INSIDE WASHINGTON: Probe finds health risks missed (ATSDR)

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INSIDE WASHINGTON: Probe finds health risks missed

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By RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press Writer Rita Beamish, Associated Press

Writer – Wed Mar 11, 6:16 am ET

Featured Topics:

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The federal agency charged with protecting the public near toxic pollution

sites often obscures or overlooks potential health hazards, uses inadequate

analysis and fails to zero in on toxic culprits, congressional investigators

and scientists say.

A House investigative report says officials from the Agency for Toxic

Substances and Disease Registry " deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore

legitimate health concerns. "

Local communities have voiced frustration and confusion at findings by the

agency 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.

" 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.

The health agency declined to comment, saying its director, Frumkin,

would address the criticisms when he appears at a hearing before the House

science panel Thursday.

By law the health agency, a branch of the Health and Human Services

Department, assesses health hazards at polluted sites designated under the

Superfund

cleanup law, and those of concern to local communities. It frequently faces

residents who expect environmental answers for a host of illnesses, which

science can't always provide.

But the agency's critics also include some of its own scientists, including

toxicologist De , who told Congress last year that his bosses

minimized the health risk of formaldehyde in trailers provided for survivors

of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

Congressional investigators reviewed ATSDR health studies and interviewed

scientists and community activists across the country for the House report,

which was obtained by The Associated Press.

It accuses Frumkin of letting scientific integrity lag behind political

expediency and uncomplicated conclusions. Subcommittee Chairman Brad ,

D-N.C., said the problems " threaten the health and safety of the American

public.

Fixing ATSDR requires a cultural shift of the agency. "

Ozonoff, professor of environmental health at Boston University's

School of Public Health, said ATSDR often produces good work, but added: " They

don't always use the latest science and the most up to date information. They

don't have enough resources and people and breadth of skills and talent. They

don't have the trust of communities. "

Ozonoff took issue with aspects of a new draft health assessment for a

contaminated neighborhood in Elkhart, Ind., that addressed elevated levels of

the

degreasing solvent trichloroethylene. The agency appeared to overlook

previous studies showing cancer and birth defects can show up at lower exposure

levels than the draft report indicated, thus playing down the potential risk in

Elkhart, he said.

Among issues raised by other scientists:

• Hoffman, a professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine

in New York, uncovered a high incidence of a blood cancer in northeast

Pennsylvania while working with the health agency's scientists. The research

identified an elevated incidence of polycythemia vera, including four cases on

a

mile-long stretch of road near a former toxic waste company.

Although an abstract by Hoffman and his colleagues said there was significant

evidence linking the cancer to environmental causes, agency officials

publicly rejected the idea and unsuccessfully pressured Hoffman in 2007 to

withdraw

from a conference where he was to present the findings.

" I thought they were trying to always increase the hurdles so they could

disprove what to me was basically pretty obvious, " Hoffman said in a telephone

interview with The Associated Press. Ultimately, after additional analysis,

ATSDR agreed that the elevated cases were statistically significant and its

scientists joined Hoffman in publishing the findings last month. The agency is

now considering additional studies.

• Henry Cole, an environmental consultant and former senior scientist with

the Environmental Protection Agency, said a four-year study into residents'

complaints of foul odors and health ailments near an Ohio waste plant,

Perma-fix of Dayton, used insufficient sampling to conclude in December that

none of

the 100 compounds exceeded safe levels.

Nor did it incorporate lawsuit and regulatory information that could have

broadened the result beyond ATSDR's sole recommendation that Perma-fix should

check for an odor source and mitigate it if possible. That left residents

frustrated. " They come in with a very narrow focus and oftentimes they don't

come

up with anything " to help the community, Cole said in another interview.

• Randall Parrish, a researcher at the University of Leicester, England,

found depleted uranium exposure in 20 percent of residents he tested in Colonie,

N.Y., where a company once produced uranium weapons for the military. He

recommended that ATSDR revisit the area because its earlier health study,

without benefit of his test method, assumed it couldn't detect past exposure or

tie

it to illness years after the plant closed.

ATSDR replied that the amount in people's bodies would be so small it

wouldn't cause a health hazard, so no further work was warranted, the

subcommittee

report said.

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On the Net:

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry:

_http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/_

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