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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 11, 1985)
Waitin’on a call Page 9 Oregon daily _ _ emerald Monday, March 11, 1985 Eugene, Oregon Volume 86, Number 116 Bomb threat mars Ethiopian benefit By Cynthia Whitfield Of (he Emarald A bomb threat disrupted Sunday night’s Heart of Oregon’s Pledge to Ethiopia benefit to raise funds for famine victims in Ethiopia. No bomb was found, and the concert resumed within thirty minutes. The threat came after an already disappointing day for HOPE. The fund-raising effort fell far short of HOPE’S $200,000 goal. By late Sunday evening only $3,200 had been collected. HOPE member Arzinia Richardson said the caller said he "didn’t like the idea of raising money for niggers.” HOPE, a four-member Eugene-based organization, and Public Health International of Oregon, sponsored three Hult Center concerts Sunday, which featured rock, jazz, folk and gospel music in the Silva Concert Hall. The ticket price for each concert was originally set at $12.50, but was lowered to $7.50 Tuesday because of low ticket sales. But by noon Sunday, local radio stations announc ed that tickets were no longer necessary. Instead. HOPE decided to accept donations of any kind for admission to the concerts. All proceeds from the concert will be donated to Oxfam America, an organization working to provide famine relief and educational self-help projects to Ethiopians. *‘We had sold only about 50 tickets before this mor ning,” said Denny Guelher, a promotions volunteer for HOPE. Guelher said Ken Kesey “grabbed him” and suggested the concerts should be a give-as-you can community event. Guelher blamed Eugene’s warm weather and sun ny skies for part of the problem. The HOPE staff asked local radio stations to inform listeners of the change in admission policy. The radio stations responded by urg ing listeners to come to the Hult, bringing “anything you can afford.” The first concert, classical and jazz performances, featuring the Eugene Ballet Company and nationally recognized jazz performer Bobby McFerrin, was attend ed by an estimated 50-100 persons. Several concert goers said they would have liked to stay for McFerrin’s performance, but had purchased tickets for the stage performance of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in the Hult Center’s Soreng Theatre. Meanwhile, additional entertainment provided at the Eugene Hilton also drew sparse crowds. Photo by Stjeven Wall . . 0 Photo by Dean Guernsey The Whitetones performed before a sparse crowd at the Hilton Sunday afternoon as part of the HOPE benefit. EPA sued for studies’ findings . Local use of dioxin sprays scrutinized By Dave Berns Of tb« Emerald Dioxin — the word creates the imagery of life-threatening chemicals and brings to mind the evacuation of small towns such as Times Beach, Mo. Yet, has the dioxin threat been overplayed by the media in recent years? A University law student and his wife do not believe so. Paul Merrell and Carol Van Strum, who are residents of Five Rivers, have sued the federal Environmental Protec tion Agency in an attempt to force the agency to release all documents relating to the EPA’s studies of the impact of her bicides on human health in the Siuslaw National Forest. The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in late Oc tober, names William Ruckelshaus, former EPA ad ministrator. as the defendant. Merrell has, in the past, filed two other lawsuits seeking bans on the use of herbicides in Oregon. "The EPA is withholding in formation on the effects of diox in spraying all over the coun try," said Van Strum in a recent interview. ,yy/y/f ,, “TKe agency did studies in Hemlock, Mich.; Hempstead, .N.Y.; San Antonio, Texas; and Chicago. I don’t. believe they contacted any area residents with the results of these studies/’ she said. Van Strum has written a book titled “A Bitter Fog: Herbicides and Human Rights,” which describes the events leading up to her lawsuit. “In the spring of 1979 our valley was sprayed with the her bicide 2,4,5-T. That summer five of seven pregnant women miscarried, two kids almost died from spinal meningitis, and people suffered from both gastrointestinal and respiratory problems,” Van Strum said. There is much circumstantial evidence to suggest that these events were related to the her bicide spraying, she said. “But the EPA will not release infor mation that supports our beliefs.” Recently, the Lane County Board of Commissioners sent a letter to U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip” O’Neill, re questing that O’Neill initiate a House investigation into Van Strum’s charges. *,*,*.’’ What is the EPA doing? The EPA tries to release as much information as possible on the study of dioxins, said Anita Frankel of the EPA’s Seat tle office. “A lot of fear exists about dioxins,” Frankel said. “People just hear the word dioxin, and the publicity is going to hurt anyone trying to perform an ob jective study. Unfortunately, the EPA hasn't been involved in the study of dioxin for very long.” But the agency is working to increase the amount of informa tion it has on dioxins, she said. In late 1983, the agency developed a “National Dioxin Strategy,” said Barry Korb, of the EPA’s Washington D.C. office. The strategy orders studies to determine the health effects of dioxin and an examination of possible methods for the disposal of the contaminant, Korb said. Structure of dioxin A dioxin is composed of two six-sided benzene rings that are linked by two oxygen molecules. In most dioxins, chlorine molecules bond with the benzene. It is the location of the chlorine on the benzene that determines the form of dioxin present in an herbicide. In 2,4,5-T, the numbers in dicate that the chlorine is located on points 2, 4, and 5 of the benzene ring. There are 75 types of dioxin, with the most toxic being 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p dioxin, also known as TCDD. Herbicide use in Oregon Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. Forest Ser vice and the Bureau of Land Management routinely sprayed Oregon’s forests with dioxin contaminated herbicides. The purpose of the sprayings was to kill grass and brush that in terfered with timber growth on BLM and Forest Service lands. The 1979 spraying that Van Strum described was part of this program. Since early 1984, a federal court order has ended the use of herbicides on federal lands in Oregon and Washington. U.S. 9th District ludge James Burns ruled that the BLM and Forest Service must give him a “worst case scenqriq,,v • outlining the health effects of the herbicides, before he would consider lifting the ban. Local environmentalist sup ports Van Strum Mary O’Brien of the Nor thwest Coalition for Alter natives to Pesticides supports both the ban and Van Strum’s concerns about dioxin. “There is plenty of cir cumstantial evidence of birth defects, cancers and respiratory problems, yet we don’t know how toxic most dioxins are because they haven’t been tested. Currently, the only pesticides recognized as dangerous and banned by the EPA are 2,4,5-T and Silvex,” said O’Brien, who has a doc torate in botany. But the 14-year-old EPA is not sufficiently investigating the ef fects of most dioxin contaminated herbicides, O'Brien said. OSU scientist believes dioxins are harmless Yet Michael Newton, a pro fessor of forest ecology at Continued on Page 5