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By Michael Stebbins, orginally published at Scientists & Engineers for America Action Fund
As the sweat-soaked crowd entered the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall, to hear Al Gore’s energy challenge they were greeted by a blast of air conditioning. Relief! Sweet ironic relief! DC is obscenely hot today, yet, thousands of people were lined up along the street to hear Gore issue what was promised, a truly grand challenge. They were not disappointed.
Al Gore issued the challenge of our lifetime…
Remember the excellent Charlotte Observer series on poultry workers? If you missed it the first time, it’s well worth a read. After a 22-month investigation, reporters conveyed a grim picture: poultry-plant workers suffer high rates of crippling injuries, but fear losing their jobs if they complain; companies cover up the problems, and OSHA lets them off easy.
Tonight on PBS, Bill Moyers’ Journal and Expose: America’s Investigative Reports “go inside America’s poultry industry, which employs almost a quarter million workers nationwide, to show the reality of working conditions and to investigate how official statistics showing a drop in workplace injuries may have been the result of deceptive reporting.”
DC folks can watch the show on WETA at 9pm tonight; others should check local listings.
By Michael Stebbins, originally published at Scientists and Engineers for America Action Fund
Last month I wrote about the White House’s apparent involvement in the denial of California’s request for exemption from the Clean Air Act to set their own guidelines for the regulation of auto emissions standards. Now the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been forced to postpone a vote to hold EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administrator Susan Dudley in contempt for not turning over documents relating to the role of the White House because the administration is claiming executive privilege.
Under the law, California is the only state that can set their own standards for auto emissions, but it has to have a waiver by the EPA to do so. If granted, other states are permitted to adopt either the federal standard or the California standard.
by revere
Originally posted at Effect Measure
You know any post that starts out . . .
Gerardo Castillo, 30 years old, had worked at the Blommer Chocolate Co. for 9 years. His family wanted him to quite ever since an explosion in a roaster killed a fellow worker and injured another. He was fearful himself, but he stayed on . . .
is going to end badly. You’d be right. Continuing with our post . . .
By Michael Stebbins, originally published at Scientists and Engineers for America Action Fund
The House just passed the National Nanotechnology Initiative Amendments Act of 2008 by a vote of 407 to 6. H.R. 5940 reauthorizes and refines the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), notably strengthening the commitment to environmental and safety research. This seems particularly important considering the recent news on the potential danger of carbon nanotubes.
According to House Science and Technology Committee chairman, Bart Gordon (D-TN) “The federal interagency nanotechnology research program has not yet put in place a well designed, adequately funded, and effectively executed research program focused on the environmental and safety aspects of nanotechnology. H.R. 5940 addresses this deficiency by requiring that a research plan, with detailed objectives and funding targets, be developed and quickly implemented.”
The bill requires the White House “to ensure that a detailed implementation plan for Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) research is developed and executed.” It also requires the plan to be responsive to recommendations from the NNI external advisory committee and requires the development of a publicly accessible database containing every EHS research project supported under the NNI.
“We need to protect the public health and allay any safety concerns,” said Gordon. “I believe H.R. 5940 will help ensure the safety of new products for the benefit of both the business community and the public generally.”
Finally, the bill also creates new nanotechnology education programs to attract secondary school students to science, now a hallmark of just about every science bill that Congress introduces.
For more information, please visit the Committee’s website.
Do you know of any cases of Parkinson’s disease among workers at flavoring companies?
David Egilman, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Brown University, is aware of two cases of Parkinson’s disease in men in their fifties who were flavorists at a large flavorings company. The plant alone had 15 “flavorists.” (The average age of onset for Parkinson’s is 60 and it is a relatively rare disease.) Dr. Egilman is making an appeal to see if others are aware of a possible disease-exposure relationship. As Pump Handle readers know, workers are typically the canaries for the rest of us. If you know of similar cases in flavoring-exposed workers, contact Dr. Egilman at degilman@egilman.com
How do you best teach workers about safety? How do you change people’s attitudes?
The Workers’ Comp board in Ontario, Cananda, and many safety instructors along with them, believes that gruesome pictures or videos work best. Like driving by the scene of a car accident, it is hard not to look. Perhaps by showing a horrific accident, workers will be more careful or take more precautions. The Ontario Worker Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) produced a series of five short (30 second) videos for different industries each showing an “accident” which occurs and then saying how this could have been prevented.
