SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
pr watch
"Poison Papers" Snapshot: Transcript Illustrates EPA Collusion with Chemical Industry
The world of independent chemical testing has a shiny veneer. The public is reassured that chemicals they're exposed to on a daily basis are certified by technicians in spotless white lab coats who carefully conduct scientific studies, including on animals in neat rows of cages.
Jul 27, 2017
The world of independent chemical testing has a shiny veneer. The public is reassured that chemicals they're exposed to on a daily basis are certified by technicians in spotless white lab coats who carefully conduct scientific studies, including on animals in neat rows of cages.
But a federal grand jury investigation that ended with convictions in the early 1980s discovered that Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT), the largest such lab in the United States, conducted trials with mice that regularly drowned in their feeding troughs. The dead animals would decompose so quickly that "their bodies oozed through wire cage bottoms and lay in purple puddles on the dropping trays." IBT even invented an acronym "TBD/TDA" for its raw safety data, later discovered to mean "too badly decomposed."
That was just one of a host of problems uncovered at IBT which conducted an estimated 35 to 40 percent of all the toxicology tests performed in the United States including for FDA regulated products and EPA regulated pesticides and chemicals. Scientists at the FDA were the first to spot the fraud and misconduct and blew the whistle on IBT in Senate hearings in the late 1970's. Soon after, the EPA was forced to deal with the issue and estimated behind the scenes that some 80 percent of the data provided to them for chemical registration from IBT was nonexistent, fraudulent, or invalid.
The IBT scandal presented the EPA with a potentially immense crisis. Knowing that almost every IBT test it had looked at was seriously flawed and presumptively fraudulent, it could order retests and withdraw its approval from every IBT-tested chemical. This course of action would have been fully warranted, scientifically. But it would have had drastic effects on the chemical industry, on public confidence, and on the newly-formed EPA itself.
What the EPA did instead is revealed in a transcript of a meeting that took place at the Howard Johnson Inn in Arlington, Virginia on October 3rd, 1978. This secret meeting was between senior figures at EPA, Canada's Health Protection Branch, and executives of the chemical industry, and was intended to solve the IBT "problem."
This transcript is part of more than 20,000 documents, weighing over three tons, just released by the Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), on the "Poison Papers." website. Most of the Poison Papers were collected by author and activist Carol Van Strum, who used documents obtained through public interest lawsuits and open records requests to investigate chemical pollution, and digitized by journalist Peter von Stackelberg. Van Strum's remarkable story was detailed this week in the Intercept.
A Conversation About Collusion
The Poison Papers represent a vast trove of rediscovered chemical industry and regulatory agency documents and correspondence stretching back to the 1920s. Collectively they shed light on what was known about chemical toxicity, when, and by whom, in the often-incriminating words of the participants themselves.
The Howard Johnson's transcript is a prime example of the materials in the trove. It allows us to "listen in" on a conversation that took place decades ago, but still has implication for us today.
The transcript "exemplifies as well as any other single document among the Papers the history of everyday regulatory failures and agency complicity that is the unknown story of the EPA and its enduring collusion with the chemical industry, and whose result is a systemic failure to protect the American public from chemical hazards," says Dr. Jonathan Latham, Director of the Bioscience Resource Project.
"Not One" IBT Study Free of Errors
The Howard Johnson's meeting was called to discuss the IBT scandal and plan a way forward. No consumer groups, environmental groups or members of the public were present that day in Arlington under HoJo's cheerful orange roof when the topic of how to deal with the dead animals, the fraudulent, and the corrupt data was discussed.
Near the outset of the meeting, the EPA's Fred Arnold, Acting Branch Chief of Regulatory Analysis & Lab Audits, assured the chemical company representatives present that no chemicals would be removed from the market, even though the studies supposedly showing their safety had been proven fraudulent:
"We determined that [i]t was neither in EPA's interest or the public interest or the registrants' interest [to replace all IBT data] because a large number of studies, which were performed at IBT, were performed satisfactorily," Arnold said (p. 6).
Yet Arnold's contention that some of the studies were "satisfactory" was contradicted multiple times in the same meeting. It was later stated, for example, that not one IBT study was free of errors (p. 16). Dr. Arthur Pallotta, Consultant to the Special Pesticide Review Division in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, stated that "there were few [IBT] studies that did not have discrepancies, errors and omissions" (p. 27). Elsewhere in the transcript, EPA accepted that over 80 percent of the test results from IBT were invalid (p. 123).
