What was going on when I was born?

Residents and former residents at the Love Canal toxic-waste site in Niagara Falls, N.Y., are no more likely to have suffered chromosomal damage than residents elsewhere in the city, a Government study concluded today. The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and two major national laboratories, contradicted a disputed 1980 study that spread fear among the residents and led to the removal of hundreds of families to protect their safety. The latest study found ''no increase in abnormalities'' among 46 residents or former residents of the area surrounding the canal compared to 50 residents of a control area roughly a mile away. ''This suggests that no specific relationship existed between exposure to chemical agents in the Love Canal area and increased frequency of chromosome damage,'' the study asserted.

An article in Business Day on May 7 about oil exploration attributed to the wrong Phillips Petroleum official a remark about the ''investment climate most attractive'' for exploration projects. The speaker was Edward Morse, director of international affairs for Phillips.

''I will not support a budget resolution that raises taxes while we're coming out of a recession.

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly today to repeal the withholding of taxes from dividends and interest payments. Despite the vigorous opposition of both the Reagan Administration and Speaker of the House Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., Democrat of Massachusetts, the repeal bill passed by a vote of 382 to 41, a margin that would be sufficient to override a veto by President Reagan. The President has threatened in the past to veto any attempt to repeal or postpone the withholding, which is to go into effect July 1. But at his news conference last night, Mr. Reagan stopped short of repeating this threat. ''I'm going to wait and see what they come up with up there on the Hill,'' he said.

After President Reagan lobbied lawmakers with last-minute phone calls, the MX missile narrowly survived another test vote in Congress today and headed for a showdown on the floor of the House and Senate. The House Appropriations Committee voted, 30 to 26, in favor of a resolution that would free $625 million for development and testing of the missile that Congress blocked last year. Most politicians expect the funds to be released, but the outcome is by no means settled. After the committee action, Representative Norman D. Dicks, a Washington Democrat who supported the missile, said, ''The closeness of the vote clearly indicates that the Administration has got a lot of work to do on Capitol Hill.''

There was stately music and lusty cheering; confetti and balloons filled the air and, here and there in the sea of gowns and tassels, champagne corks popped. In afternoon ceremonies, more than 7,300 people, including a distinguished 80-year-old philosopher who got his bachelor's degree after a 60-year delay, received degrees yesterday at Columbia University's 229th commencement. Columbia's president, Michael I. Sovern, presided over the ceremonies at the university's Low Plaza, saying the occasion represented ''one of the best days of our lives.'' After the awarding of degrees for 20 schools and colleges, he read citations for 11 people invited by Columbia to receive honorary degrees and awards, including the author Isaac Asimov, Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island and the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Polykarp Kusch.

International A confidential U.S.-Israeli accord was signed in Washington and Jerusalem, according to Israeli and Reagan Administration officials. The agreement, they said, recognizes that despite the Israeli-Lebanese security accord, Israel has the right to retaliate against terrorist attacks from Lebanon and that Israel may delay withdrawing its forces from Lebanon until the forces of Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization also withdraw. (Page A1, Column 1.) An Israeli-Lebanese agreement was signed in ceremonies in both countries. The security agreement is designed to lead to a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon and a continuing Israeli involvement in policing southern Lebanon. (A16:1-4.)

Adm. Stansfield Turner, who as Director of Central Intelligence prosecuted a former C.I.A. agent for refusing to clear his book with the agency, is disputing C.I.A. censors over his own book on intelligence. Admiral Turner acknowledged in an interview that the agency's Publications Review Board had objected to portions of three chapters in his uncompleted book. As much as 10 percent of one section was deleted on the ground that it included classified information that would be injurious to the protection of agency sources and methods.

AS with many other unproved substances with seemingly miraculous properties, DMSO has been dubbed alternately a panacea and a snake oil. The drug has also attracted a considerable cult following, enormous journalistic attention and highly profitable sales for unapproved uses. The Food and Drug Administration has approved DMSO for only one medical use: to relieve the pain of a rare bladder disorder called interstitial cystitis. However, since DMSO is legally sold over the counter as an industrial chemical (as well as by veterinarian's prescription for a few animal problems), the Federal Government cannot stop people from buying and applying it for myriad conditions ranging in seriousness from sprained ankles to cancer. It is most popular among professional athletes, who use it as a chemical hot-water bottle and contend that it gets them back into play within days of an injury; without it, they say, they have to sit on the sidelines for weeks while nature takes its time in healing. Patients suffering the crippling pain of arthritis have also given it considerable grass-roots support, although the Arthritis Foundation has repeatedly said that evidence of DMSO's effectiveness is lacking and has warned against unsupervised use of nonmedical preparations of DMSO.

The pace of the nation's housing recovery slowed a bit more in April with new housing starts falling 8 percent from the March level, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.49 million units, the Government reported today. It was the second consecutive monthly decline, bringing housing starts down from a peak annual rate of more than 1.78 million units in February. But the April level was in line with the estimates of many economists that housing starts this year will be about 1.5 million units.

The rapid strides made by Japan in computers and semiconductors are generally viewed as the best recent examples of the payoff from the Japanese brand of industrial policy. The Japanese approach emphasizes cooperation between business and Government. While the teamwork that characterizes Japanese industrial policy has accomplished much in the rising high-technology field, perhaps its biggest achievement has been in maintaining an unemployment rate of less than 3 percent, the lowest of any major developed country. ''The most impressive thing about Japan's industrial policy is the way they manage the rational adjustment of their declining industries with a minimum of social pain and political obstruction,'' said Frank A. Weil, a former Deputy Secretary of the United States Commerce Department. U.S. Critical of Practices The key Government player in this process is the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The agency directs the orderly decline of ailing industries and nurtures up-and-coming industries. In doing so, Japan and its trade ministry have been criticized in the United States and elsewhere for what are considered anticompetitive practices. The Japanese reject the charges, saying they stem from the success of the policies.

The Soviet Union, after hesitating more than a month, has accepted President Reagan's offer to negotiate a new longterm grain purchase agreement, the Agriculture Department announced today. The State Department, which once argued against such an agreement on the ground that it would send Moscow the wrong signal at a time when Mr. Reagan was assailing the behavior of the Russians, said today that their move should be viewed as more of a commercial decision than a political decision. ''This is a matter of grain trading and should be viewed in that context only,'' said a State Department official, who asked not to be identified. ''You should not consider it a political step.''