By Ally Petrilla
I read the Jackson Sun’s (Tennessee) headline “Churches ‘go green’ as they as they aim to protect God’s creation from more harm” and said to myself, “Finally!” I am not that excited that my home state is catching the Go Green bug (although that’s a great thing, too!); I was more excited to see that people are having enough sense to use churches as an outlet for health messages for people in the South.
For our readers in the DC area, there are two upcoming events featuring David Michaels speaking about Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health:
Center for American Progress reading
Wednesday, May 28, 12:30 – 1:30pm
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
(You need to RSVP for this one, and they’ll serve a light lunch at noon)
Politics & Prose reading
Saturday, June 7, 6pm
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
After dinner last night at a local tavern, I asked the waiter for a container to carry home our leftovers. He promptly returned with a No. 5 plastic container (damn!). Have you ever looked at the carry-out containers you receive from your local restaurants? Are they made of a recyclable material? Are they made of a recyclable material that the city you live in will actually recycle?
by David Egilman, MD, MPH
I just finished watching the Waxman hearings on FDA preemption and must comment on Christopher Shays’ (R-CT) comments. Christopher Shays is the last remaining Republican congressman from New England. Hopefully the November elections will result in the extinction of this last remaining
remnant of the age of the dinosaurs.
He repeatedly stated that he “had no dog in this hunt” concerning the impact of preemption and torts suits on drug safety. This is a peculiar position for a Congressperson who must decide whether or not the FDA’s actions are appropriate. It’s one thing to have no opinion; it is in another to imply that there is no reason to have opinion.
By Olga Naidenko
After lead, asbestos, aromatic amine dyes, Minamata disease, Bhopal, and fluorochemicals, we presumably have learned something about worker safety, especially when it comes to large-scale production in cutting-edge chemical industries. So here comes the test: can we use this knowledge to ensure worker safety in the up-and-coming nanotechnology industry?
An international survey published in the May issue of Environmental Science and Technology addressed precisely this question: are nanomaterials firms and laboratories installing adequate, nano-specific environmental health and safety (EHS) programs, engineering controls, personal protective equipment, exposure monitoring and product stewardship programs?
By Adam Finkel
I am always on the lookout for examples of how laypeople and/or experts fail to appreciate the enormity of the risks workers face. As someone who came to OSHA from a background in environmental health policy, where an excess lifetime fatality risk greater than one chance per million is often seen as unacceptably high, I am still amazed at the unfinished business on the occupational agenda. I sent the letter below to the New York Times on March 14th, and it was not printed amid a group of other letters focusing on more lurid aspects of Eliot Spitzer’s downfall. I appreciate columnist Nicholas Kristof calling attention to the hazards of “the oldest profession” (well, except for agriculture, perhaps), but I wish more people understood that as intolerable as a 1% lifetime risk is, it is by no means confined to one particular occupation.
The Associated Press conducted a five-month investigation and found that drug residues have been detected in the drinking water of 24 major U.S. metropolitan areas, which serve roughly 41 million Americans. Concerns about these drug residues have largely focused on wildlife, as estrogen from birth control pills and other hormonal drugs has been interfering with fish reproduction (see past post here). Now, though, the AP is highlighting the number of people exposed and the potential for human health effects:
As the recent problems with tainted food, drugs, toys, and other consumer products have made clear, our regulatory system has a lot of holes in it. Part of the problem is the current reluctance of agency appointees to do anything that might burden the industries in question, but that’s not the whole story. It’s also the case that the laws we rely on to protect us from dangerous products simply aren’t strong enough.
The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production (at the University of Massachusetts Lowell) has just issued two reports that pinpoint the policy problems we’re facing and offer suggestions for how to fix them.
The Presumption of Safety: Limits of Federal Policies on Toxic Substances in Consumer Products identifies these four limitations in the current regulatory system:
By Francis Hamilton Rammazzocchi
For the second time in two months, America has witnessed a catastrophic industrial explosion involving multiple fatalities. On December 19, 2007, the small T2 Chemicals in Jacksonville, FL, detonated in a towering mushroom cloud, killing four workers. And earlier this week, the Imperial Sugar plant outside of Savannah, Georgia, exploded, killing at least 6 workers and probably more.
Not only were both of these disasters preventable, but the factors that caused both explosions had been subjects of Chemical Safety Board (CSB) regulatory recommendations to OSHA, recommendations ignored by the agency — with tragic consequences.
This afternoon at 2:30pm Eastern time, David Michaels will be doing a Public Health Reports webcast on protecting workers from beryllium. No registration or log-in password is necessary to participate; the link for the webcast will be posted at 2 PM on the Public Health Reports website.
