Cristine Russell

DAVIS, CA.-It is theatre in the round at the barn-like Wyatt Pavilion on the University of California campus here. But the people on the raised stage are not actors and the audience is obviously not a student crowd. Instead, a phalanx of briefcase-bearing representatives of industry and government. more than 100-strong, have come to hear a 12-mernber scientific advisory panel deliberate about which chemicals cause cancer or birth defects. The play is called Proposition 65, a long-running drama without an ending that is being watched around the world as a harbinger of what can happen when citizens-concerned about the environment but distrustful of existing government and business efforts-take control of toxic chemicals into their own hands. Persuaded by a colorful cast of environmental, consumer. and labor activists, as well as politicians like state Rep. Tom Hayden and his movie star wife Jane Fonda, California voters handily passed Proposition 65 in November 1986. Formally called the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, its extraordinary breadth went far beyond existing state or federal toxic control laws.

Editors Note: APF Reporter Vol.11 #3 exsisted only as a photo copy, becuase of this the pictures in this story are of poor quality. Monsanto Company’s three St. Louis area plants use perchloroethylene to make a bacteria-fighting chemical in deodorant soap, produce paradichlorobenzene to make mothballs and use chlorine to make swimming pool chemicals. In the process, the plants discharged 4.4 million pounds of these and 28 other hazardous chemicals into the air last year. Monsanto Chemical Company’s W.G. Krummrich plant in Sauget, Il., across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. Photo: Courtesy of Monsato The company recently filed the emissions numbers with the Environmental Protection Agency in response to a sweeping new federal law that has the potential to revolutionize what the public knows about the toxic chemicals released by American industry into the air, water and land around them. Perchloroethylene in high doses can cause dizziness, even death. It can endanger an unborn baby or pose a threat of cancer. Paradichlorobenzene is an irritant that at high levels can cause liver and kidney