This is a trade secret under FOIA?

I’ve often suspected that some federal agencies apply very broad definitions to the exemptions provided under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  Now, thanks to one diligent journalist I can judge for myself whether the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is an offender. 

Ellen Smith of Mine Safety and Health News requested records from MSHA and the Solicitor’s Office (SOL) about its legal determination that the haulage road on which coal-truck drive Chad Cook, 25, died, was under MSHA jurisdication.  MSHA had made a gross error in 2005-2006 when it concluded that the road was private property.  (In November 2007, the senior officials reversed themselves, but it was too late to get justice for Chad Cook.)   Smith made her FOIA request for the legal determination in August 2008, and MSHA responded 7 months later.   They provided a four-page memo written by SOL, but redacted certain portions under FOIA Exemption 4.   This exemption is allowed to protect

“trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential.”

An Overlooked Player in the Anti-Regulatory Movement

Our regular readers are no doubt familiar with the efforts of various industries to protect their particular products from regulation. These industries (and the organizations they fund) often succeed in weakening or delaying regulations intended to protect people from climate change, tobacco, and other hazards. 

In addition to battling specific regulatory proposals, these same industries often fund efforts to weaken the agencies, groups, and process that advance regulation. For instance, the infamous Data Quality Act, which makes it far too easy for regulated industries to gum up the works at federal agencies, had roots in Philip Morris’s efforts to halt regulation of secondhand smoke. 

Now, the Natural Resources News Service’s Adam Sarvana warns us about an often-overlooked player in the anti-regulatory arena: Roger Bate, who has used the issue of DDT and malaria “to pit potential allies in regulatory efforts, especially environmentalists and public health advocates, against each other in an effort to draw their fire away from regulated industries, including tobacco.”

Tobacco Tactics for Climate Change Denial

American News Project has just posted a new video segment about how tactics used to defend tobacco are now staving off action on climate change. In “Smoke and CO2: How to Spin Global Warming,” Danielle Ivory gives an eight-minute overview of how we went from reassurances that tobacco isn’t really harmful to insistence that we don’t really need to worry about global warming. Our own David Michaels provides commentary.

Even if you already know all about how manufactured doubt has stalled progress on smoking cessation and greenhouse-gas reductions, it’s worth watching the piece for its collection of ads and speeches by those trying to prevent regulation of their products. My favorite: former Philip Morris CEO Joseph Cullman, when asked about smoking’s link to low-birthweight babies, saying “some women prefer having smaller babies.”

Watch it here.

Next step for Chao’s Secret Rule

Hmph!   I just read on the OMB/OIRA website that they have completed their review of Labor Secretary Chao’s proposal to change the way that OSHA and MSHA assess workers’ risk of health hazards.  The OIRA website notice says their review was completed on August 25, and it was approved “consistent with change.” 

How Product Defense Hurts Workers

Hazards magazine, a UK-based publication dedicated to occupational health, has just published a piece by David Michaels about how product defense tactics harm workers. Much of David’s book, Doubt is Their Product, focuses on substances whose dangers are particularly evident in the workplace, including asbestos, benzene lead, aromatic amines (dyes and rubber chemicals that cause bladder cancer), beryllium, chromium 6, diacetyl, and ergonomic hazards.

This latest piece, “Spin Cycle,” gives a good overview of how product defense firms have tried to prevent regulation of several specific workplace hazards in the U.S., and notes that standards set (or not set) in this country often have international repercussions. Hazards also provides sidebars on manganese, benzene, beryllium, and non-binding ACGIH standards.

Rushing NOT! to Protect Workers’ Health

Following The Pump Handle’s July 8 post “Secret Rule on OSHA Risk Assessment” (and July 10 here), a front-page Washington Post article provides more details on the Bush Administration’s plan to ”reform” the system used by OSHA and MSHA to assess workers’ risk from toxic materials.  In U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules, Post reporter Carol Leonnig obtained a draft copy of the proposed rule, which would direct the risk assessment assumptions and procedures used by MSHA and OSHA when developing regulations to protect workers health hazards.  Leonnig reports that Bush appointee, lawyer and “ethics advisor” Deborah Misir in DOL’s Office of Policy worked with a contractor to develop the new risk asssessment plan, intentionally leaving career scientists out of the process.