But Arnold's assertion that it wasn't in anyone's interest to demand new studies had striking ramifications. It was the grounds for not removing any chemicals from the market, for reassuring the public, and for kicking the IBT mess down the road. By 1983, EPA had determined that over 90 percent of IBT's studies submitted to them had serious, invalidating problems.
A "Salvage Operation": Ignoring Scientific Controls
Early in the meeting, EPA made a list of IBT errors that it planned to ignore to make the task of "validating" IBT's studies manageable.
It planned to ignore whenever animals were missing from (or added to) studies. No statistic existed then - nor does it now - to compensate for such measurement irregularities, but this difficulty was glossed over by the EPA.
Just as bad, many IBT studies appeared to be shorter in time than protocols called for. As David Clegg of Canada's Health Protection Branch explained to the meeting:
"Now, we have come across the 90-day study where the study started on, let's say, the 1st of June. The invoice for shipment of the test material from the firm was the 9th of June, and the diet preparation sheets are for the 12th of June.
"In other words, by the time the diet was prepared, according to the raw data, the study has been underway for 12 days for a 90-day study.
"This does not necessarily invalidate the study, of course. You can still get some information from it, but the whole base line, which you are working from, has to be altered to deal with an 88-day [sic] study or whatever length it is and conclusions have to be drawn on this sort of basis" (pp. 34-35).
EPA also noted that IBT had major problems with its controls. It had run a system known as "common controls." These controls were often in different rooms or carried out at different times, presumably with rats from different batches. EPA proposed cobbling such experiments together and thus making use of these controls. Clegg's tone was apologetic:
"I can't say that I am very happy about this on scientific grounds, but we are trying to run this as a salvage operation and, if we can come up with something which gives us a reasonable base line for controls which may be applicable to a number of studies, then, when controls are not available, we'll compare them against those controls," he said (p. 41).
EPA Adopts Unsigned Studies
EPA's Arnold also admitted at the meeting what appeared to be EPA's own historical fraud. In revisiting original data sent to them by IBT, manufacturers might find that, in the past, EPA had itself examined the tissue samples and determined there to be "no significant finding" when in fact "the truth of the matter is the organ was never examined" (Arnold, p. 102).
By the time the FDA and EPA had taken a strong interest in the testing lab, IBT had begun a "policy not to sign" its own reports, according to the transcript, indicating that staff were unwilling to stand behind the findings.
As Fred Arnold told the attendees, "A number of scientists, who may have been involved in the early states of a test, are no longer there and nobody can state, categorically, that everything reflected in the report, in fact, is borne out by the raw data" (pp. 63-64).
Arnold admitted that EPA had in the past sometimes accepted unsigned studies. So he stated that its remedy to the new signature problem would be to adopt such unsigned studies in order not "to create a double standard now" (p. 64), effectively adopting IBT's unprecedented practices as its own.
It was later uncovered in court proceedings that IBT also forged signatures.
The Howard Johnson Take-Home
Three IBT officials went to prison, closing a chapter on a massive scientific fraud, but the book was never closed.
"As the Howard Johnson transcript reveals, a majority of the IBT studies were never intended to be redone, and still underlie the U.S. chemical regulatory system," said Latham.
Author Carol Van Strum commented on the significance of the transcript for CMD:
"The 1978 Howard Johnson transcript records a crucial meeting of EPA, Canadian, and pesticide industry officials to discuss EPA's response to massive fraud in the safety tests for pesticide registrations. At the meeting, Fred T. Arnold, chief of EPA Regulatory Analysis and Lab Audits, assured industry that EPA's discovery of fraudulent, invalid, or nonexistent safety tests would 'not interfere with the ability to control pests and market pesticides.' This document was the linchpin of my book, A Bitter Fog: Herbicides and Human Rights, documenting the government's acceptance of phony industry studies while dismissing reports of human illness, death, involuntary abortions, birth defects, and other effects of pesticide exposure."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Hey "Polluting Pruitt" - What Are you Trying to Hide?
As the world reacts to President Trump's chaotic turkey-shoot politics it is easy to get sucked into the headlines, but miss the real news.
Later today, Scott "Polluting Pruitt" could be confirmed as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, after a vote in the Senate. The fact that Pruitt, a man who has sued the EPA fourteen times, could be even considered for the job is a scandal. But it gets worse.
Pruitt's confirmation is hardly making international news. And that is because Trump is causing so much outrage elsewhere.
Feb 17, 2017
As the world reacts to President Trump's chaotic turkey-shoot politics it is easy to get sucked into the headlines, but miss the real news.
