Manufacturing Uncertainty
sb admin | May 5, 2008The May 12th issue of Newsweek contains Sharon Begleyâs excellent review of Doubt is Their Product (which should now be available in your local bookstore). Naturally, we like it because it says nice things about Davidâs book, but we also think Begley does a terrific job describing the kinds of abuses the book chronicles. Itâs not surprising to see her giving a pithy summary of how polluters manufacture uncertainty, since she wrote last yearâs Newsweek cover story âGlobal-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine,â which provides one of the best overviews of the global warming denial movement…
sb admin | April 29, 2008Just as the 60-day deadline approached for filing a legal challenge to a new health standard to protect mine workers from asbestos exposure, mining industry trade associations submitted their petitions in federal court. MSHA's rule was published on February 29, and tick-tock, like clockwork, the National Mining Assoc, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Assoc (NSSGA) and others filed suits in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting judicial review of MSHA's rule. Under both the OSHA and MSHA statutues, "any person who may be adversely affect by a [newly promulgated]…
sb admin | April 17, 2008Doubt is Their Product is the focus of the second piece in a three-part series by Slateâs Daniel Engber on âradical skepticism and the rise of conspiratorial thinking about science.â After describing the strategy of manufacturing doubt, from its tobacco-industry roots to its use by energy and drug companies and politicians, Engber suggests that anti-regulatory forces arenât the only ones using it. His perspective is an interesting and useful one for those of us who are immersed in the scientific back-and-forth and might not realize how the general public views the issues.
In the first in his…
sb admin | February 27, 2008Diacetyl â the butter-flavoring chemical linked to severe lung disease in food and flavoring workers â hasnât been in the news much recently. It got a lot of attention in September, when we drew attention to the case of a Colorado man who appeared to have developed bronciolitis obliterans from eating microwave popcorn twice a day for several years. (More details here.) Major popcorn manufacturers announced that they would be removing diacetyl from their microwave popcorn lines, and OSHA put out a press release saying it was initiating rulemaking on the chemical.
I haven't written about…
sb admin | January 31, 2008On Monday February 4th, Iâll be doing the Public Health Reportsâ monthly webcast, discussing the recent article Celeste Monforton and I wrote entitled Berylliumâs âPublic Relations Problemâ: Protecting Workers When There is No Safe Exposure Level. Hereâs some background:
In a 1947 report, entitled Public Relations Problems in Connection with Occupational Diseases in the Beryllium Industry, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) asserted that the ability of the US government to produce nuclear weapons was threatened by the high incidence of severe health effects associated with exposure to…
sb admin | December 18, 2007The journal Epidemiology has just published new evidence that drinking hexavalent chromium -- also called chromium 6 -- increases risk of stomach cancer. The study is important for public health purposes, since many drinking water sources are chromium contaminated (including the water in the community in the movie Erin Brockovich).
This new study is also the latest piece of a very ugly scandal that illustrates how polluters manufacture doubt to impede regulation. And this scandal is but one of several in which chromium polluters have manipulated epidemiologic studies to sow uncertainty -…
sb admin | November 14, 2007Over at The Intersection, Chris Mooney has a teaser about his terrific article "An Inconvenient Assessment," chronicling the effort by the Bush administration, in cahoots with ExxonMobil-funded climate change deniers, to undercut a vitally important climate change report. The longer article appears in this monthâs issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
While the report in question, officially known as Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, was issued in 2000, it was packed with information that could have informed a…
sb admin | October 15, 2007After reviewing previously undisclosed documents*, the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward writes how a group of notable occupational health scientists and epidemiologists felt DuPont misrepresented the scientific evidence to-date about the health risks associated with PFOA (ammonium perfluorooctanoate, a.k.a. C8).  Ward writes about concerns expressed in private email exchanges among scientists on the firm's Epidemiology Review Board (ERB), an independent and external committee, when DuPont made a big public announcement (and to its employees at the Washington Works plant (near…
sb admin | September 20, 2007By Dick ClappÂ
Researchers devote a lot of effort to determining what causes cancer, and their findings can help us treat and prevent the disease. Industries that use and manufacture suspected carcinogens have something to fear, though, if research shows their products or processes to be contributing to cancer in workers or nearby communities. As a result, there has been a three-decade debate about the magnitude of the cancer burden contributed by these sources.
This issue is getting renewed attention because the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently released a report…
sb admin | August 7, 2007It no longer seems unusual to see an article in the Washington Post or the New York Times about Bush administration officials interfering with science for political reasons. Over the past week, though, two major news sources that reach a different audience have given this problem a lot of ink.
