In the waning days of the Bush Administration (stop me if you’ve heard this one), all stops are being pulled to push through sundry rules and regulation changes, stuff that…
In the waning days of the Bush Administration (stop me if you’ve heard this one), all stops are being pulled to push through sundry rules and regulation changes, stuff that Bush has wanted for a long time, but for whatever reason (like, maybe, it would hurt the GOP further in elections) didn’t get around to.
Take regulation of perchlorates …
Critics accuse the EPA of ignoring expert advice and basing their decision on an abstract model of perchlorate exposure, rather than existing human data.
“We know that breast milk is widely contaminated with perchlorate, and we know that young children are especially vulnerable. We have really good human data. So why are they putting a model front-and-center?” said Anila Jacobs at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. “And they used a model that hasn’t yet gone through the peer-review process.”
Silly! It’s because the model gives the result they wanted!
Perchlorate [is] a chemical found mostly in jet rocket fuel and detected in 35 states and 153 water public water systems. It is known to lower thyroid hormone levels in women; it poses a particular threat to pregnant women and breast-feeding children, whose long-term neurological development can be stunted by youthful hormone imbalances.
As many as 40 million Americans may now be exposed to unsafe levels of perchlorate, and the EPA’s own analysis puts the number at 16 million. The most comprehensive human exposure study, which measured unexpectedly high perchlorate levels and correlated them with thyroid hormone drops, was concluded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2007.
Environmental health advocates saw the study as supporting tightened restrictions on perchlorate levels in drinking water — something the EPA had been loath to do under the Bush administration. The study was not considered in the anticipated ruling, which could effectively end federal monitoring of perchlorate in drinking water.
“If you used the human studies from the CDC, then you would be forced to regulate it, because we know there are health effects at current levels of exposure,” said Jacobs.
And, there, you see? Those studies say the things they don’t want them to say, so they have to be ignored.
The EPA declined to comment on why they used a model rather than the CDC’s data in deciding that regulating perchlorate would not provide “a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public water systems.”
In a November letter to EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, the EPA’s own Science Advisory Board questioned the model. “Its soundness will not be publicly vetted,” they wrote. Only one of two peer reviews invited by the agency has been received, and that was announced only today on the EPA’s website.
“The Science Advisory Board believes that more time is needed for the decision process and for scientific input,” said Joan Rose, a Michigan State University water researcher and chair of the Board’s Drinking Water Committee.
Even Michael Dourson, a researcher at the nonprofit Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment project who accepts the EPA’s model, doesn’t understand why the EPA favored it over human studies.
“The data is on pregnant women and babies, and these studies are quite powerful,” he said. “If they could spend more time to make their decision, I’d recommend looking at it.”
But they can’t spend more time, because at the end of January a new adminstration comes in and will stop them from doing it.
And, beyond that, it’s not a quick thing to reverse. See, regulatory decisions take time (when done by the rules), and reversing regulatory decisions isn’t a trivial process, and will doubtless be fought by every foot-dragging legal action the industry can think of. Ditto for a legislative approach.
Gosh, remember when all people had to complain about in an existing administration was stealing typewriter keys?
