Toxic Government Report Uncovered
NEW YORK - A much-delayed U.S. government report has been obtained by journalists, raising allegations that officials may be suppressing politically inconvenient data that, if released, could help protect the health of millions living in the Great Lakes region of the country.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study of environmental and health data in eight Great Lakes states was scheduled for publication in July 2007 but it has not yet been made public.
The Center for Public Integrity, a public interest investigative journalism organization, has obtained copies of the report and is raising questions about why despite several years of study and peer review, it was suddenly pulled back for revision — and why its lead author, Christopher De Rosa, was removed from the position he held since 1992.
The study, “Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern,” was developed by the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent U.S-Canadian organization that monitors and advises both governments on the use and quality of boundary waters.
It brings together two sets of data: environmental data on known “areas of concern” — including superfund sites and hazardous waste dumps — and separate health data collected by county or, in some cases, smaller geographical regions.
The findings pointed to elevated rates of lung, colon, and breast cancer; low birth weight; and infant mortality in several of the geographical areas of concern.
The report does not claim to identify cause and effect. Instead, it outlines areas for further study and data collection on the link between pollution and health.
“Let’s say we have a superfund site and we also find elevated risk of leukemia in the county — is that related? We don’t know, but people living in the area can logically argue that we ought to find out,” Dr. Peter Orris, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and one of the peer reviewers of the study, told OneWorld.
Orris is among several of the study’s peer reviewers who, along with the International Joint Committee in a December letter to the CDC, have called for the report’s publication.
“When you release these [environmental and health] databases together in a way that lets communities look at them, it raises questions that help define the environmental research agenda,” Oriss said.
CDC spokesperson Bernadette Burden told OneWorld that the report was held back because internal and external reviewers — including the Environmental Protection Agency and several state health departments — identified “numerous discrepancies and deficiencies” and determined a rigorous review was needed.
Burden cited several examples, including the fact that the county-level health data “reflected people’s illnesses from 1988 to 1997, while much of the environmental data used in the report came from the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory dated 2001 and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination system with 2004 data.”
CDC did not clarify why these issues were not identified until July 2007 despite several years of review. A new director of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and ATSDR, Howard Frumkin, was appointed in July 2007, shortly before the report was due to be released.
Compounding the concerns surrounding the report are recent revelations that CDC failed to address toxins in FEMA trailers provided after Hurricane Katrina. CBS News broke the story after it obtained documents sent from Christopher De Rosa to his superiors at CDC warning that the trailers might be unsafe.
De Rosa also oversaw the Great Lakes report.
De Rosa, who served as director of the Division of Toxicology since 1992, was removed from this position and named special assistant in Frumkin’s office — a position that appears to carry “no real responsibilities” according to a Feb. 2008 letter from members of the Congressional Committee on Science and Technologies to CDC director Julie Gerberding. The letter called the move an apparent retaliation.
Toxins and Health Concerns Along the Great Lakes
In 1998, Canada’s federal health department produced reports on the overall health of people living in 17 areas of concern in Ontario, documenting elevated hospitalizations for certain diseases and higher rates of cancer and birth defects.
In 2001, the International Joint Commission requested that the United States prepare a similar report.
However, only two Great Lakes states, New York and Illinois, collect the type of data necessary to examine the link between health and environmental toxins, according to David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and Environment at the University of New York at Albany School of Public Health and another of the study’s peer reviewers.
Carpenter said he hoped the release of the CDC study would raise awareness of the data gaps and inform future research. “In my judgment, it’s the best that could be done with the information available,” he said.
In two separate reviews, he recommended the study’s publication.
“I just don’t know why it hasn’t been [published],” he said.
As many as 9 million people — including residents of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee — may be at risk from exposure to pollutants including pesticides, dioxin, PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls), and mercury, according to Sheila Kaplan, an investigative journalist who covered the story for the Center for Public Integrity.
Kaplan has read all three drafts of the study, from 2004 to 2007.
“It’s important for this work to be followed up on,” she told OneWorld. “What I hope from this report is that communities will say, ‘We deserve to know this information and whether exposure to these chemicals and metals is killing us.’ More work needs to be done.”
A Deliberate Suppression?
Canadian biologist Michael Gilbertson, a third peer reviewer, said on the record with the Center for Public Integrity that he felt the findings were being suppressed because they were “inconvenient.”
Peter Orris raised concern that the publication may have been halted based on orders outside the CDC.
“I have an overall concern with respect to the culture of this administration, which permeates all levels of the scientific wing of the government,” Orris told OneWorld. “The administration has regularly cut funds so that they don’t find statistics that could be potentially politically embarrassing — for instance, the sampling of toxins in fish in the Great Lakes has been cut way back.”
