PANUPS: OMB Undermines Guidelines on Cancer Risk

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PANUPS: OMB Undermines Guidelines on Cancer Risk

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 11:09:53 -0700

 

 

 

 

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P A N U P S

Pesticide Action Network Updates Service

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OMB Undermines Guidelines on Cancer Risk

April 8, 2005

 

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revised

20-year old standards for assessing the risks of cancer from exposures to

environmental pollutants. The new guidelines acknowledge the mounting

evidence that children under 2 years of age are 10 times more likely than

adults to get cancer from certain chemicals. Unfortunately, the new

guidelines may never see the light of day, because the White House Office

of Management and Budget (OMB) has added language to the regulations

that will allow industry to block their implementation.

 

Cancer risk assessment guidelines provide a blueprint for agency

regulators to determine the risks of cancer in humans from exposure to a

certain chemical and to set allowable residues of pesticides or other

chemicals in food, air, water, waste and contaminated sites. When the

first

risk assessments were adopted in 1986, little was understood about the

vulnerability of different subpopulations to adverse health effects

from chemical exposure. The new guidelines seek to correct this, " EPA

notes that childhood may be a lifestage of greater susceptibility for a

number of reasons, such as rapid growth and development that occurs

prenatally and after birth, differences related to an immature metabolic

system, and differences in diet and behavior patterns that may increase

exposure. " EPA also designed the guidance to reflect new evidence as it

becomes known, " The supplemental guidance is separate from the Guidelines

so that it may be more easily updated as scientific understanding about

effects of early-life exposures evolve. "

 

The regulations, including the children's supplemental guidelines, were

issued by EPA in March 2003. In its review, the agency's Scientific

Advisory Board agreed with EPA's conclusion that early-life exposures to

chemical pollutants increase cancer risk and recommended the guidelines

be finalized as written. But that didn't happen.

 

Instead, the guidelines went to OMB for review, and sat there for two

years. Finally, OMB added language allowing the chemical industry or an

outside party to challenge the way the guidelines were applied for

chemical assessment in a process termed " expert elicitation. " OMB also

inserted the requirement that EPA assessments meet OMB standards for

implementation of the Data Quality Act, an obscure piece of legislation

written by an industry lobbyist and slipped into an appropriations

bill in

2000 with little debate. The Act, which consists of only two sentences,

requires OMB to ensure that all information disseminated by the federal

government is reliable. So far the Data Quality Act has been used

primarily by industry to forestall regulation.

 

The Washington Post analyzed 39 petitions filed during the first 20

months of the Data Quality Act and found that 32 were filed by regulated

industries, business or trade organizations or their lobbyists. Among

those was an American Chemistry Council petition that challenged data

used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission for a ban on the use of

wood treated with heavy metals and arsenic in playground equipment.

Another petition, filed for Syngenta, argued that atrazine should not be

restricted as an endocrine disruptor, despite hundreds of pages of

scientific evidence, because EPA had not yet established a " regulatory

endpoint " or official measurement for endocrine disruption.

 

Consumers, environmental groups and worker advocates argue that the

Data Quality Act is biased in favor of industry because it asks the

government to use only data that have achieved a level of certainty

rare in

statistical or epidemiological research. The end result of this high bar

is the discounting of scientific information that should trigger

regulation. The costs of ignoring new evidence can be steep.

Epidemiologist

Devra Davis has pointed out, " a goal for public health research is

predicting and thus preventing future harm. This purpose takes us out

of the

realm of pure knowledge and into an arena in which lives are at stake.

Our standards of proof must change accordingly. "

 

Children, the developing fetus and other sectors of the population that

have been increasingly identified by researchers as particularly

vulnerable to chemicals in the environment have waited a long time for

this

regulation. According to OMB, they may now have to wait even longer.

 

Sources: US EPA, " Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment " and

Supplemental Guidance on Risks From Early-Life Exposure; OMBWatch,

April 4,

2005, http://www.ombwatch.org New York Times, April 4, 2005; Washington

Post, August 14, 2004; Davis, Devra, When Smoke Ran Like Water, Tales

of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, 2002, Basic

Books, New York, NY.

Contact: PANNA.

 

 

 

PANUPS is a weekly email news service providing resource guides and

reporting on pesticide issues that don't always get coverage by the

mainstream media. It's produced by Pesticide Action Network North

America, a

non-profit and non-governmental organization working to advance

sustainable alternatives to pesticides worldwide.

 

You can join our efforts! We gladly accept donations for our work and

all contributions are tax deductible in the United States. Visit

http://www.panna.org/donate.

 

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