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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Probe finds health risks missed
  • Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:43:26 -0700


INSIDE WASHINGTON: Probe finds health risks missed
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TOXICS_TURMOIL?SITE=UTSAC&SECTION=POL
ITICS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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 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.

--

On the Net:

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/









  • [Livingontheland] Probe finds health risks missed, Tradingpost, 03/11/2009

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