“If the messenger doesn’t come with the message, no one knows it’s there,” he added.
According to Burden, the CDC plans to release the report after the review is completed, in “weeks rather than months.” She could not comment about Christopher De Rosa or other personnel matters.
© 2008 One World
gonna take a long time to clean up after the bush administration.
Now this is a REAL terrorist attack!
Where’s George and “My Pet Goat?”
Anyone surprised?
I blame bush as much as the rest of us with our eyes open, but unfortunately, this is a bed we all have made for ourselves. I am a proud Canadian, but on enviromental issues, I hang my head in shame.
alirandyabi,
I like Canada and most of the Canadians I have met, but that is one thing I hold against your government. You have even worse controls over pollution than we do (or did at least until the idiot from Texas started gutting the EPA). I quit visiting Victoria when I found out that they pump all their untreated sewage into the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. The smelter that is located just north of the border has pumped tons of mercury right into the Columbia River and down here into Washington.
Is any body surprised? Absolutely I am shocked that there has not been a Columbine attack in Washington yet.
I think a lot of Canadians are under the impression that because we have fewer major cities that we aren’t as responsible for the state of the environment, but our countries policies are shamefull. I was so dissapointed by the outcome of the LIVE 8 concert in 2005. So many artists provided entertainment, and as usual people enjoyed it without giving anything back. Our government will do what we demand of them, but people only wanted a party, and our leaders did nothing. We had a chance to change…Sorry we didn’t
I can’t connect any of the dots that anyone else can’t. But we’re going to see more of this under globalism, not less of it. The thrust of “globalism” is to replace the controls and laws developed under formerly representative governments with governments insulated from this process, developed outside of public mandate, according to the intentions of an elite who *intend* to operate above and beyond public responsibility.
This kind of pollution is a product of a particular brand of irresponsibility, which seeks profitability at any cost. To overcome this evil transformation of the world, we have to concentrate on the larger picture. It is by usurpation of the so called economic systems of the world that “financing” and regulatory exclusion *together* are provided to the darlings of the usurpers. Canadians have only lost control of their government as we have lost control of ours.
It is the lack of a proper economy which results in all of these things; it is because the privatized currencies imposed about the world can only multiply debt that a business, a city, a country even can claim it no longer can afford to clean up after itself.
How many years now has New York simply barged its waste to sea, that used syringes wash up on all east coast beaches?
We *can* afford to do all these things right, only when we eradicate multiplication of debt. As Thomas Jefferson said, “If the American people ever allow the banks to issue their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation [by introducing a currency subject to interest, by having to pay interest and principal out of the circulation, and then by having to maintain the circulation by re-borrowing the principal and interest as a greater debt, increased so much as periodic interest], the banks and [eventually bank owned] corporations which will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake homeless on the continent their fathers [had just] conquered.”
Yes, there is corruption here. But we can only afford to sustain business as we should conduct business, when we eliminate the central banking systems imposed about the world.
If you really want to do something about it, see this Nolan Chart article:
http://www.nolanchart.com/article2519.html
You might follow some of the other links out, or Google “PARABLE of Perfect Economy” to see how the American Colonists maintained control of their monetary systems prior to England’s attempt to impose a central bank, which resulted in the American Revolution.
You live in a world controlled by international financiers. These toxins, and the coverup, like so many other present manifestations, are the singular consequence of their rule.
I would like to see industry rebuilt in this country, and I believe nuclear power can be done right….
But when any responsible professionally trained official is one political hack phone call away from being removed… its back in the toilet we go.
Obama better hire pros and let them do it right.
News about this report may be new but the whole topic is really not recent or current because this kind of thing has been going on for several centuries, indeed modern civilization is marked by the very lack of concern about poisoning the local areas around human habitation and the increasingly unhealthy destruction of the environment. This has resulted in fewer forests, meadows and ponds, more poisons in the air, water and soil and a lack of natural resources causing starvation and lower standards of living for those who can’t afford the thin gauze of protection that a suburban life style affords- and even that ticky tackey homelife affords ‘protection’ that is often more a matter of perception than fact.
Since Rachel Carson’s publication of “Silent Spring” however, we can no longer claim innocent ignorance or lack of understanding. Certainly since the first Earth Day in 1970, public awareness has been fully raised to the level of having knowledge of and information on responsible choices that could be made to keep the integrity of the original environment. Now it seems we have passed a fork in the road on our rampant path of destruction and face a future of a toxic environment that is increasingly becoming unlivable.
I hear so much common street talk like: “What can we do, scientists tell us these things but don’t do anything.”
