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Probe: Federal Agency Ignores Health Hazards
Officials supposed to protect public near toxic sites deny risks, report says
The federal agency charged with protecting the public near toxic pollution sites often obscures or overlooks potential health hazards, uses inadequate analysis and fails to zero in on toxic culprits, congressional investigators and scientists say.
A sign is posted at an ongoing cleanup pump and treatment center operated by Shaw Corp. at Camp Lejeune, N.C., that treats an underground plume of TCE, or trichloroethylene, created years earlier by a waste disposal site on base that contaminated the water. (Gerry Broome / AP)
A House investigative report says officials from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry "deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate health concerns."
Local communities have voiced frustration and confusion at findings by the agency that are challenged by outside scientists or are ambiguous about whether people living near industrial pollution or toxic dumps or breathe foul-smelling air have reason to worry.
"Time and time again ATSDR appears to avoid clearly and directly confronting the most obvious toxic culprits that harm the health of local communities throughout the nation," said the report from the House Science and Technology investigations and oversight subcommittee.
The health agency declined to comment, saying its director, Howard Frumkin, would address the criticisms when he appears at a hearing before the House science panel Thursday.
By law the health agency, a branch of the Health and Human Services Department, assesses health hazards at polluted sites designated under the Superfund cleanup law, and those of concern to local communities. It frequently faces residents who expect environmental answers for a host of illnesses, which science can't always provide.
But the agency's critics also include some of its own scientists, including toxicologist Christopher De Rosa, who told Congress last year that his bosses minimized the health risk of formaldehyde in trailers provided for survivors of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
Congressional investigators reviewed ATSDR health studies and interviewed scientists and community activists across the country for the House report, which was obtained by The Associated Press.
It accuses Frumkin of letting scientific integrity lag behind political expediency and uncomplicated conclusions. Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller, D-N.C., said the problems "threaten the health and safety of the American public. Fixing ATSDR requires a cultural shift of the agency."
David Ozonoff, professor of environmental health at Boston University's School of Public Health, said ATSDR often produces good work, but added: "They don't always use the latest science and the most up to date information. They don't have enough resources and people and breadth of skills and talent. They don't have the trust of communities."
Ozonoff took issue with aspects of a new draft health assessment for a contaminated neighborhood in Elkhart, Ind., that addressed elevated levels of the degreasing solvent trichloroethylene. The agency appeared to overlook previous studies showing cancer and birth defects can show up at lower exposure levels than the draft report indicated, thus playing down the potential risk in Elkhart, he said.
Among issues raised by other scientists:
- Ronald Hoffman, a professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, uncovered a high incidence of a blood cancer in northeast Pennsylvania while working with the health agency's scientists. The research identified an elevated incidence of polycythemia vera, including four cases on a mile-long stretch of road near a former toxic waste company.
Although an abstract by Hoffman and his colleagues said there was significant evidence linking the cancer to environmental causes, agency officials publicly rejected the idea and unsuccessfully pressured Hoffman in 2007 to withdraw from a conference where he was to present the findings.
"I thought they were trying to always increase the hurdles so they could disprove what to me was basically pretty obvious," Hoffman said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. Ultimately, after additional analysis, ATSDR agreed that the elevated cases were statistically significant and its scientists joined Hoffman in publishing the findings last month. The agency is now considering additional studies.
- Henry Cole, an environmental consultant and former senior scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency, said a four-year study into residents' complaints of foul odors and health ailments near an Ohio waste plant, Perma-fix of Dayton, used insufficient sampling to conclude in December that none of the 100 compounds exceeded safe levels.
Nor did it incorporate lawsuit and regulatory information that could have broadened the result beyond ATSDR's sole recommendation that Perma-fix should check for an odor source and mitigate it if possible. That left residents frustrated. "They come in with a very narrow focus and oftentimes they don't come up with anything" to help the community, Cole said in another interview.
- Randall Parrish, a researcher at the University of Leicester, England, found depleted uranium exposure in 20 percent of residents he tested in Colonie, N.Y., where a company once produced uranium weapons for the military. He recommended that ATSDR revisit the area because its earlier health study, without benefit of his test method, assumed it couldn't detect past exposure or tie it to illness years after the plant closed.
ATSDR replied that the amount in people's bodies would be so small it wouldn't cause a health hazard, so no further work was warranted, the subcommittee report said.
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9 Comments so far
Show AllObviously, the ATSDR is staffed by Bush appointees... nuff said.
ANY amount of inhaled or ingested DU is too much! It will be with you for 4.5 billion years, in direct contact with your cell membranes or within the cells itself, possibly effecting DNA itself. Of course, you won't be here for 4.5 billion years. If the DU is in the right place, it may be more like 4.5 years.