David will focus on the Public Health Reports article he and Celeste Monforton co-authored: Beryllium’s “Public Relations Problem”: Protecting Workers When There is No Safe Exposure Level. Visit his post about the article for more.
By Les Leopold
If you need a quick snooze, read a US Government Accountability Office report with its carefully parsed prose. But lost in the holiday rush was a December GAO report that could keep you awake as it bashes the Bush administration’s effort to water down the community Right to Know regulations that provide us with potentially life-saving information about the use, storage and release of toxic substances. These regulations require that companies make detailed reports which form the Toxics Release Inventory – an accessible public database on the quantity of toxic chemicals on site and how much has been released into the air, land and water.
The rule changes have the smell of freshly minted money. Industry saves as the paperwork declines. More protection from histrionic public peeping toms is also welcomed by these secretive corporations The GAO estimates the new rules permits “3,500 facilities to no longer report detailed information about their toxic chemical releases and waste management practices.” Of the 90,000 Toxic Release Inventory reports now filed, 22,000 could no longer be available to the public. Although the EPA claimed the rules would impact reporting on less than one percent of total toxic releases nationwide, the GAO warned that it “masked the disproportionately large impact the rule would have on individual communities across the country.” But really, should anybody care about these arcane fine points?
Tomorrow’s Science Friday radio program will feature a segment on the Science Debate 2008 campaign, which calls for the presidential candidates to devote a debate to science-related issues. You can listen live online from 2 - 4pm Eastern time, or check your local NPR station’s listings to see when the show airs.
Here’s what we wrote last month about why such a debate is needed and which questions we’d like to see the candidates answer:
The Pump Handle will be on hiatus for the remainder of the year.
We wish all of our readers and friends a healthy, peaceful 2008.
Susan Wood (see her past Pump Handle posts here) has an op-ed in today’s Boston Globe: “A public health system defeated at the hands of ideology.” She focuses on the Bush administration’s “failure to staff important health-related positions with qualified individuals willing to provide science-based advice” — a problem that’s particularly glaring when it comes to reproductive health issues.
By Dick Clapp
There were two reviews of Devra Davis’s new book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (Basic Books, 2007), published in Lancet journals last month. One was in the November 24 issue of the Lancet and the other was in the November issue of Lancet Oncology. They are so diametrically opposite that one wonders if the reviewers had read the same book. The Lancet review is by Peter Boyle, the current director of IARC (the International Agency for Research on Cancer) - an agency that is widely respected but whose recent report on attributable causes of cancer has raised some eyebrows among cancer researchers. Boyle’s review is a broadside against the book that starts with “Devotees of conspiracy theories and aficionados of gossip and innuendo will be drawn toward this book like wasps to a juicy piece of meat.” The review by Fred Pearce, a well-known environmental consultant and science writer, starts with “This is a clash of titans. Not between mankind and cancer so much as between the clinicians and chemical companies on one side, and the environmental and public health people on the other.”
By David Michaels, Susan Wood, and Liz Borkowski
We’ve joined with our fellow scientists and citizens to call for presidential candidates to devote a debate to an issue we haven’t heard enough about in campaign appearances so far: science. The “Science Debate 2008” campaign is a nonpartisan effort that states:
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.
We here at The Pump Handle are particularly concerned about the way that political appointees in this administration have suppressed, distorted, and ignored scientific evidence and communication about important issues, including global warming, emergency contraception, and a range of other public health issues. Some officials have failed to address important issues such as protecting consumers from dangerous drugs or chemical hazards. At the same time, the White House has issued Executive Order 13422, which erected new hurdles that make it harder for regulatory agencies to do their jobs, and has installed (via recess appointment) an anti-regulatory extremist to oversee the administration’s regulatory policies. In short, scientific federal agencies are not able to use science as they should to protect our air, water, drugs, and food and to address large-scale health and environmental problems. It is imperative that the next president reverse these damaging trends and restore scientific integrity to federal policy. Therefore, we suggest that presidential candidates answer the following questions:
By Aman
Cross-posted with permission from Technology, Health & Development
Tomorrow is World AIDS Day and instead of “barraging you with [another set of] statistics, gruesome photos, or heart-wrenching stories” (quote credit to Mr. Casnocaha), I want to alert you to something we prefer here - solutions, problem solving, technology, and creative thinking. Piya Sorcar, a doctoral student in Stanford’s Learning, Sciences & Technology Design program has used her considerable skills to figure out how to reach the minds of children in devleoping countries when it comes to HIV/AIDS education.