Later today, Scott "Polluting Pruitt" could be confirmed as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, after a vote in the Senate. The fact that Pruitt, a man who has sued the EPA fourteen times, could be even considered for the job is a scandal. But it gets worse.
Pruitt's confirmation is hardly making international news. And that is because Trump is causing so much outrage elsewhere.
As Robinson Meyer brilliantly writes in The Atlantic: "President Donald Trump has a way with scandal. His biggest controversies are so huge, so ludicrously bamboozling, that they suck up much of the attention in the country. The smaller disputes facing his staff can therefore slip by unnoticed. In his three-week-old administration, perhaps no man has benefited from this more than Scott Pruitt, Trump's nominee to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the current attorney general of Oklahoma."
As I have pointed out before, Pruitt "has sued the Agency at least fourteen times, arguing it cannot regulate toxic mercury pollution, as well as soot, carbon emissions from power plants, clean air standards for the oil and gas industry and the quality of America's waterways, amongst others. Research by EDF has revealed that "in every suit except one, at least one of Pruitt's co-litigators contributed to Pruitt's campaign or a political action committee affiliated with Pruitt - directly, or via an employee or member."
A month ago, I wrote "this is dirty cronyism". Take just one case of this dirty cronyism that many people would feel verges on being corrupt. As the New York Times reported in 2014:
"The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state. But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma's biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon's chief of lobbying."
Devon Energy, which called the letter "outstanding", went on to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican Attorneys General Association. Scott Pruitt was its then chairman.
But the scandal gets worse.
Pruitt has deep close ties to the fossil fuel industry and he is trying to keep those ties - and his communication with the industry - hidden.
Over the last 2 years, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), which runs PR Watch, has submitted nine public record requests to Pruitt's Oklahoma Attorney General's office for correspondence between Pruitt and numerous oil companies. The only problem is that Pruitt's office has been withholding them. Earlier this month, it released just 411 out of the thousands it said existed.
So CMD sued to gain access to the emails Pruitt wants to keep secret. Two days ago, a group of Senators weighed in to the legal action too. The Senators, all members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, had requested the information from Pruitt during his confirmation process.
Rather than divulge it in the interests of transparency, Pruitt had referred the Senators to his own office's process for requesting documents under Oklahoma's Open Records Act, a process he had not been complying with.
The letter says: "we write to the Court today because we need to understand whether in his current capacity Mr. Pruitt engaged with the industries that he will be responsible for regulating if he is confirmed as Administrator in ways that would compromise his ability to carry out his duties with".
And in a major victory, yesterday an Oklahoma County Court judge found Pruitt in violation of the state's Open Records Act. The Judge, Aletia Haynes Timmons, criticised the Attorney General's office for its "abject failure" to abide by the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
Now Pruitt's office has until next Tuesday to turn over more than 2,500 emails it has withheld, and a further 10 days to turn over an undetermined number of additional documents.
"Scott Pruitt broke the law and went to great lengths to avoid the questions many Americans have about his true motivations," argues Nick Surgey, CMD's director of research. "Despite Pruitt's efforts to repeatedly obfuscate and withhold public documents, we're all wiser to his ways and the interests he really serves."
By the time these emails are released, Pruitt could well be the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. There are therefore calls to hold off the vote, until at least Senators have seen these emails.
"A rushed Senate vote to confirm Pruitt as EPA Administrator right now would be a travesty," argues Elizabeth Thompson, from the Environmental Defense Fund. "The documents in question are related to Pruitt's fitness to serve as head of EPA. Senators should exercise due diligence when confirming nominees, and they can't do that when they've been denied access to relevant information."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Revealed: The Trump Administration's Energy Plan
Dec 06, 2016
The future Donald Trump administration's energy agenda is revealed in a memo prepared by Trump's energy transition head Thomas Pyle, titled "What to Expect from the Trump Administration." The document, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), was sent by Pyle on November 15th, just days before the Trump campaign announced Pyle's appointment as head of his Department of Energy transition team.
Pyle is the President of both the American Energy Alliance and the Institute for Energy Research. Both organizations have received cash from numerous fossil fuel funders including ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and Koch Industries. From 2001 to 2005, Pyle was Director of Federal Affairs for Koch Industries.
The memo outlines fourteen policies to be expected from President-elect Trump, which collectively amounts to a fossil fuel industry wish list and which would be devastating for attempts to slow climate change.
The agenda includes withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Climate agreement, eliminating the Clean Power Plan, increasing the leasing of federal lands for exploitation of coal, oil and gas, expediting the approval of pipeline projects including the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline and rolling back federal fuel economy standards.
Read the memo here.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular