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enjoy a lobster dinner not knowing if it came from those polluted 

 areas where shellfish contain concentrated polio virus 60 times that of 

 the fish in surrounding waters? Pollution has already closed 20 per- 

 cent of our commercial shellfish beds and of the large clam industry 

 areas, particularly in my area. 



Oil in the water is a real killer of our marine life, but it may come 

 to the time where it has a second strike capacity — it may kill human 

 beings. Direct contact w^ith the breathing apparatus of undersea life 

 kills many and weakens others. Cancer in fishes is a likely result of 

 oil pollution with cancers, growths, and concentrated cancer produc- 

 ing agents being found in a variety of marine life exposed to those 

 parts of the ocean polluted by oil refineries. Oysters and mussels from 

 polluted areas have been found to contain concentrations of hydro- 

 carbons known to cause cancer in man. And don't think because your 

 oysters are fried you're safe. These potentially lethal hydrocarbons, 

 odorless and invisible, are still locked into seafood tissues even after 

 frying. 



Food and Drug Administration scientists say it is possible that 

 these cancerous fish could cause cancer in humans, although they have 

 not had medical evidence of this yet. I, for one, do not want to take 

 that chance and I don't think the American people want to take that 

 chance, either. 



For those of you who are clam lovers, I would remind you that 

 clams harvested from the New York Bight contained coliform bac- 

 teria 50 to 80 times above acceptable levels set by the Food and Drug 

 Administration. And when you consider the poor little shrimp, I 

 call attention to the ironic case in Florida where uncontaminated 

 shrimp were contaminated by being cleaned on land with polluted 

 water taken from the harbor at Key West. 



Of course, the recent mercury pollution flap is receding from our 

 minds, but let us not forget that mercury contamination is still with 

 us ; it will be with us for a long time, and its dangers are still very real. 



You may remember my statement last July when I described the 

 greatest cessnool of our seas, the New York Bight. I carefully out- 

 lined the "pliffht of the bight" in my remarks then. Nothing has 

 changed, but the fact is that |X>llution in our harbor is getting worse. 



The importance of all this is that it is not only happening in the 

 New York area but in all coastal areas of the United States. There are 

 121 other ooean-dumninsf sites on the Atlantic coast, 56 on the gulf 

 coast, and 68 on the Pacific coast, where we are dumping upward of 

 50 million tons of trash from tin cans to cannons and poisonous iso- 

 topes to poisoned gas. 



New York and its own "dead sea" is being emulated by a string of 

 fled2:ing dead seas from Maine to Washington State, and we must not 

 forget our polluted inland waterways and lakes that are fast turning 

 into a massive national disgrace. 



I have an exnlanation of mv bill that I have submitted in two Ck)n- 

 gresses now, H.E. 285. H.R. 285 offers a total procrram for the solu- 

 tion of the water pollution problem not onlv in New York Harbor 

 but throughout America wherever wastes are disposed of in our waters. 

 In a nation where 85 nercent of the population lives in the coastal 

 environment, and in which 100 percent of the people depend on that 



