Bonnie Hill has heard this story, and many others. But, she sighs, “after all that’s gone on, it would still be virtually impossible to prove in a court of law that you had been exposed and then, even worse, that what happened afterwards was the result of that exposure. That’s one thing that happened with the miscarriages. Dow just dredged up every possible factor that could influence a miscarriage or spontaneous abortion. Well, of course there are a lot of things that can cause miscarriages, but I really resent their insinuations—it’s been a little more than that, actually—that this is a great area for growing marijuana, and it’s because we don’t want our marijuana plantations killed off that we’re against spraying. Someone has also spread the rumor that our miscarriages are because we are ‘remnants of the sixties flower children’ who overindulge in drugs. I’ve lived here for eleven years, and I can assure you that opponents of herbicide spraying come from all walks of life. Some of them even work for the timber industry, and there are absolutely no marijuana plantations in the Alsea area. That’s one ploy that just won’t work—not here, anyway.”
Dow has also challenged the EPA’s decision to place a limited suspension order on domestic use of 2,4,5-T,[24] arguing that the Alsea study was not comprehensive enough to merit the EPA’s conclusions.
“One of the problems we have had all along,” Hill explains, “is that the media has always given people the impression that the EPA’s study was based on only nine women living in the Alsea area, when in fact the EPA actually covered a sixteen-hundred-square-mile area, and of course years of research into the effects of 2,4,5-T influenced their decision as well. I don’t mean to disparage the media altogether, because we received international coverage and it was rather surprising, even a bit overwhelming, because people came from New Zealand, England, Germany, and Australia to talk with us, and this of course increased people’s awareness of this problem. Our main criticism of the EPA study is that they only examined hospital records, rather than talking with more of the people who lived in this area, because very few spontaneous abortions are treated in hospitals these days. They are almost all treated in doctor’s offices, or people don’t go to the doctor at all; it’s just something that happens in their homes. Out of the first eleven spontaneous abortions that we found out about, only two had been treated in hospitals, and that’s a fairly representational figure—all the rest being treated in doctor’s offices—so if the EPA really wanted to get a true feeling of what was going on here they should have gone to doctors’ offices, which is something we pressed for from the very beginning. So actually, in spite of our good feelings about the suspension order, we still feel that no one has really taken a thorough look at just what had been going on here.”
Prior to the EPA’s Emergency Suspension Order, 2,4,5-T was undergoing scrutiny through a process called RPAR, or “Rebuttable Presumption Against Registration.” Having decided that on the basis of its evidence there were serious questions involved in the continued domestic use of 2,4,5-T, the EPA had announced that it was considering canceling registration for this product, but would give the manufacturer the opportunity to present arguments for keeping the herbicide on the market. The Emergency Suspension Order superseded RPAR and the two hearings were merged into one, which was to be divided into two sections—first, the risks involved in, and second, the benefits derived from using 2,4,5-T.
During the second section of the EPA’s hearings, Dow Chemical was joined by fifty-four corporations and trade associations, including the National Cattlemen’s Association, the National Forest Products Association, and the American Farm Bureau in opposing the EPA’s possible cancellation of 2,4,5-T. The US Department of Agriculture also intervened with information that supported Dow’s position. Intervening on behalf of affected citizens were the Environmental Defense Fund and the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP), an organization with fifty member groups in five northwestern states. Following arguments in favor of and against the continued registration of 2,4,5-T, an administrative law judge was to make a recommendation to the EPA’s administrator, whose decision would be subject to a lengthily appeals process. But in March 1981, before testimony had been completed, the EPA agreed with Dow’s request to suspend the hearings and negotiate a settlement behind closed doors.
“Our reaction to the news was one of anger,” wrote the NCAP staff in their quarterly magazine, NCAP News. “To so compromise a public process as to render it meaningless is an outrage to all citizens. Instead of an orderly public airing of the risks and benefits of 2,4,5-T and a decision by an administrative law judge, we have gotten the backroom deal. The closed-door negotiations have short-circuited the orderly hearing process, stifled the disclosure of essential information, and effectively excluded citizen representation.”5
“I think they knew that no one really had any information on the benefits of T, either economic or otherwise,” laughs Hill, “but no matter which way things go, Dow pretty much wins because the EPA will be closed down before long anyway. The Reagan administration didn’t even appoint an administrator for the agency until four months after the president took office, and their funding has been cut by 40 percent this year; yet they were always under funded. And it’s ironic that at a time when the EPA seems to be needed more than ever, some of the best people are leaving because they are unable to deal with the frustration of working for an administrator and an administration whose idea of regulating the environment is that you should pretty much let industry do whatever it wishes.”
As I listen to Bonnie Hill it becomes increasingly clear that she has not come to these mountains to be a weekend woodswoman, stapling NO HUNTING OR TRESPASSING signs to the trees on her acreage so the rednecks won’t ravage the wildlife. Nor has she chosen a life style that will enable her to return to her parents’ suburban home and, while the bathtub fills with steaming water, rail against the parasitical and platitudinous quality of urban-suburban life. She does not like what some of the people who work for the BLM, Forest Service, or private timber companies are doing to the land, but she does not hate the men who are doing it. Having lived not just on but in the land for over a decade, she realizes that the ice-clear streams, the trees, centuries old and draped in layers of lichen, the elk and the deer and the trout can get along without human begins; but she cannot imagine her family getting along without the land. What seems to upset and bewilder her the most is why everyone doesn’t love the forests as much as she and her neighbors do—a question that has perplexed Native Americans for more than two hundred years. The answer, as she has heard more than one professor of Ag-Economics say, “is of course complex.”
Although even the most fervent opponents of 2,4,5-T would concede that Dow has managed to reduce the amount of TCDD in this herbicide, no one is quite certain just how much 2,4,5-T is currently being sprayed on rangelands and rice plantations, or even how much of this herbicide is actually manufactured each year. The amount produced is considered a trade secret, but even if one were able to determine the exact number of gallons produced, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to discover with any precision just where and in what quantities 2,4,5-T is being used. Neither the EPA nor the states in which herbicides are used have the financial resources or manpower to spot-check even a small percentage of the helicopters that douse our national forests, rangelands, and rice plantations with defoliants. Moreover, there is little if any environmental testing for residues of TCDD that might find their way into the water, soil, and food chain following the application of herbicides contaminated with dioxin.
24
Although the EPA passed its suspension order on certain domestic uses of 2,4,5-T in February 1979, there is evidence that the use of this herbicide has actually increased each year since the suspension order was passed.