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forms of aquatic life, which are eaten by small fish ; the sm'all fish are 

 eaten by bigger fish, and as the mercury moves up the food chain, it 

 becomes more and more concentrated. In a body of water containing 

 .00001 parts of mercury per million, the food-fish might contain 10 

 parts per million. Tuna and swordfish have large amounts, in part 

 beca.use both are wide-ranging predators, at the top of long food- 

 chains. 



We sliould have been alerted before this to the danger of mercury. 

 In Japan, between 1953 and 1960, at least 43 people died and scores 

 were permanently disabled — suffering blindness, deafness, convulsions, 

 coma, mental retardation — from eating fish caught in a bay where a 

 plastics factory had been dumping mercury. 



In the 1950's, Sweden discovered that mercury was responsible for 

 her dwindling bird population, and that her fresh-water fish were con- 

 taminated. The Government there has banned the use of mercury- 

 ti-eated seed, and recommends that people eat no more than one fish 

 meal a week. 



Pollution has many sources. This applies to the disposal of indus- 

 trial wastes and sewage from urban communities, insecticides, and 

 fertilizers from land runoft", seepage of petroleum from offshore drill- 

 ing, as well as the pollutants that accumulate in the marine food chain 

 since many species of fish and other marine biota tend to inhabit the 

 relatively shallow areas of the ocean. 



This bill, which I am pleased to cosponsor, states clearly that it is 

 the policy of the United States "to regulate the dumping of all types 

 of material in the oceans, coastal and other waters and to prevent or 

 vigorously limit the dumping into oceans, coastal, and other waters of 

 any material which could adversely affect human health, welfare, or 

 amenities, or the marine environment, ecological systems, or economic 

 potentialities." 



In addition, the bill provides for the means of making this policy 

 a reality. 



It is also my hope that our private industries will voluntarily do 

 everything possible to limit pollution. We have already seen many 

 instances of such action. In one instance, for example, the Dow Chem- 

 ical Co. in Midland, Mich., has prevented waste tlirough such steps as 

 recycling raw materials. It has made each man — "right down to the 

 janitor" — accountable for pollution, using the rule : "If you mess it up, 

 you clean it up." Dow has attached the same emergency -type impor- 

 tance to a pollution incident as to a fire, explosion, or personal injury. 



Two years ago when the program started, Dow's monitors turned 

 up 1,100 potential pollution problems. Three hundred of them serious 

 enough to require immediate action — such as the fact that contami- 

 nants sometimes get into cooling water. Last year Dow spent $800,000 

 to put in a system with devices that can sense contaminants in the 

 cooling water and immediately divert the water into a 50-million gal- 

 lon pond. There it is treated before it is allowed to get back into the 

 Tittabawassee River. 



There are many other instances of such private initiative. It is my 

 hope that a bill such as the one we are discussing today, and private 

 efforts by business and industiy, can together help us to ease this 

 major problem of water pollution. 