Translate that to: “I won’t do anything about an issue that doesn’t directly affect me (like a house afire) and even the subtle ramifications of cancer and birth defects for millions are the price I am willing to pay for my sweet, comfy cosey little life.”
The ramifications of living in a fascist society are inherent in statements about powerlessness that are made by the average person.
When Europeans and folks from other continents arrived here by the ship load following Columbus, we encountered a hemisphere dominated by millions of small rivers and lakes that have since disappeared. First Nations maintained these lakes through a number of practices of which Multilevel Orcharding with a backbone of hundreds of millions of nut trees and particularly the Oak tree (acorns), butternut, chestnut, hazelnut, almond, pine(nut) trees, with Fruit trees, fruit shrubs, berries, mushrooms, greens from the trees, herbs, cereals, wild-rice, potatoes, edible roots.
The production of this multilevel orchard is considered by many studies (notably United Nation reports from around the world)to be some 100 time more productive of all economic and ecological products (food, air, water, water storage, absorption of toxins etc) than agri (field) culture alone. One can understand this productivity from the 92 - 97 % absorption of solar energy by tree canopies compared with 2 - 7 % absorption by cereal and field crops alone. The roots of orchards descend tens and hundreds of feet compared with bare inches to tens of inches by cereal and field crops. Every tree is a heatpump and energy storage unit so climate was significantly different. The cool forested regions drew warm moist sea winds inland. Contact with leaf and bark surfaces deposited most of this moisture. This pattern of abundance is the legacy of indigenous (derived from the Latin meaning ’self-generating) peoples from around the world including the original Celtic and other indigenous peoples of Europe.
Right away in 1492 the epidemics hit from various diseases brought by Columbus’ crew. Pigs and other domestic animals on subsequent voyages brought various human transmissible diseases. These epidemics and other subsequent disease laden ships then spread native to native across the continent along well established trade routes. Diseases common to the European, Asian or African origins had devastating effects until an original American hemisphere population fell from 110 - 125 million down to less than 5 million.
If we want to return to the productivity of the orchard earth, we need to learn indigenous traditions particularly in social and economic organisation. The economic democracy of the First Nations that underlay their well known political democracy (model for Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and other revolutionaries) was unfortunately unknown in the apartheid Feudal colonies. Our colonies isolated themselves through violence and lack of respect to the welcome of First Nations (vastly reduced in numbers from the epidemics). Still the welcome was and is genuine.
If we want the kind of freedom that comes with alignment with the abundant productivity of the earth, orcharding can liberate us from the artificial scarcity of ignorant imperial systems based in agriculture. To do this there is a sophisticated indigenous heritage of economy, governance and natural science waiting to be rediscovered and continued from humanity’s long tradition.
It still remains for us to immigrate with respect to this land and home.
We are all getting poisoned all the time.
I live in California, a big agricultural state, and I’ve experienced living in Los Angeles during the aerial spraying of malithion to combat the med fly - a total failure by the way. Now I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, near Berkeley, and we are about to be sprayed again, only this time for the light brown apple moth (LBAM). The State plans to spray us 3 times per month for 9 month straight. They plan to do this for 3-5 years, or until the last light brown apple moth is found. California has delcared it a “State of Emergency” to get around all the protections we would normally have. Local communities are trying to stop it, but it is really hard. The California Department of Food and Agriculture is planning to spend $500,000 to hire an international PR firm to convince the public that the spraying is a good idea. We are going to do our best to try to stop them, but it will be a struggle. They’ve already sprayed on Santa Cruz and Monterey. The first spraying they did not dislcose to the public what they were sprayed with. The second spraying they got a different pesticide and disclosed some of the ingredients, but not all due to “trade secrets”. There have been over 600 reports of illness and adverse side effects from the spraying. The local media refuses to give any attention to this matter, accept for a few newpaper articles that seem to go unoticed. Most folks don’t even know it is going to happen. And I’m sure you all are wondering how this can happen in such a “progressive” area.
Where’s Erin Brockovich? How come this development isn’t surprising? And of course, the “culture of this administration permeates” and corrupts any attempts to get at any truth that might in inconvenient to the Rodent.
If we can hold our breath, and noses, until the November elections we might still get out of this alive. Go Obama!
She’s hanging out with Monica JOHNNY.
But she really could start a shit fight for us.
RE: - Anyone surprised?
Not really. Will read the rest of the comments tomorrow.
Agree that this is the real terrorism.
Who Pulled the Plug on Lake Superior?
