USA - An Attack on EPA’s Policy Process Fails Peer Review
Bill Hirzy says:
RE: The paragraph starting..”All of which is not to discount the possibility that a real science scandal could emerge under the Obama administration.” I’m a charter member of the EPA HQ professionals union, which we organized, basically, around scientific integrity in the early 1980’s. (I retired - as Senior Scientist, Risk Assessment Division, OPPT-last September and now teach at American University)Since 1986 the union has taken exception to EPA’s unscientific approach to dealing with the toxicity of fluoride in order to protect the USPHS program of national water fluoridation. In 2006 the National Research Council Committee on Fluoride Toxicity, convened under an EPA contract with the National Academy,reported to EPA that its drinking water standards for fluoride wer “not protective of public health,” (which is what the union has been saying since 1986)and recommended that EPA conduct a new risk assessment for a new set of standards. When I last spoke with the Division Director responsible for that risk assessment he told me EPA was waiting for a paper, promised three years ago by its principal first author, that would counter an epidemiology study done under that very author’s direction at Harvard. That study shows a five-fold increased risk of osteosarcoma for pre-adolescent boys who drink “optimally fluoridated” water. The study was hidden from the NRC Committee by that author, but eventaully came to light and has been published in the peer-reviewed literature.
EPA is clearly hoping to avoid being the agency of the death of USPHS’s hoary sacred cow, water fluoridation, by having to set a Maximum Contaminant Level Goal for fluoride of zero, under its policy of setting such MCLG’s for all known carcinogens.
So, be on the lookout for the Jackson/Obama/Browner EPA to fiddle with the science on this issue. BTW - I am WAY left of all three of those folks - so don’t count me or the union as being in league with the like of James Inhofe et al.
RE: The paragraph starting..”All of which is not to discount the possibility that a real science scandal could emerge under the Obama administration.” I’m a charter member of the EPA HQ professionals union, which we organized, basically, around scientific integrity in the early 1980’s. (I retired - as Senior Scientist, Risk Assessment Division, OPPT-last September and now teach at American University)Since 1986 the union has taken exception to EPA’s unscientific approach to dealing with the toxicity of fluoride in order to protect the USPHS program of national water fluoridation. In 2006 the National Research Council Committee on Fluoride Toxicity, convened under an EPA contract with the National Academy,reported to EPA that its drinking water standards for fluoride wer “not protective of public health,” (which is what the union has been saying since 1986)and recommended that EPA conduct a new risk assessment for a new set of standards. When I last spoke with the Division Director responsible for that risk assessment he told me EPA was waiting for a paper, promised three years ago by its principal first author, that would counter an epidemiology study done under that very author’s direction at Harvard. That study shows a five-fold increased risk of osteosarcoma for pre-adolescent boys who drink “optimally fluoridated” water. The study was hidden from the NRC Committee by that author, but eventaully came to light and has been published in the peer-reviewed literature.
EPA is clearly hoping to avoid being the agency of the death of USPHS’s hoary sacred cow, water fluoridation, by having to set a Maximum Contaminant Level Goal for fluoride of zero, under its policy of setting such MCLG’s for all known carcinogens.
So, be on the lookout for the Jackson/Obama/Browner EPA to fiddle with the science on this issue. BTW - I am WAY left of all three of those folks - so don’t count me or the union as being in league with the like of James Inhofe et al.
posted by Bill at
9:49 AM
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