By David Egilman
Jack Kevorkian was tried several times for second degree murder for assisting at suicide. He was finally convicted of second degree murder for one such “assist.” The state never asserted that the person who was killed was uninformed or had not participated in the decision to hire Kevorkian to assist in their own death. Patients knew of the risk they were taking when they contacted Dr. Kevorkian to help them kill themselves.
Dr. Lynn Goldman, former EPA Assistant Administrator For Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances and current Chair of Johns Hopkins’s Indepartmental Program in Applied Public Health, will be at George Washington University tomorrow (Tuesday, 11/27) to give a talk entitled “Chemicals: Making Public Health Policy in the Face of Uncertainty.” The event will run from noon until 1:30pm at the GWU Hospital Auditorium, as part of the GWU School of Public Health and Health Services Public Health Grand Rounds.
UPDATE: Transcript and video now available from Kaisernetwork
By Paul D. Blanc
The interconnections among toxic butter flavoring, fatal coal mine “bumps,” and tainted Barbie accessories may not be immediately obvious - but they all reflect the failures of an increasingly compromised U. S. regulatory apparatus.
In early September, news broke that the artificial butter flavoring chemical diacetyl had caused severe lung disease in a hapless consumer who liked his popcorn just a bit too much. The resulting publicity spurred the leading industrial user of diacetyl, ConAgra, to remove the chemical from its product line. Thus was accomplished in one day what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was unable to do despite half a dozen years of accumulated evidence that the chemical was causing lung disease in workers exposed to it on the job.
Exactly one year ago today, we published our first post here on The Pump Handle. It’s been an eventful year, to say the least.
By far, our most popular post was David Michaels’s “Popcorn Lung Coming to Your Kitchen? The FDA Doesn’t Want to Know,” which publicized the first reported case of bronchiolitis obliterans in a consumer and the pathetic reaction from public health agencies. Of course this is just one piece of the larger butter-flavoring story, which we’ve been following since our inception, mostly focusing on OSHA’s superficial responses to a hazard that’s robbing workers of their lung capacity.
We’ve also kept ourselves busy advocating for drug-safety reforms at FDA; considering ways to improve occupational health and safety in the U.S.; monitoring White House attempts to seize more control over regulatory agencies; weighing in on the conflict-of-interest issues surrounding the bisphenol A risk assessment; and criticizing the CPSC for its lackluster response to lead-tainted toys and other unsafe products. As tragedy unfolded at the collapsed Crandall Canyon mine in Utah, we explored the problems that contributed to the disaster and ways to keep miners safer.
Recent research has been attracting attention, and bloggers help explain the findings – in some cases, more accurately than the traditional media outlets do:
- MarkH at denialism blog critiques the news coverage of the latest research on obesity, overweight, and mortality (Washington Post headline: “Being Overweight Isn’t All Bad, Study Says”) and reminds us that it’s also important to look at obesity’s effects on quality of life and disability.
- Revere at Effect Measure, Mike the Mad Biologist, and Tara C. Smith at Aetiology report on new research into MRSA and pigs – and why it might be time to rethink antibiotics use in livestock.
- Ed Silverman at Pharmalot has the latest on Merck’s failed HIV vaccine, which seems to have made some clinical trial participants’ immune systems more vulnerable.
- Tara C. Smith at Aetiology awards the “Bad Science Writing of the Day” title to an article about chocolate and gut bacteria.
Elsewhere:
Yesterday’s edition of OSHA’s “Quick Takes” e-news memo featured an item entitled “BLS Reports Workplace Injury and Illness Overall Rate Lowest on Record.” Peter Infante, former Director of the Office of Standards Review for OSHA’s Health Standards Program, was not so quick to cheer at this, though. He fired off a response to OSHA, and gave us permission to post it here:
Dear OSHA Official:
Could someone please inform the Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, that the reporting of injuries and illness data do not include “illnesses.” The data are essentially injury data. Illnesses such as non-malignant lung diseases, cancers and heart diseases that are related to the job would only be rarely, if ever recorded. Hence, occupational sources for these diseases are not included in the data that the BLS collects in order to determine injury and illness rates for US workers. Even in the case of mesothelioma, which can only be related to asbestos exposure, the latent period for the disease is so long that workers are unlikely to be employed on the job where the exposure occurred at the time of their diagnosis, so even an undispituable “exposure and disease connection” as this one is not recorded as a workplace cancer. The case is likely the same for all diseases with a long latency period. Actually in practice, any occupational disease that is not the result of an acute illness is unlikely to be reported and the acute illnesses also are rarely recorded and hence not reported on the DOL forms used by the BLS for gathering the data used in its report.