October 12, 2007 (Runs 15:00)
Scientists believe climate change is lowering water levels in the lake. Locals believe there’s another culprit. Margo McDiarmid investigates
(video and viewer comments)
http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/environmentscience/who_pulled_the_plug_on_lake_su_1.html
This one touches on the Great Lakes although it focuses mainly on Atlanta:
Atlanta’s Water Woes
November 6, 2007 (Runs 11:32)
Record drought has residents of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama - and one mussel species - fighting over a scarce water supply
http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/internationalus/atlantas_water_woes_1.html
There’s a lot more being reported on “The Secret History of the War on Cancer” by Devra Davis. It’s a great book and it should revolutionize the political discussion of pollution; who wants to get cancer and it is preventable for the next generation if not for us.
I remember the first Earth Day in 1970. I still have a pin someplace. It was a very optimistic time (other than Vietnam), and a lot of progress has been made. Didn’t the EPA start about that time? Under Nixon, of all people. DDT is disappearing from the Great lakes, for exmple, phosphate pollution has been reduced, and its been a while since the Cuyahoga River has caught fire.
But its a tough problem. Discharges and runoff from every factory, chemical and drug plant, lawn, farm, poultry plant, leaky oil seal… in the watershed ends up in the lakes. Hopefully further progress will be made, but Global Warming and the Bush administration are real optimism kilers.
(Forgot. By neocon standards, Nixon was a flaming liberal balance the budget peacenick, and a total amateur at the imperial presidency, high crimes, doublespeak and manipulating public opinion.)
The Bush administration the Republicans in Congress aided by a few Democrats may be responsible for giving the coup de grace to the Super Fund and encouraging all manner of harm to our environment, land, water and air. But the chemical despoilation of the land has been going on for well over 100 years. It picked up speed considerably during and after WW II as the use and production of chemicals became more prolific and more difficult to dispose of. As to the comment about supporting nuclear energy, there is the problem of disposing of the nuclear waste. The news, after more than a half century of trying is that you cannot. I grew up on a farm near a toxic waste dump. I’m 65. I’ve had medical problems and chemical senstivities beginning in childhood. In adulthood my family was poisoned by lead paint dust. My son is disabled. He is autistic, mute, retarded, has seizures and costs the government over $100,000 per year. When my son was a child one in every 2,000 was autistic. Now it’s one in 166. The Republicans could care less about anything but the corporate bottom line. What really trickles down to us is pollution and ensuing illness, disability and death.
VAUDREE
is there any way i can get these video links on text.? i have awful trouble downloading videos (someone says i don’t have enough memory - the computer i mean - not me!!) they start and stop and jump and jerk around then stop completely. so until i get it fixed can i read the information somewhere. ? thanks a lot
coco
Ever been to Sault St Marie in Michigan? Prime example of Canadians polluting on the border because they know it wont affect them… not that we (Americans) are any better. Also, poor choice for a picture to get me to read this lousy article (Chi-Town Skyline). Chicago was hardly even mentioned. For all the people that think holding your breath and waiting for Obama is the answer, you will die from lack of oxygen before an “elected” official does anything responsible for our environment. If you want real change, revolt!
1 in 15,000 American Amish kids is autistic. 1 in 166 American kids is autistic. 1 in 2 American kids will deal with their own cancer in their lifetime. Translation: it’s in the water, the vaccines, the cosmetics, the pesticides, the paint chips, the formaldehyde in plywood, the arsenic in the wood chips in your kid’s playground, the baby bottle plastic, the Pill, and I can name 20 more easy culprits who deserve a class action suit. Too bad manslaughter is no longer a felony.
The great lakes have always been a dumping ground for any toxic (or otherwise) chemicals from many business. Sometimes it gets better but mostly the companies do whatever they can get away with.
All the stuff runs to the sea eventually, unless it gets caught up in the lake bottom. The only way to stop this is to fine the crap out of them, but it seems that for all the complaining that both Canada and the US does, nothing ever gets done other than Canada pointing out that the US is the Great Poluter. Seems that they don’t look at Sarnia and the plants downstream.
When the rest of the country runs out of water, hopefully they won’t find that the Great Lakes are too poluted to use.
coco, there is a way, but I don’t know how. If anyone here knows how … would try the david suzuki foundation.
Gerald Sutliff thanks for the name of the book - whether we read all the books or look at all the links it is good to have them available. Whether we agree with what we read or watch or not, it proves we read or watched it. Feeling dizzy today so bare with me. Just typed “approved” when I wanted to say “improved.”
RE: - Absolutely I am shocked that there has not been a Columbine attack in Washington yet.
