By the Associated Press, The New York Times

The Wan He arrived Wednesday with 110 tons of transformers, other electrical equipment, oil, circuit breakers, packing material, rags and other debris, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Campbell said. The waste was supposed to be temporarily housed in Seattle.  

Scott Reid, president of Local 19 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said the local lost its arbitration early today with the shipping and stevedoring companies. He said about 20 workers would be put on the job, but were asking for safety measures before handling the potentially harmful substance.  

``We are going to take as many (precautions) as they will let us take,'' Reid said. ``We've asked for protective gear, asked for permission to do this very slowly, asked to have EPA officials, Coast Guard officials there and that they inspect every container as it is offloaded.''  

Arbitration is the standard means of resolving cargo handling issues under the union contract. The ILWU has a long history of refusing to unload ships for political and environmental reasons.  

Reid said he had no idea how long it would take to get the 14 containers off the ship.  

``We're very upset, very frustrated that our civic leaders, state leaders and federal leaders let this happen to us,'' he said. ``We're between a rock and a hard place. We feel this is an unfair position they put us in.''  

About two dozen protesters were waiting when the ship arrived late Wednesday at Terminal 18.  

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were used in heavy electrical equipment and other industrial applications. But they have been banned by the federal government since 1977 because they have 
been linked to cancer in laboratory animals.  

The Environmental Protection Agency gave the Pentagon permission to unload the waste for temporary storage while the contractor, Trans-Cycle Industries of Pell City, Ala., and defense officials figure out how to dispose of it. It was to be stored in a Seattle-area warehouse.  

Gov. Gary Locke said he was assured that permanent disposal would be arranged within 30 days.  

``We want it out of here as soon as possible,'' Locke said. ``This waste was generated in another country, and it has no business being in Washington.''  

The environmental group Greenpeace said the waste should never have left Japan, and protesters were on hand when the ship arrived.

``It's outrageous that the EPA would approve this when it's quite clearly illegal,'' said Dave Batker of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, which tracks shipments of toxic waste around the world.   

Michael Zarin of New York, a lawyer for Trans-Cycle, downplayed the risk from the shipment, saying the transformers are ``essentially scrap metal.''  

Properly stored waste would not endanger anyone, EPA risk assessor Dana Davoli said.  

``You can be far away from a factory and still be exposed to a chemical in the air, but you can be right next to properly packaged material in a drum and you're not exposed,'' Davoli said.