By Kristen Perosino
Spinach. Peanut butter. Hamburgers. Pet food. No, I’m not preparing for a trip to the grocery store (but if I were, I might unknowingly be adding salmonella, E. coli, and aflatoxin to my grocery list). I’m talking about food safety.
Americans have been made more aware lately of the flaws in our current food safety system, and many lawmakers agree that reform is necessary. However, they don’t agree (yet) on the most effective way to address this issue. Let’s look at some of the food safety problems.
By James Celenza
Last year, a jury found that three paint companies created a public nuisance when they made and sold the lead paints that continue to poison children in Rhode Island. Now, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch is proposing that the companies spend $2.4 billion removing lead paint from more than half the houses and apartments in Rhode Island. Some criticize the effort and expense that will be required, but lead poisoning is a serious issue that deserves our attention - and this settlement provides an opportunity to address lead poisoning and connected health issues in a systematic way that will benefit Rhode Islanders’ health in the long run.
By Kristen Perosino
Is FDA on the road to recovery? Will public confidence in the agency be restored?
In what is bound to be an interesting policy address (not to mention well-timed, as the recently passed FDA Amendments Act of 2007 awaits Bush’s signature), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) is scheduled to present her vision of “The Future of the FDA” on Wednesday, October 3rd at George Washington University.
She’s quite an important figure for the agency. As Chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds FDA, DeLauro is influential in determining resource allocations to FDA programs. She demonstrated her clout earlier this year, for example, when FDA was rumored to cut funding for the Office of Women’s Health. DeLauro voiced her opposition and challenged Commissioner von Eschenbach to explain any such decision. FDA eventually maintained funding levels for the office after pressure from DeLauro and many women’s rights advocates. Translation: Women’s health is important to DeLauro.
The following post is by Dr. David Egilman, a familiar figure to those who have been following the case of Eli Lilly’s schizophrenia drug Zyprexa. See Alex Berenson’s New York Times articles on the case for more background, or read David Michaels’s post about Zyprexa and sequestered science. — Editor
“The Truth is Not Free”
By David Egilman
September 11, 2007
All that is needed for the forces of evil to succeed is for enough good people to remain silent.
– Edmund Burke
The consequences of silence can be devastating. My father spent WWII in a German concentration camp largely as a consequence of silence. In response to the Holocaust, which was facilitated by the silence of a nation, I have devoted much of my professional career to studying and reporting the effects of silence on public health.
Last December, I was subpoenaed for copies of internal documents that I acquired as a consulting witness in litigation against the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. I released all of the documents I had, which made their way to The New York Times and became the basis for four major articles. After the Times stories ran, 30 states subpoenaed documents detailing Lilly’s sales, marketing and promotional practices for Zyprexa as part of civil investigations under state consumer protection laws.
By Kristen Perosino
Congress is currently considering important legislation to improve drug and medical device safety and strengthen scientific integrity at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Both the House (H.R. 2900) and Senate (S. 1082) versions contain provisions that should be adopted in the final bill to better protect public health. One such provision is Title V Section 501 of the Senate bill regarding the right of FDA scientists to publish their research. This language, which amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, adds the following wording to the policy on the review and clearance of scientific articles published by FDA employees:
If you haven’t seen it yet, go read Edward Cody’s Washington Post article on a recent Chinese mine disaster. It begins with a description from a survivor:
XINTAI, China, Aug. 23 — The first sign of trouble was a stream of water that burst from a wall deep in the mine, Wang Kuitao recalled. Within minutes, he said, the water was everywhere, rushing down the shaft carrying tons of mud. Another disaster was on the way, Wang quickly concluded, one more in the cruel rhythm of China’s deadly coal fields.
by Ken Ward, Jr. (This item first appeared on Nieman Watchdog; posted with permission)
Often after accidents like the one at Crandall Canyon, Utah, mine operators claim their mines had relatively few violations. Even if that’s true—and often it isn’t—‘relatively few’ just isn’t good enough in a risky venture like coal mining. As I write this, the news out of Crandall Canyon, Utah, is not looking good. The Associated Press reports that a tiny microphone lowered deep into the earth early Friday picked up no evidence that six coal miners caught in cave-in four days ago were still alive.
