LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

To the editor: Since Southeast Missouri State University is planning a new campus with the involvement of the city, it would be an appropriate time to consider a name change to reflect the relationship with the city and to add some distinctiveness.

Truman State University sounds a lot more charming to me than Northeast Missouri State University, and changing the name of Southeast Missouri State University to Cape State University would be a big improvement in my opinion. It may take some adjustment, but with the help of computers the conversion could be made relatively painless.

Adding the new campus is a big step, and a name change would seem to be appropriate at such a time. Choosing an appropriate name that would satisfy all of the different interests involved might be difficult, but I suggest Cape State University.

H.E. FIEHLER, Class of 1950

Cape Girardeau

To the editor: Monday the street sweeper cleaned our street. Tuesday the citys leaf vacuum truck is picking up leaves along our curb. Lessee ... is there something backwards here.

FRED KELLER

Cape Girardeau

To the editor: The Nov. 28 editorial in favor of the Cape Girardeau School Districts attendance-no finals policy was curious. The papers points follow with some observations.

1. If kids arent in school, they arent learning. But anyone who had dragged himself to the office with a bad cold knows that sick kids in school dont learn either. Theyre just there.

2. The district has reported no problems with contagious illness during the three years the policy has been in effect. Hello! You apparently slept through health department nurse Charlotte Craigs presentation at the board meeting, and you overlooked her letter to the editor. The Cape Girardeau public schools are reporting contagious illnesses at two to three times the rate of other districts in the county. Were you not feeling well when we talked about this?

3. The school nurses can take care of it. These nurses are reporting those high infection rates to the health department. Did you notice that the administration speaks for the nurses (who are not tenured) when they say there is no problem?4. Its the parents responsibility. See high infection rates, No. 3, above.

5. Attendance has an impact on state funding. Bingo! You followed the cookie and got the right answer, but you still have to take exams, because the important thing is attendance.

6. On finals day, the motivated students enjoy big-screen TV and refreshments ... .

On the downside, a smart and healthy student may go all the way through high school without taking a final exam. So the motivated, college-bound students learn that education just means showing up. These kids are in for a cruel surprise in college, in graduate school and in the real world. We are not paying tax dollars for them to watch Oprah.

A reasonable attendance policy would not put state funding ahead of keeping sick children from infecting healthy children. A reasonable attendance policy would not put watching television ahead of learning how to take exams.

The Missourian appears to be backing a bureaucratic stonewall. If you and the district hang in there, I fear that someday we will see what happens when some highly motivated but contagious student does his bit for state funding and spreads something like viral meningitis. Then the paper can say Oops! but the district wont get off that cheaply.

BENJAMIN F. LEWIS

Cape Girardeau

To the editor: Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, represent a group of over 200 related chemicals that have been used primarily in the more recent past in varying mixtures in electrical equipment. Because of their use in various mixtures, it is difficult to determine with pinpoint precision the health effects of this or that particular combination, but there is much suggestive evidence.

The Southeast Missourians Nov. 30 editorial attacked the Environmental Protection Agency and the cleanup of the Missouri Electric Works Toxic Superfund Site in Cape Girardeau. In its attacks, the editorial stated that PCBs have never been proven to have caused any human illness, and if PCBs arent harmful, why pay anything.

Some readers might accept this reasoning at face value, but I would suggest that maybe we should look at the evidence to test this view. Just as occurs with cigarettes, it is the substances which are inherently associated with the PCBs that seem to have adverse health effects. Because these substances are present either as contaminants in the manufacture of PCBs or occur as breakdown products, they are always and inevitably present in the environment when PCBs escape. Cleaning up a PCB spill includes the cleanup of these other contaminants.

In demanding proof, the editorial articulates the same unfortunate misunderstanding of how science works that has plagued the anti-environmental movement for so long. When dealing with issues such as these, what science provides is evidence to evaluate, not proof. This requires a level of absolute certainty that science (even though it can get us to the moon and stars) will never be able to provide.

Reasons that we dont have overwhelming evidence regarding direct human health effects of PCBs are ethical and pragmatic: It would be unethical to conduct tests of a seriously suspected human carcinogen on unknowing subjects, and it would be difficult to find volunteers for a sound controlled test if the risks were known to all participants.

What we have with such potential hazards as PCBs are two sources of data. One source is analysis of the consequences of occupational or accidental human exposure to the chemical. Such sources are always subject to the criticism that they are uncontrolled, and we cannot be 100 percent certain that any pattern is a consequence of the exposure under investigation. The best we can do is apply a prudent interpretation of the data. The second source of data involves studies on animals. Such studies have been the basis for medical advances throughout time even though they are open to the criticism that the responses of non-human mammals may not be applicable to humans.

The studies of occupational or accidental exposure have suggested two possibilities, in both cases of which the culprits might be inevitable co-contaminants with PCBs, namely their breakdown products (some of which may be more hazardous than the PCBs themselves):n Short-term acute occupational exposure has been implicated as a cause for skin rashes and eye irritation.n Accidental consumption of PCBs in Japanese incidents seemed to have induced a range of disease symptoms including fatigue, nausea, swelling of arms and legs, and liver disorders, with a possible increase in liver cancers over time.

Animal experiments, meanwhile, reveal that PCB mixtures (or their breakdown products) induce adverse health effects that include liver damage, skin irritation, negative reproductive and developmental effects and cancer.

Given that these are the best sources of data available to us, we must use them to help us make a rational decision as to what steps to take. As a result of these data, it would seem logical, appropriately cautious and even conservative to consider that there may be health hazards for humans associated with exposure to the chemicals or their breakdown products. When it comes to potential human health effects, I would hope most people prefer to be safe rather than sorry. This is apparently not so with the Southeast Missourian editorial board.

I would like to leave you with the following questions:

1. Knowing the possible health risks attributed to PCBs and their byproducts, would you feel comfortable living at the MEW site?

2. Would you feel comfortable drinking water from a well located at the MEW site?

3. Would you feel comfortable letting your children or grandchildren play at a park that was formerly a PCB dumping ground? If you answered no to any of the above questions, then you would logically have to support the cleanup of PCBs on the MEW site.

FRANK DIETIKER JR.

Cape Girardeau