MEW CLEANUP: PCB QUESTIONS REMAIN

Anyone who has been following the Environmental Protection Agency's handling of the Missouri Electric Works cleanup in Cape Girardeau has probably either lost some hair or seen it turn white. For 14 years, the EPA has been dealing with soil and groundwater contamination caused by polychlorinated biphenyls -- PCBs -- that spilled from electrical transformers taken to the company for repair, storage or disposal.

If spending millions of dollars on anything can be considered good news, there is something positive in the fact that a private company has been hired to do the soil work for $3 million to $3.5 million, far less than the $17 million estimated by the EPA. The cost of the cleanup must be borne, under federal regulations, by businesses and companies who took transformers to MEW before the company went out of business six years ago.

Still to come is the cost of cleaning up contaminated groundwater at the MEW site on South Kingshighway. A study of this problem is expected to cost some $2 million, and no estimate has been compiled for the actual cleanup work.

While there is little dispute that PCB contamination occurred at the MEW site -- just as such contamination has been fairly common at many sites around the country where electrical transformers have been a factor -- a bigger question hasn't been answered: Are PCBs a threat to human health?

Not only is there no answer, but the question isn't even getting serious consideration from federal authorities who have, based on what may be faulty conclusions, decided there is a threat of such national proportions that it is spending private and public funds to deal with the situation.

At one time, the PCB-laden oil contained in transformers was recycled as a spray to control dust on unpaved roads. That practice was halted once the EPA determined there was a health threat from PCBs.

But the fact remains that PCBs have never been proven to have caused any human illness.

Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. Once the federal government's bureaucracy embarks on a course of action, it appears even facts -- or a lack of them -- aren't allowed to stand in the way.

As a result, some 175 former MEW customers will be expected to pay whatever the costs of the Cape Girardeau cleanup turn out to be. So far, nearly 140 former customers have contributed between $4 million and $5 million to a cleanup trust fund. The other former customers will be expected to pay much of the rest. The EPA's share is 20 percent.

But if PCBs aren't harmful, why pay anything?