Send Sharon/ letter to Congressmen

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This letter from Sharon and does an excellent job of telling the story

about the widespread efforts to hide the dangers of toxic mold. Please take a

few minutes and send this letter to your U.S. Senators and Representatives. You

can copy and paste it right into their email forms.

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Dear Congressman,

The following letter was hand-delivered to the Federal Committee on Oversight

and Government Reform last Fall. I thought you would find it interesting.

September 27, 2007

The Hon. Henry A. Waxman

Chair, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

U.S. House of Representatives

2157 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Waxman:

We are writing to call your attention to the widespread and ongoing promulgation

of medical misinformation regarding the seriousness of mold induced illnesses.

The misinformation is being promoted by private, yet federally funded medical

associations and the government agencies with whom they partner. The Department

of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

NIOSH, ASTDR and OSHA have outsourced the study of mold induced illnesses to

those private medical associations with close ties to insurance and other

stakeholder industries. As a result, the interests of industry have taken

precedence over the lives and safety of the American public.

A recent study by Berkeley Labs and the EPA confirms the large public health and

economic impact of indoor dampness and mold. They estimate that the number of

asthma cases alone that are attributable to mold exposure in homes is 4.6

million people at an annual cost of $3.5 billion. These numbers do not reflect

even more serious non-respiratory illness brought on by the toxins produced by

molds. Nor do the numbers reflect the systemic infections that are affecting

countless school children, office workers, residents and those already

susceptible and hospitalized for other illnesses. Strong evidence indicates that

since the early 2000's it has been governmental policy to ignore the severity of

these illnesses while simultaneously redesigning the buildings and construction

materials responsible for the increase in serious mold induced illnesses.

At the Surgeon General's Workshop on Indoor Air Quality, January 2005, it was

determined the cycle to correct the sick buildings would take approximately 20

years. It was also determined that the focus would be on curing the sick

buildings and not the sick people. Through government agencies and government

funding outsourced to conflicted medical associations, physicians are being

provided misinformation downplaying the severity of illness while the building

clean up runs its cycle. The public is not being warned of the dangers.

In January of 2007, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article that was

headlined: " Court of Opinion: Amid Suits Over Mold, Experts Wear Two Hats. " The

result of a six-month investigation, the article outlined how the private

medical association, American College of Occupational and Environmental

Medicine, (ACOEM) played a significant role in denying the severity of mold

induced illnesses. As occupational physicians, some ACOEM members are employed

by large corporations to evaluate injured workers on behalf of insurers and

employers. Others are employed by risk management corporations. The inherent

conflict of interest - an organization charged with setting national protocol to

improve occupational and environmental health care while many of their members

work for employers who may have a financial stake in limiting care and denying

the causation of environmental illness - was detailed by in The Wall Street

Journal article.

In 2002, a physician and a PhD who frequently testify in mold lawsuits as expert

witnesses for the defense were specifically brought into ACOEM to author the

organization's position statement on mold. The third author brought in,

Hardin, PhD, had recently retired as Deputy Director of NIOSH, Assistant Surgeon

General. He was starting a second career representing employers and insurers in

mold litigation. None were prior members of ACOEM nor did they have expertise in

mycotoxin research. Dr. Hardin's membership was provided gratis.

Contrary to symptoms continually being reported across the United States, the

resulting position statement by the three authors ignores the evidence of

symptoms indicative of poisoning (toxicity) to conclude it is " highly unlikely

at best even in the most vulnerable of subpopulations " that people experience

these symptoms from exposure to microbial contaminants found within water

damaged buildings. To form this conclusion, the authors made their own

calculations from second-hand data based on a single rodent study. The

calculations and their conclusion have never been duplicated. No peer-reviewed

papers, including those referenced in the ACOEM mold statement, share their

conclusion. The Wall Street Journal quoted Dr. Harriet Ammann, Senior

Toxicologist for the Washington State Department of Health as saying " They [the

ACOEM authors] took hypothetical exposure and hypothetical toxicity and jumped

to the conclusion there is nothing there. "

With the imprimatur of ACOEM, this unsupported dismissal of mold-induced illness

has been used extensively and authoritatively in mold litigation throughout the

nation to deny financial liability for insurers, employers and others when

illness brought on by exposures to moldy buildings occur. It has also caused the

physicians of America to wrongfully perceive that mold does not cause serious

illness.