The national, and international, media continue their watch over the effort to rescue the miners – and to fill the never-ending television and Internet news cycle. Media outlets of all stripes have turned mine owner Bob Murray into a household name. CNN got to pat itself on the back for getting its cameras into the mine. Reporters and scientists have dueled with Murray over whether an earthquake caused the mine collapse, or whether the mine collapse simply looked like an earthquake to the seismic detection systems.
But lost among the frenzy are some important questions. Well, maybe they’re not lost – but they’re not being asked and answered very bluntly. First and foremost, why is it acceptable for the coal industry to break the law?
By Harrison Newton, National Nursing Centers Consortium (Lead Safe DC)
The recent recall of top-selling toys made by Mattel Inc. because they “could” contain the neurotoxin lead should cause government, academia and the public to consider why we are still allowing lead to harm our communities. Can’t we do better?
Of course we can, and the industries that have spent the last 100 years pushing lead into our homes could be doing a lot more to help. In the Washington D.C. area, hundreds of children this year will suffer the effects of lead, which has been proven to decrease IQ, ability to concentrate, and to cause behavioral problems. Overall lead levels decreased after lead was removed from gasoline in the 1970s, but millions of children are still exposed to lead, largely through lead paint – which is no longer used in the U.S., but is present in older housing and used in many of the countries where our goods are manufactured.
Certainly, no back-pats should be administered over the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s nationwide recall of “Sesame Street” and “Dora the Explorer” toys – because past experience suggests it won’t go far enough to solve the problem.
By Myra L. Karstadt, Ph.D
On June 13, a team of which I was part received EPA’s highest award: The Administrator’s Gold Medal for Exceptional Service. According to the citation, the award was given to us “For successful conclusion of the largest administrative penalty action in history which will significantly improve reporting of TSCA toxic chemical risk information.”
The DuPont case, which I worked on from mid-2003 (the beginning of the investigation that resulted in the litigation) until I left EPA at the end of May 2005, was based in greatest part on the company’s violation of reporting regulations under section 8(e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). TSCA covers the production and distribution of commercial and industrial chemicals, and its goal is “to ensure that chemicals sold and used in the United States do not pose an unreasonable risk to human health and the environment.” Section 8(e) requires U.S. chemical manufacturers, importers, processors and distributors to notify EPA within 30 days of “new, unpublished information on their chemicals that may lead to a conclusion of substantial risk to human health or to the environment.” EPA determined that DuPont repeatedly failed to notify the agency about substantial risk of injury to human health or the environment that DuPont obtained about PFOA, a chemical involved in producing DuPont’s Teflon®, from as early as 1981 and as recently as 2004.
You’d think that a statutory section that resulted in “the largest administrative penalty action in history” would have a good deal of staff and resources devoted to it, and would be enforced with vigor with regard to violators other than DuPont. Sounds logical, but if that’s what you’re thinking, you would be wrong.
As Dick Clapp wrote earlier this month, Rachel Carson’s critics have used the 100th anniversary of her birth as an occasion to attack the influential environmental author. In the New York Times, columnist John Tierney (sub only) called Carson’s classic work Silent Spring “a hodgepodge of science and junk science.” Barry Commoner, himself an author of landmark books on ecology, wrote a response to the Times, and has given us permission to post it here. -Liz Borkowski
To the Editor:
John Tierney’s rehash (Science Times, June 5, 2007) of the long discredited arguments against the 1972 law banning the use of DDT in the U.S. is a malicious attack on Rachel Carson’s classic work, “Silent Spring,” where she concluded that cancer incidence is largely due to synthetic organic chemicals rather than to naturally occurring ones. Tierney’s evidence that natural compounds are “as likely to be carcinogenic as synthetic ones” is directly contradicted by a comprehensive review of data from five international cancer agencies recently reported in the American Cancer Society’s journal CANCER. By checking this study’s list of chemicals that cause breast cancer in laboratory animals against the Combined Chemical Dictionary (a database distinguishing synthetic and natural organic chemicals), I find that of the total 212 organic chemicals, 203 are synthetic and only 9 are produced by living things. In calling “Silent Spring” a “hodgepodge of science and junk science,” Mr. Tierney has produced a shameful display of junk journalism.
