June 5, 1983

The following article is based on reporting by Ralph Blumenthal and Ben A. Franklin and was written by Mr. Blumenthal. Garbage companies dominated by organized crime have been secretly and illegally dumping vast quantities of dangerous chemicals throughout the New York area, according to law-enforcement authorities, court records and police informants. The accounts tell of hazardous wastes flushed into suburban sewer systems, poured into garbage landfills, dumped into waterways, mixed into heating oil, stacked in warehouses and buried in unmarked pits. Officials say it is impossible to assess the health effects of the illicit disposal. Such dumping has long been suspected, but confirmation and details of the schemes did not come until a recent series of investigations and prosecutions.

Can a drug so apparently straightforward that doctors routinely prescribe it for overweight people be affecting the outcome of thoroughbred horse races around the country? According to recent veterinary research, the drug - furosemide, better known as Lasix - prevents water-weight buildup in people but also seems to make horses run faster. Even more baffling, no one is sure just why that is. ''Lasix can turn a $10,000 horse into a $50,000 horse and a slow one into a fast one,'' says Jerry Fanning, the trainer of Desert Wine, who ran on Lasix when he finished second in both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness last month. Other trainers who use the drug on their horses agree with that assessment, and that concerns veterinarians and racing officials. After several years of achieving hard-earned reforms that have brought much abuse of illegal racing medication under control, they are beginning to suspect that Lasix, a drug which has been sanctioned for widespread use to control bleeding, is among the most potent and volatile of all.

Frank Howard, in his first full day as the 10th manager of the Mets, conceded today that the Mets needed help because ''we can't go on the way we've been going.'' But neither he nor his bosses offered an immediate plan to rescue the new manager from the old problems he had inherited from George Bamberger. ''There is no question we have holes to fill,'' Howard said. ''We have had seven years of frustration and, let's face it, bad baseball. You need quality ballplayers, and total effort from them. But, for now, we have to play with the players we have.'' Frank Cashen, the general manager of the Mets, did not promise any radical moves or major trades to keep the club's rebuilding program from collapsing. He acknowledged that the team needed a No.1 catcher because John Stearns was still disabled. But he reported that no ''hot deal'' was on the table.

Governor Kean toured the city's Ironbound section today and sought to assure residents that there was no evidence that dioxin contamination had spread beyond an abandoned chemical plant. The Governor was generally well-received by the area's homeowners as he walked door to door in the blue-collar neighborhood near the Passaic River. On Thursday, Mr. Kean ordered the closing of a food distribution center and offered to pay to lodge as many as 100 residents at a Y.M.C.A. So far, no one has made the move. Eugene Foltzer, who owns an Exxon station a few blocks from the plant, spoke with the Governor at the entrance to the old Diamond Alkali Company plant, at 80 Lister Avenue, where the high levels of dioxin, a toxic chemical, were identified this week.

''In school, you learn silly things like, 'the Middle Ages means barbarism.' In my film, I tell a very modern story that happened to take place in the 16th century,'' said Daniel Vigne, director of ''The Return of Martin Guerre.'' Based on a famous love story and trial that inspired a play, two novels, an operetta, and a soon-tobe-published historical account, this award-winning French film opens Friday at the 68th Street Playhouse. ''The Return of Martin Guerre'' gives new life to a legendary folk tale by insisting on its ''timelessness'' - of setting, images, music, and story. It was shot in a French peasant village which has remained virtually unchanged since the 1550's; 40 kilometers away was the actual town where a youth named Martin Guerre married Bertrande de Rols, disappeared for nine years, and returned to reclaim his wife and land. With visual compositions that recall Flemish painting and music that blends medieval sounds with electronic instrumentation, the film conveys the flavor of the Middle Ages as well as the modernity of the tale's implications - about justice, revenge and especially love.