Starting in the early 1980s, it became clear that the common industrial degreasing agent Trichloroethylene (or TCE, for short) might increase the risk of cancer in those exposed to it. Since then, over 80 studies have been published on the possible toxicological effects of TCE exposure. In 2001 after an extensive review of these studies and how people were exposed to the chemical, the EPA publised a draft risk assesment that indicated their intentions to severely limit the maximum legal level of TCE in water supplies (then and currently at 5 milligrams/liter).
Yesterday, the LA Times published an excellent article detailing the aftermath of that publication. The article was surprisingly neutral, given the stark disregard for public health that it exposes in the Administration. I however, am not going to pretend to be neutral. This case is yet another example of how the administration disregards and impugns science and scientists in order to prevent their findings from being an inconvenience.
Each year, the Pentagon spends about $5 billion (that’s with a B) to clean up TCE contamination at its bases. That’s because there are over 1,400 military facilities with high levels of the contaminant. One such facility is the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories where my university and faculty members in my department have been working in the broader cleanup effort. A low-end estimate of the additional cost to the Pentagon had the EPA risk assesment been finalized and new maximum contaminant levels (called MCLs) been set is $1.5 billion dollars. But that was according to an internal Air Force document; outside experts put the price tag significantly higher.
So, motives now quite clear, the Pentagon pushed hard against the Administration to shelve the draft document. By 2003 they were successful and the draft was set aside. It wasn’t just the efforts of the Pentagon that drove the change of heart at the EPA however, Bush-appointed officials including then research director Paul Gliman spoke out against the draft as well.
In arguing his case against the document, former deputy undersecretary of Defense Raymond F. Dubuois is quoted in the LA Times piece with this scary line of reasoning:
If you go down two or three levels in EPA, you have an awful lot of people that came onboard during the Clinton administration, to be perfectly blunt about it, and have a different approach than I do at Defense…It doesn’t mean I don’t respect their opinions or judgements, but I have an obligation where our [Defense department] scientists question their [EPA] scientists to bring it to the surface
That’s right, when rigidly controlled military scientists take the side of the Defense Department, that must mean that EPA scientists are wrong.
There is, of course, the chance that those folks down “two or three levels” at the EPA are really working to take down the system from the inside. So, to evaluate the science behind the 2001 draft assesment, EPA convened a science advisory board to evaluate the integrity of their research. The board included members of the public health, academic, and chemical industry communities. Their report, issued about a year after the release of the EPA’s draft risk assesment found the science behind the assesment sound and urged its quick implementation. It also suggested that the EPA provide stronger support for its calculations of health risks. Gilman, the Bush appointee, seized on this point and judged the draft to be seriously flawed.
But what are those health risks, you ask? The bottom line is that each year possibly thousands of birth defects and cancers can be traced to the effects of chronic TCE exposure. The evidence for these assertions are that rats fed high doses of the chemical develop kidney and liver cancer, and human exposed to acute doses suffer similar symptoms along with birth defects.
But, the rate of cancer increase varied greatly among the 80 reports cited by the EPA. Also, the use of acute doses does not necessarily mean that chronic low doses have the same effect. However, conducting cancer toxicology studies is notoriously difficult due to the ethical issues with subjecting people to potentially harmful agents.
Historically, the EPA (and the Defense Department) have acted very conservatively and listed chemicals as possible carcinogens based on rodent studies alone because of the very high moral and economic cost of not doing so. Today’s politically mediated regulatory climate is a bit different, and is voiced well by Paul Dugard, a toxicologist working for the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance Inc., a TCE-industry representative (also quoted in the Times piece)
If TCE is a human carcinogen, it isn’t much of one…People exposed at low levels shouldn’t be concerned…EPA’s philosophy is still one of being super conservative and that is being pushed back against.
By whom? The conservative adminstration that heads our nation seeks to liberalize regulation of very likely carcinogenic compounds? Since when has public safety been something that a few billion dollars can jeapordize? Of course that question is intentionally naive, but seriously there is no credible scientific opposition to the toxicology effects of TCE.
In response to that realization, the science of cancer toxicology is under attack (see my review of Tom Bethell’s vapid chapter on it in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science), particularly that conducted by the EPA. In fact, the EPA itself is subject to a very lucrative new form of attack on all of its science. In response to an adminstration practically shouting out for anyone who can be loosely called a scientist to come forward and challenge politically unpopular conclusions, according to Gilman “an entire consulting industry has sprung up in Washington to attack the EPA and sow seeds of doubt about its capabilities” reports the Times piece. Gilman himself, now head of Oak Ridge (another DOE lab), says “Inside the Beltway, it is an accepted fact that the science of EPA is not good.”
Well Mr. Gilman, outisde the Beltway, where the rest of us live, people are dying because of the ignorant and corrupt greed of our leaders. Just because they don’t like the science doesn’t mean it’s wrong. The threat that you and your cronies represent to our nation is one of decreased respect for science, declining public health, and increased corporate influence on sound government policy. The TCE case is just one more in a littany of abuses by the Adminstration. Let’s just hope that people awaken to what’s going on before many thousands more suffer needlessly.