Barry Commoner, Senior Scientist
CBNS, Queens College, CUNY
By Peter Lurie, MD, MPH, Deputy Director, Public Citizen’s Health Research Group
Dr. Lurie is a contributor to Public Citizen’s drug newsletter, available at www.worstpills.org. He will present testimony on state doctor gift disclosure laws before the Senate Special Committee on Aging on Wednesday, June 27, 2007. This article originally appeared in the May 2007 issue of Public Citizen’s Health Letter.
The life of a doctor must be tough. To judge by most of their offices, doctors are unable to afford pens, mugs, refrigerator magnets, or pads of paper. Even lunch is beyond their reach, it seems. And dinner at a fancy downtown restaurant? Fuhgeddaboutit.
Fortunately, there’s a group willing to step into the breach and supply these missing morsels and amenities. You guessed it: the pharmaceutical industry.
Despite the growing prevalence of direct-to-consumer advertising on television ($4.2 billion in 2005), the pharmaceutical industry continues to lavish the lion’s share of its advertising budget on physicians ($7.2 billion, excluding the ubiquitous free samples). After all, it is the physician who wields the power of the prescription pen.
Somehow, doctors operate under the delusion that the pharmaceutical industry is misguided enough to squander close to $20 billion on promotion annually even though, according to many doctors’ reasoning, all this largesse has no influence upon their prescribing habits. Much research suggests otherwise. When doctors were sent on expensive junkets to exotic locales, purportedly to receive objective education on a drug or disease, researchers noticed that prescribing of the sponsoring drug companies’ products went up in those doctors’ hospitals upon their return. Doctors accepting gifts from drug companies are more likely to request that their hospital add drugs to the hospital’s formulary, its list of preferred drugs.
Some people have had enough. Recently, a number of prominent medical schools, including Stanford, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, have sharply limited interactions between their physicians and pharmaceutical representatives. And now states are getting in on the action.
By Peter Dooley
The stories of injury and illness among workers at the Toyota Georgetown plant (reported in the Washington Post story this past week) remind us all about the plight of workers without representation in their workplace. Facing termination after an injury, being transferred to a less desirable job or being discriminated against for standing up for basic rights are daily occurrences in workplaces without unions or contracts to challenge a company’s one-party system of management. Health and safety is the clearest example of how this lack of representation becomes an infringement of human rights. Read the rest of this entry »
The public (that’s you) have until May 24 to comments on EPA’s list of nominees for its Science Advisory Board panel on asbestos. David Michaels has weighed in on this issue and is submitting his comments today to EPA. Another organization providing input is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Writing on behalf of NRDC, senior scientist Jennifer Sass writes:
On the whole, industry-employed scientists and scientists working for industry-supported research institutions tend to downplay the effects of toxic chemicals. …Here, many, if not most of the industry nominees developed their asbestos publication record in the last five years, becoming “instant experts” in the service of their corporate clients. The nominees are unfit to provide EPA with robust independent scientific advice.
A complete list of the nominees appears here.
By David Michaels
Many people first heard about hexavalent chromium, or chromium 6, from the movie Erin Brockovich, which is based on the true story of a lawsuit over chromium-contaminated groundwater in the town of Hinkley, California.
Less well-known is the campaign waged by companies that manufacture or use chromium 6 to convince regulatory agencies that the chemical, which has recognized as a lung carcinogen for more than 50 years, just isn’t so dangerous. There’s a lot of chromium-contaminated water out there, and if chromium 6 in drinking water were acknowledged to be a cause of cancer, it would cost industry a lot of money in clean-up costs.
It won’t surprise regular readers of this blog – or anyone who’s seen our case study on industry efforts to delay OSHA’s chromium 6 standard – to hear that these companies have turned to product defense firms, and that the firms have produced studies that differ markedly from those completed by non-industry-funded scientists. Read the rest of this entry »
By Adam M. Finkel
Two weeks ago, Congress officially asked a question that would have been unutterable during the first six years of the Bush Administration: “Have OSHA Standards Kept up with Workplace Hazards?” I was not surprised to read Assistant Secretary Ed Foulke’s testimony, in which he tried mightily to make the molehill of OSHA regulatory activity since 2001 look like a (small) mountain. In my experience as a former OSHA executive, each of the Assistant Secretaries since at least 1997 has assigned a small army of spin-meisters to look for data, any data, that will make the agency look useful (assuming, as they always do, that any positive trend is OSHA’s doing), and to ignore anything contrary.