In 2003, a corporation of which two ACOEM mold authors are principals, was then

paid $40,000 by the conservative think-tank, Manhattan Institute, to convert the

position statement into what they refer to as a " lay translation " . The edited

version of the ACOEM Mold Statement was then shared through the U.S. Chamber of

Commerce with stakeholder industries - real estate, mortgage, building and

insurance. The bottom line of the " lay translation " : " Thus the notion that

'toxic mold' is an insidious secret 'killer' as so many media reports and trial

lawyers would claim is 'Junk Science' unsupported by actual scientific study. "

Merely one example of the influence the ACOEM mold statement has had on

government understanding of mold induced illnesses is the 2006 handbook of the

Occupational Health & Safety Administration: " Preventing Mold-Related Problems

In The Indoor Workplace - A Guide For Building Owners, Managers and Occupants. "

The OSHA handbook ignores the findings of thousands of peer-reviewed papers,

including findings of the NIH Institute of Medicine, but cites the ACOEM mold

statement three times. It also cites an additional paper by principals of the

corporation that authored the ACOEM mold statement three times. Another

co-author of those papers is an ACOEM member and prolific defense witness in

mold litigation. (This ACOEM member was the subject of an NBC Dateline

investigation into claims denials by State Farm Insurance, titled The Paper

Chase.) The OSHA handbook reinforces the ACOEM line, saying: " Mycotoxins

[molds] have not been shown to cause health problems

for occupants at concentrations usually seen in residential or commercial

buildings. " Although much is yet to be understood about the mechanisms of

mold-induced illness, to promote the concept that is has been scientifically

established that toxins found within water damaged buildings do not cause health

problems is simply untrue, and echoes the position taken by many ACOEM members

when testifying as defense expert witnesses.

An illustration of how the misinformation has been dispersed to the medical

community with the assistance of government funding is the Association of

Occupational and Environmental Clinics (AOEC). AOEC is a nonprofit occupational

physician organization affiliated with ACOEM. The two associations' leadership

are virtually interchangeable. Some members hold key positions within the

National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) and Agency for Toxic Substances and

Disease Registry (ATDSR). According to its website, (http://www.aoec. org),

AOEC is a non-profit organization with several of its clinics focusing on

environmental illnesses. AOEC receives significant financial support through

multi-year cooperative agreements with the ATDSR and the National Institute for

Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Under these agreements, AOEC is charged

with developing curriculum materials for occupational and environmental health

education and providing continuing

education programs for primary care practitioners and others. The federal

funding is to be used to aid in identifying, reporting and preventing

occupational and environmental health hazards and to provide a means for

occupational/ environmental health clinics to share information that will better

enable them to diagnose and treat occupational/ environmental diseases. With

regard to mold induced illnesses, AOEC preaches the teachings of its sister

organization, ACOEM, when mis-educating the physicians of America.

ACOEM and AOEC have clearly misused government funding to promote false science

that harms Americans to the financial benefit of stakeholder industries. Through

the federally funded capacity to influence occupational health care, they have

allowed employers - corporations who are a source of income to the

organizations' members - to gain undue and improper influence over public and

private policy with regard to mold induced illnesses. In addition, AOEC controls

the funding for Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units (PEHSU) that are

located at various teaching hospitals and clinics across the nation. PEHSU has

been charged with advancing the understanding of environmental illness in

children. This means much control in advancing the understanding of

environmental illness for all US citizens has been placed in the hands of the

inherently conflicted medical practice of occupational medicine.

Given the organizational biases of ACOEM and AOEC, their close affiliations with

industry, their close affiliations with government agencies, the funding and

contracts outsourced from these government agencies; and most importantly, given

their influence over the practice of environmental medicine nationwide, it is

appropriate that Congress exercise oversight. We therefore request that as Chair

of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, you conduct an

investigation into the genesis, usage, proliferation and ramifications of the

ACOEM mold statement.

Thank you for your leadership in assuring that the scientific integrity of our

nation's health and environmental agencies remains uncompromised, and thank you

for your attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Sharon Noonan Kramer

Ms. Mulvey son

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