Lawmakers Probe EPA Conflicts

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Lawmakers Probe EPA Conflicts

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WASHINGTON (AP) —A House committee opened an investigation Monday into

potential conflicts of interest in scientific panels that advise the

Environmental

Protection Agency.

 

The House Energy and Commerce Committee cited the case of eight scientists

who were consultants or members of EPA science advisory panels assessing the

human health effects of toxic chemicals while getting research support from

the chemical industry on the same chemicals they were examining.

 

 

In two cases, EPA advisers were employed by companies that made or worked

with manufacturers of the chemicals being evaluated. the committee said.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the committee's chairman, said such conflicts

appear to be in stark contrast to EPA's decision last summer to remove a public

health scientist and expert in toxicology, from a panel examining the health

impacts of a flame retardant because of critical comments she made about the

chemical.

The American Chemistry Council, the industry trade group, had called for the

removal of Deborah Rice, a toxicologist from Maine, as chairman of an

independent EPA panel assessing the health risks from " deca " , a flame retardant

in

electronic equipment, after she urged the Maine state legislature to ban the

chemical.

" The routine use of chemical industry employees and representatives in EPA's

scientific review process, together with EPA's dismissal of Dr. Rice raises

serious questions with regard to EPA's conflict of interest rules and their

application, " said Dingell in a letter Monday to EPA Administrator Stephen

Johnson.

Rice, an employee of Maine's Department of Health and Human Services, was

never alleged to have any monetary interest associated with deca and her

dismissal " seems to argue that scientific expertise ... is a basis for

disqualification, " the letter continued.

" We will be reviewing the letter and we will respond appropriately, " said EPA

spokesman Timothy Lyons.

The letter, also signed by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the

committee's investigations subcommittee, demanded documents related to Rice's

ouster, as well as records related the appointment of scientists with chemical

industry ties.

Rice's removal, as chairman of the deca chemical review board " does not seem

sensible on its face " given the EPA's acceptance of scientists with ties to

the chemical industry and even to companies who make the chemicals being

reviewed, the congressmen wrote.

Among the appointments questioned:

_ An employee of Exxon Mobil Corp., who served on an expert panel assessing

the cancer-causing potential of ethylene oxide, a chemical also made by Exxon

Mobil.

_ A participant in a panel examining the risk to humans from a widely used

octane enhancer in gasoline, who was employed by an engineering company working

with makers of the chemical and major oil and chemical companies.

_ A scientist who served on a panel examining the health impacts of ethylene

oxide, a component in various industrial chemicals, who received research

support from Dow Agro, one of the chemicals' manufacturers.

The House committee questioned a case where a consultant to an EPA review

panel, promoted his research on a chemical while he also prepared the chemical

industry's public comments on the cancer-causing potential of the same

chemical. Also cited was a case where a scientist who, while a consultant to an

EPA

review panel, promoted his own industry-supported research arguing the

chemical was not a carcinogen.

In light of Rice's removal, Dingell and Stupak asked the EPA about the

appointment of a Harvard University epidemiologist to a recently convened panel

reviewing the possible cancer risk from acrylamide, an industrial chemical used

as a thickener but also found in some foods. They said that the

epidemiologist on a number of occasions has said the exposure to acrylamide

through food

does not appear to pose a cancer risk.

The examples cited by the House committee were included in a report last

month by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based advocacy group,

that said its investigation found that among seven external EPA review panels,

it found 17 reviewers with potential conflicts of interest.

 

 

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