Well, well, it’s the same old playbook for the Bush Administration: Leave out the career staff who know most about the topic, assign a political appointee with no expertise to manage the process, and pay a hand-selected contractor to do the work.  That would be bad enough, but it gets worse.

Congress demands briefing on Chao’s mystery proposal for risk assessment

Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Congressman George Miller (D-CA) are demanding answers from Labor Secretary Elaine Chao on her mysterious proposed rule on risk assessment.  I reported earlier this week that the Secretary’s office sent a proposed rule to OMB on July 7 entitled “Requirements for DOL Agencies’ Assessment of Occupational Health Risks.”  Although this proposal might sound innocuous, past experience at so-called “regulatory reform” of risk assessment tells us to be very wary of plans to “improve” the risk assessment process.  In layman’s terms, it means workers’ health gets screwed. 

Kennedy and Miller’s letter to Secretary Chao asks for a briefing within a week about the proposed regulation, and asks for:

• a copy of the proposed rule
• the legal authority under which the Department expects to promulgate this regulation
• the reason that this proposed rule was not listed in the Department’s Regulatory Agenda (which was published in May 2008 )

A screenshot of OMB’s webpage on which this proposed rule appears is here.

Thanks to the Senator and Congresman for taking their oversight responsibilities seriously.

Secret rule on OSHA risk assessment?

I found the most curious item on OMB OIRA’s webpage today, and my paranoia about end-of-the-term mischief by the Bush Administration kicked into high gear.  The item is listed as a proposed rule submitted to OIRA for review on July 7 titled:

“Requirements for DOL Agencies’ Assessment of Occupational Health Risks” (RIN: 1290-AA23)  (Link here, select DOL) or (screenshot)

Whenever the term risk assessment is uttered by the Bush Admininstration, I know they are up to no good.  Recall their earlier effort at a major overhaul of agency’s risk assessment procedures; this was a proposal that was long on new one-size-fits-all requirements for agencies involved in health, safety and environmental protection, but woefully lacking in details about the alleged problem it was designed to fix.  More importantly, it would have added new steps to the rulemaking process, making a dysfunctional system more so, and creating administrative obstacles for health protective rules.  Thankfully, a failing grade by the National Academy of Sciences forced OMB to junk it. 

This mysterious draft proposal at OMB makes me wonder whether this is the White House’s plan B for so-called “reforms” to agency risk assessments.  Let’s see:  they couldn’t impose their requirements agency-wide, so why not target specific agencies?  What better place than those pesky rules to protect workers’ from dangerous contaminants?

Why the Right Wing attacks science

by revere (cross posted at Effect Measure)

If you want to see what difference environmental protection enforcement makes, just go to eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union. Or China. In the 1970s the US led the world in cleaning its environment and was consolidating its gains with well-staffed, motivated federal and state environment agencies. But that was then. Last weekend the US Senate couldn’t even manage a paltry 60 votes to stop a filibuster of a bipartisan and none too strong global warming bill. This kind of failure isn’t new. The US slow motion fall in environmental leadership has been going on for decades. In the Bush administration it is no longer covert but displayed blatantly and without shame. The lack of commitment is not a result of public disinterest or hostility. Polling throughout this period shows continuing support for environmental protection, and mainstream environmental organizations have even increased their membership. So what’s going on? A recent scholarly paper pulls back the curtain on one reason for the long slide (cf. Jacques, Dunlap and Freeman, “The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism”, Environmental Politics 17:349 – 385, 2008).

Product Defense Wolf Tries on Sheep’s Clothing

The Weinberg Group is one of the product defense firms I write about in my new book “Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health.” These firms help polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products avoid regulation – only now the Weinberg Group is not a product defense firm, it’s transformed itself into a “product support” firm.