Meanwhile, the chance of transmitting genetic damage to your progeny, if any, is enormous.
Look at the photos of some of the births in DU contaminated areas.
Exactly cruz_cntrl. But more needs to be said -- and done.
When agencies which are statutorily obliged to protect public health fail in their responsibilities not because of human error or incompetence but because of political orders from the White House -- then, where the evidence for that illegal conduct is compelling, the officials who gave such orders must be criminally prosecuted.
If this "new" WH administration and congresss aren't willing to investigate and nail the Bush Cabal sociopaths who perpetrated such public health outrages, then citizens and their watchdog groups need to do so, using the law.
Obviously, the inner Bush/Cheney cabal already belongs in jail for concocting fradulent info to send US soldiers to be injured and and killed in Iraq.
But of course no one wants to touch THAT issue.
As a veteran of WW2 and member of Veterans for Peace, I was in Iraq in 2001
and visited universities, children's hospitals and met with their leading doctors.
They provided us with reams of statistics on the soaring rates of lukemia,
lung,a multitude of other cancers and pictures of dozens, a tiny part of the
thousands of Iraq children born there since 1991 with minor to extreme birth defects. In recent years, 56% of all new cancers, are in children under age 6.
I have been researching, writing and speaking since the mid. 90's on the health,
reproductive ,and environmental affect our weapons of choice, Depleted Uranium,
(DU) has had on that suffering nation since we first used it against them in 1991.
To save space here, kindly check my 10 min. youtube video on Google.com
under the title What Are We Doing To Our Own Loved Ones?
For more details on this issues, please Google.com PWW The Depleted Uranium
Cover Up.
To add to this tragedy, since 1991, we have had close to 2 million of our own
troops,government and contract workers cycle in and our of the region, some on
their 3rd or 4th tour, ALL exposed to the same conditions as the Iraqis.
Bud Deraps
Bud Deraps
In Gulf War #1 and the most recent wars, I tried to argue with my conservative acquaintances that DU bombs were dangerous and inhumane. They all disagreed. Then I would ask them if they would have a piece of furniture containing DU in their home, and never did I receive a "Yes." In their hearts, they knew DU was dangerous or, at least, suspected it, but as good Christians and good Patriots and loyal Rash Limpdick followers, they just did not care what happened to our soldiers, mush less the Iraqis.
As someone who works for a federal regulatory agency myself, let me offer my observations.
The problem I've seen are the following:
1. Over the past 25-30 years most federal agencies with regulatory functions (and uncannily, especially regulatory agencies) have adopted a culture where they consider the agency itself part of the industry it regulates - with the same interests of the industry. Like the Obama-culture, adversarial relationships - even when any other relationship is compromising the agency mission, is highly discouraged. The various division, branch and section chiefs even frequently have pro-industry stuff on their office walls - bumper stickers, trade association awards, stuff like that.
2. While the scientific and analytical lab staff tend to be politically progressive, the ideological makeup of the actual people who interpret and direct the regulatory activity have become quite conservative over the years - and they tend to pick conservatives when hiring new people. Whether this is just a refection of the politics of the better paid US middle-managerial class in general, or something more insidious, I can't be sure.
Some of this reflects revolving-door issues, some of it pressure from the political appointees at the very top. but most of it seems to have arisen entirely in the culture of the non-political higher-level career civil servants - GS-13 and up.
---USAn---
"deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or repeal 'Corporate Citizenship' before they kill us all."
At some point individuals are going to have to hold corporate executives personally responsible for polluting their neighborhoods. The government isn't going to do a damn thing.
I wish more people would read and learn to think critically. Even if people are passive and say, yeah there's pollution all over, they are not really comprehending the situation. It's just a vague fact of life to them. They think it's just part of life, like in order to live you just have to accept it, what can you do about. I'v actually heard people talk like this. Or even if they are mad about it they just forget about it after a day or so goes by and go on about their daily living. I come from an area in which IBM left chemicals in the ground. I personally do not live close enough to the contamination but many of my co-workers do. It seems citizens do not take it upon themselves to any great extent to make life difficult for those who should take the responsibility to keep us safe. NO matter what we do or say here, company after company will continue to pollute day in and day out.
Why because they know they can... Yeah every so often, some company gets caught. But the scale of the problem is big and getting bigger. Why? Because look at coal, they're trying harder to get bigger and NUCLEAR POWER. DID YOU SEE THE NEW TV AD ABOUT HOW NUCLEAR ENERGY IS CLEAN AIR ENERGY? I saw it last night. Digusting.