryland standard for dioxin that was 100 times less stringent than EPA's standard. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Virginia by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Maryland Conservation Council and three other environmental groups.