When the EPA issued its first health risk assessment in 1976, it ran four pages and it was based in large part on studies that counted "bumps and lumps" on animals subjected to possible carcinogens. By contrast, EPA scientists now must show not only that a substance causes tumors, but the internal biological processes that are responsible. And the work is subject to greater scrutiny.
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How Environmentalists Lost the Battle Over TCE
THE NATION
First of two parts
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday March 31, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 71 words Type of Material: Correction
Risks of solvent: Due to an editing error, an article in Wednesday's Section A about the regulation and dangers of the industrial solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, quoted Alex A. Beehler, the Pentagon's top environmental official, as saying: "We are all forgetting the facts on the table. Meanwhile, we have done everything we can to curtail use of TCE." Beehler actually said, "We are all for getting the facts on the table."
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"It is true that there is more interagency review now of our work," Preuss said. "We have a couple steps where we send our assessments to the White House and they distribute them to other agencies. Each year, additional steps are taken."
All of the EPA's travails -- the toughened scientific demands, the loss of authority, the interagency battles -- have clearly taken a heavy toll and diminished the agency's stature.
"Inside the Beltway, it is an accepted fact that the science of EPA is not good," said Gilman, now director of the Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies in Tennessee, which conducts broad research on energy, the environment and other areas of science. Gilman said an entire consulting industry has sprung up in Washington to attack the EPA and sow seeds of doubt about its capabilities.
The delays in assessing TCE have also left many contaminated communities with few answers.
"My constituents who live at a recently named Superfund site ... are forced to live everyday with contaminated groundwater, soil and air and can't afford to wait the years it would take for the results of your outsourced re-review," Rep. Sue W. Kelly (R-N.Y.) told EPA officials at a hearing last year.
"I have talked to a lot of sick people," said Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.), whose district includes hundreds of homes contaminated by TCE vapors, traced to an IBM Corp. factory. IBM has paid for air filtration systems for 400 homes, but has balked at more funding based on uncertainty over the health risk. "These people are deeply frustrated and increasingly angry," Hinchey said.
Meanwhile, many environmentalists are discouraged by what they view as a virtual emasculation of the EPA in this battle.
"The general public has no idea this is happening," said Erik Olson, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The Defense Department has succeeded in undermining the basic scientific process at EPA. The DoD is the biggest polluter in the United States and they have made major investments to undercut the EPA."
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