But I was amazed to find that one witness, attorney Baruch Fellner, actually testified that not only is OSHA keeping pace, but that it shouldn’t be trying so hard to keep up! (His testimony is available here.) I felt compelled to try to put this “Mission Accomplished” moment in perspective, from the vantage point of someone who tried, sometimes under more reasonable political leadership, to emphasize science-based regulation over guidance and other voluntary programs, and to emphasize occupational disease prevention as the key unfinished business on OSHA’s to-do list.
On the Arizona Star‘s Clocking-In Blog, reporter Becky Pallack published a letter addressed to her on The Weekly Toll. The letter, written by Javier Morales (whose nephew and Godson, Ian Michael Beal, was killed in a construction accident in late 2003), discussed the unwillingness of the press to report on Workers Memorial Day.
By Lee Friedman
The Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII), based on OSHA logs, indicates that occupational injuries and illnesses in the U.S. have steadily declined by 35.8% between 1992-2003. However, major changes to the OSHA recordkeeping standard occurred in 1995 and 2001. A recent study we published illustrates that the steep decline in reported occupational injuries and illnesses during the past 10 years in the U.S. workforce is an artifact resulting from changes to the recordkeeping rules and regulations
rather than an improvement in workplace safety. Read the rest of this entry »
By James Celenza
Driving a private car is probably a typical citizen’s most “polluting” daily activity, yet in many cases, individuals have few alternatives forms of transportation. Thus urban planning and smart growth are imperative.
– American Academy of Pediatrics Ambient Air Pollution: Health Hazards to Children
Public Transit is an Environmental Health Issue.
The built environment is a summarizing concept that links issues like housing, transportation, neighborhoods and jobs. Safe and efficient public transit is a key component of healthy environments. How so? Numerous studies implicate motor vehicle air pollution as a significant contributor to respiratory and cardiovascular disease, especially among children. Air pollution in Southern California communities had been shown to affect lung development, raise the risk of asthma, and increase school absences due to respiratory illnesses by the Children’s Health Study. The latest finding from the study team zeroes in on the impact of exposure to traffic-related pollutants and shows that kindergarten and first-grade students who lived near busy roads experienced a higher prevalence of asthma.
By Eula Bingham
It was 30 years ago this month that I was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health. I vividly remember my visits to Capitol Hill and the questions of lawmakers regarding my vision for worker health and safety. Perhaps it was because I had been a teacher for 20 years; or had accompanied members of the United Auto Workers to Sweden to witness first-hand a model worker training program; or perhaps it was the influence of Selikoff, Mazzocchi and Samuels (who all knew the value of providing workers with information) that caused me to respond: ”Worker education is my highest priority.” Read the rest of this entry »
By Jennifer Sass and Sarah Janssen
As described in earlier posts (here and here), the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has contracted the work of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) out to the consulting company Sciences International. This issue received public attention just as CERHR’s scheduled review of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) was taking place.
We submitted comments to CERHR detailing concerns about the content and the process of the BPA review. Our concerns include:
by Les Boden
For the past several years, Nevada employers and insurers could avoid paying workers’ compensation benefits to workers who had positive drug tests. According to an article in Occupational Hazards, this led to the denial of 10%-12% of claims filed in Nevada. But there’s a loophole that the Nevada legislature is considering closing. Workers have the right to refuse drug testing. The Insurance Journal reports that proposed legislation would require all injured workers to submit to drug tests if they apply for workers’ compensation.
What a good idea!
by Revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
While finishing drafting a series of posts on how Tamiflu resistant virus might spread as a result of intense use for influenza control, Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway posted this to remind us that drug resistant organisms spread for reasons much less useful than trying to stop people from dying. Like treating cows so they can be killed later and we can eat them and make money for agribusiness:
By Anthony Robbins
It has been many years, 26 in fact, since I left NIOSH, victim of the Reagan landslide of 1980. It is fair to say that I have spent little time engaged in worker health issues since then. Yet Michael Silverstein’s future oriented document offered surprisingly few new or unexpected insights as it forcefully argued for a better and more effective OSHA. His passion is admirable.
Perhaps I should not have been surprised to read about old hazards, old strategies, and old indictments of those in power. It has always been thus. For a view of worker health and environmental health issues that puts today’s challenges in historical perspective, I strongly urge readers to take up Paul Blanc’s new book, How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace. It reminds us that most of the problems we see in workplaces and the environment in the 21st century have their roots hundreds or even thousands of years back.
By Dick Clapp
This week, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection issued preliminary health-based guidance to local water companies on levels of perflurooctanoic acid (PFOA) in drinking water (PDF