Dan Verganoâs USA Today article âScience vs. politics gets down and dirtyâ begins with the example of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona, who testified recently about administration officials suppressing health reports, and goes on to describe clashes between officials and scientists at the Fish…
sb admin | July 19, 2007By David Michaels
More sickening revelations about FEMAâs lack of concern for the health of Americans, this time concerning their actions months after Hurricane Katrina. Spencer S. Hsu of the Washington Post reports that
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has suppressed warnings from its own Gulf coast field workers since the middle of 2006 about suspected health problems that may be linked to elevated levels of formaldehyde gas released in FEMA-provided trailers, lawmakers said today.
At a hearing this morning of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, investigators…
sb admin | July 11, 2007By Liz BorkowskiÂ
An article in the latest issue of OMB Watchâs Watcher newsletter reports on U.S. Chamber of Commerce efforts to get EPA to make changes to its chemical databases. The short story is that the Chamber asked the EPA to correct what it claimed was âinconsistent and erroneousâ information about chemicals in the agencyâs databases, and EPA rejected the claim, explaining that there were âvalid and specific reasonsâ why databases might contain differing information for the same chemicals. (See the article for the complete story.)
The important thing about this story is that the…
sb admin | July 9, 2007A couple of weeks ago, EPA proposed a new National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone (0.07 â 0.075 ppb) that was lower than the current limit (0.08 ppb) but not as protective as the limit many experts suggested (0.06). The agency also announced that it would be taking comments on alternative standards from 0.06 â 0.08 ppb. (Read this post on the announcement for more.) On Wednesday at 10am, this proposed revision will be the subject of a hearing held by the Senate Environment & Public Works Committeeâs Clean Air & Nuclear Safety Subcommittee.
While weâre waiting to hear EPA…
sb admin | June 7, 2007Over the past few years, millions of formlerly secret internal documents from the tobacco industry have been made public and helped public health advocates learn how Big Tobacco deceived lawmakers and the public about smoking's health risks.
Wading through all these documents is time-consuming, so the Center for Media and Democracy has launched a TobaccoWiki that will allow people interested in the subject to share their findings online. (A Wiki is basically a tool for online collaboration; see Wikipedia's explanation to learn more about it.) Here's their explanation of the project:
The…
sb admin | May 17, 2007By 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 isnât so dangerous. Thereâs a lot of chromium-contaminated water out there, and if chromium 6 in drinking water were acknowledged to be a cause of cancer…
sb admin | May 14, 2007By David Michaels
OSHA has been taking a beating in the press recently and now they've started a small campaign to respond. It began with a blistering article (based in part on SKAPPâs work) by Steven Labaton in the New York Times, an article that was then reprinted in several newspapers around the country. Now, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Edwin G. Foulke Jr. is out there defending OSHAâs record issuing standards that protect worker health and safety.
Unfortunately, Mr. Foulke's arguments are reminiscent of the climate change deniers who oppose government…
sb admin | April 30, 2007By David Michaels
All of a sudden, America has become acutely aware of the terrible lung disease caused by workplace exposure to artificial butter flavor. Last week, the failure of OSHA to do anything in response to the outbreak of cases across the country was the subject of several powerful newspaper articles (including a front page story and editorial in the New York Times) and hearings in the House and Senate. In addition, the obstructive lung disease cases in the flavor industry were discussed in an alarming article in CDCâs Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The article reported that…
sb admin | March 30, 2007For those whoâve been following the investigations into how the Bush Administration interfered with government climate science, the news about political interference into Interior Department science had a familiar ring.
Chris Mooney sums it up well: âSubstitute for Philip Cooney an Interior Department official named Julie MacDonald, and it's basically the same story as it was with climate change: A political appointee, friendly with industry, overruling the determinations of agency scientists.â (Cooney was chief of staff on the White Houseâs Council on Environmental Quality â previously with…
sb admin | February 12, 2007By David Michaels
âSunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.â - Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1914)
According to the Newark Star-Ledger, Lisa B. Jackson, Commissioner of New Jerseyâs Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) has just issued a tough new standard for removing chromium 6 (a powerful lung carcinogen) from soil.
Three years ago, the same newspaperâs Alexander Lane wrote a series of articles (reprinted here and here) reporting how chromium companies Maxus Energy (formerly Diamond Shamrock), Honeywell (which took…
sb admin | February 2, 2007By David Michaels
The Guardian newspaper reports that The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the think tank/public relations firm, has offered scientists and economists $10,000 to undermine the report on global warming issued today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to the report, AEI âoffered the payments for articles that emphasize the shortcomingsâ of the IPCC report.
The offers were made in anticipation of the report, which was released today. In its letters, AEI asserted that the IPCC was "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to…