There was a few years back but he was shot before he could do any damage. It wasn’t the whitehouse but it was a government building and BBC’s coverage of it was the tackiest since, while they were waiting for more details, they went to the other story they were covering at the time - Monica Lewinski testimony. That is all I remember of it.
RE: - I think a lot of Canadians are under the impression that because we have fewer major cities that we aren’t as responsible for the state of the environment, but our countries policies are shamefull.
Agree that there are things that we can improve on all around.
Thanks for excuse for rant (disclaimer).
Something we should take more responsibility for and other things we need to hold industries feet to the fire more. One problem is that we disagree on what is essential and what we can live without and industry exploits and feeds off that. The industry turns the debate into Tide with cold water and Nature Clean with hot water pitting consumer against consumer while they go their merry way. We all need to do better than we do but as long as it is our guilt and our responsibility that we focus on only we let industry off the hook.
We have a Prime Minister who cares more about the Alberta Oil Industry and allowing the Americans to do whatever they want on the Alaska-Yukon border than anything else. Yes, another video from The National because Alberta oil uses up clean water and leaves it dirty:
Alberta Oil Sands
December 12, 2007
Canada’s oil sands…you’ve heard about the economic benefits…but what about the environmental costs? Darrow MacIntyre presents the feature documentary “Crude Awakening”.
http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/environmentscience/crude_awakening.html
RE: - The thrust of “globalism” is to replace the controls and laws developed under formerly representative governments with governments insulated from this process, developed outside of public mandate, according to the intentions of an elite who *intend* to operate above and beyond public responsibility.
Nodding in agreement (doing a lot of that today). The SPP has been described as NAFTA on steriods. I am gathering from the following that there is going to be an SPP meeting in NO in April. The last SPP meeting between the Three Amigos and 30 CEOs took place in Montebello - Congress was supposed to get back on us concerning a transcript of what took place at it.
[QUOTE FROM BUSH’S ADDRESS]And tonight I am pleased to announce that in April we will host this year’s North American Summit of Canada, Mexico, and the United States in the great city of New Orleans.[/QUOTE]
RE: - This kind of pollution is a product of a particular brand of irresponsibility, which seeks profitability at any cost.
I don’t know if “irresponsibility” is the right word for this total disregard for the welfare of others. Children, no matter how immature or irresponsible, care if someone other than themselves gets hurt. That said, the consequences are devorced from action in that those who benefit the most from destroying the earth also have the greatest ability to isolate themselves from the consequences of their own actions - or, at least they seem overly confident in their ability to continue to do so.
RE: - First Nations maintained these lakes through a number of practices of which Multilevel Orcharding with a backbone of hundreds of millions of nut trees
Yeah, to keep the land new settlers were expected to clear the land - including of all trees. Add soil erosion to the list of consequences.
RE: - California has delcared it a “State of Emergency” to get around all the protections we would normally have.
So that is why Arnold keeps calling for a State of Emergency in the news all the time. Pesticide standards tend to be a bit better in Canada than the US but I think when the SPP talks about the “harmonizing of standards” that they mean adopting Mexico’s pesticide standards. Manitoba tends to be very liberal in its use of pesticides for killing mosquitos. I’m not allergic to it so don’t pay much attention. But West Nile seems to be something that mainly only the old or people with compromised immune systems die from. Probably it is best, unless you have a specific family related allergy to it, to get West Nile when young so that you are immune to getting it when you are older. There is no such thing as not getting bitten so this seems to be the best strategy.
RE: - The second spraying they got a different pesticide and disclosed some of the ingredients, but not all due to “trade secrets”. There have been over 600 reports of illness and adverse side effects from the spraying.
Yeah, and this “trade secret thing” that works in North America does not wash in Europe. Oh, speaking about the use of pesticides - Halifax was very skillful in designing a cosmetic pesticide ban so that it would be completely ineffective (if they did it here, they’ll try it elsewhere):
Lawn and Order
If you’re not allowed to spray these chemicals on your lawn, why are they so easy to buy?
http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/lawn_and_order/
RE: - Too bad manslaughter is no longer a felony.
Corporate homocide?
With the Amish, the big polluters would try to claim that it was the result of intermarriage and founders effects. If they can’t claim that you are imagining things, they will claim that it was the result of genetic predisposition to cancer and a fluke that they all seem to be in the same area.
They have no intention of cleaning up the ecological disaster.
They plan to destroy the planet.
I know the information in the following video is hard to swallow. It is not conspiracy theory. It is fact, verified by many sources from many PsOV.
But it is absolutely necessary to understand just how sick the people running big business and government are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnpFfBMgfKU&feature=related
You needn’t, and shouldn’t, believe in this stuff. But it must be recognized that they do.
D2