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From: OMB Watch
A federal agency responsible for studying and responding to adverse health effects caused by toxic waste is reticent to acknowledge patterns of illness near contaminated sites, according to a report released by the House Science Committee subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) often paints a rosy picture of the health in communities near toxic waste sites, according to the report. In the process, scientific integrity has been sacrificed. An ATSDR staffer told the subcommittee, “It seems like the goal is to disprove the communities’ concerns rather than actually trying to prove exposures.”
ATSDR is a key agency in implementing Superfund, the national toxic waste clean-up program. While EPA handles environmental assessment and remediation, ATSDR works on the health side, assessing community health and studying the links between toxic exposure and illness.
The report outlines several examples in which ATSDR has failed to serve in the best interest of communities at risk. In most cases, ATSDR simply doesn’t acknowledge the severity of the situation. From the subcommittee’s report:
[T]ime and time again ATSDR appears to avoid clearly and directly confronting the most obvious toxic culprits that harm the health of local communities throughout the nation. Instead, they deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate concerns and health considerations of local communities and well respected scientists and medical professionals.
For example, after asbestos contaminate debris began washing up on an Illinois beach, the Illinois Department of Public Health and ATSDR released a report in 2000 that concluded “no apparent public health hazard exists.” The debris continued to wash up for years, and when ATSDR revisited the issue (in 2007) it once again concluded the beaches were safe from asbestos, according to the subcommittee’s report.
But tests from 2006 showed that asbestos had made its way into the sand on the beach, leading a local EPA office to object to a draft version of ATSDR’s findings, according to the subcommittee’s report. However, the final version went unchanged.
The subcommittee released the report in advance of an oversight hearing scheduled for Thursday at 10am. Current ATSDR head Dr. Howard Frumkin, of whom the report is quite critical, is scheduled to testify.
Image by Flickr user cpkatie, used under a Creative Commons license.
Update: Opening statements and witness testimony from Thursday's hearing are now available on the hearing webpage.
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From: TreeHugger.com
by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York on 03.11.09
Photo via All Around the House
The Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has a number of responsibilities. One of which is to determine whether or not it's safe for people to live near toxic dump sites. And one of which is not to "deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate health concerns," as a recent report has charged the agency with frequently doing. Through poor analysis, failure to act, and possibly a deliberate intent to obscure findings, the ATSDR has left many people exposed to toxic substances, and at great health risk.
Imagine living near a Superfund site, or a something that looks and smells suspiciously like a toxic waste dump. It stinks, and some of your neighbors seem to have trouble breathing--you're worried you might be exposed to toxic materials. The ATSDR is the agency you were supposed to contact. So you did. And the agency would give leave you with findings "that are challenged by outside scientists or are ambiguous about whether people living near industrial pollution or toxic dumps or breathe foul-smelling air have reason to worry." Then, you get mad. And rightfully so.
According to the new report on the ATSDR, which was obtained by the Associated Press:
"Time and time again ATSDR appears to avoid clearly and directly confronting the most obvious toxic culprits that harm the health of local communities throughout the nation," said the report from the House Science and Technology investigations and oversight subcommittee.
And how might it do that? Well, the AP article chronicles some pretty mind boggling incidents that include: the agency publicly rebuking a doctor who revealed that an area once home to a toxic waste company was causing a high incidence of a blood cancer in people exposed to it, "overlooking" previous studies that showed a history of cancer and birth defects in a contaminated neighborhood (and declaring it safe), and ignoring the complaints and health ailments of residents near an Ohio waste plant before using an insufficient sampling to declare the area non-toxic.
The list goes on—that was just a sort of greatest hits reel from yet another Bush administration environmental group's many acts of startling incompetence.
But now, with criticism getting heaped on the ATSDR from the new report, outraged communities, and some of the agency's own scientists, perhaps it'll finally have to fess up for its ignorance and really, reckless endangerment of human welfare.
More on Toxic Sites:
How Toxic is Your City?
Superfund365: Where Toxic Waste Meets Art
The Toxic Trailer Legacy
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