Subject: #554: Toxic Deception, Part 2
=======================Electronic Edition========================
. .
. RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #554 .
. ---July 10, 1997--- .
. HEADLINES: .
. TOXIC DECEPTION--PART 2 .
. ========== .
. Environmental Research Foundation .
. P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 .
. Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@rachel.clark.net .
. ========== .
. Back issues available by E-mail; to get instructions, send .
. E-mail to INFO@rachel.clark.net with the single word HELP .
. in the message; back issues also available via ftp from .
. ftp.std.com/periodicals/rachel and from gopher.std.com .
. and from http://www.monitor.net/rachel/ats-new.html.tml9837&CAT=3DCorner&PG=3DUpda= .
. Subscribe: send E-mail to rachel-weekly-request@world.std.com .
. with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message. It's free. .
=================================================================
TOXIC DECEPTION--PART 2
TOXIC DECEPTION, the must-read book by investigative reporters
Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle, is subtitled, "How the chemical
industry manipulates science, bends the law, and endangers your
health." (Available from Carol Publishing Group in Secaucus,
N.J.: phone: (201) 866-0490; ISBN No. 1-55972-385-8; and see REHW
#553.)
The book delivers on the promise in its subtitle: it tells --and
documents --a chilling story of corporate manipulation of
science, government (at all levels), the media, and public
opinion. It paints a picture of the modern corporation out of
control. Here we will focus on only one aspect of corporate
power: the way science is used and abused so that corporations
can continue to sell dangerous and cancer-causing chemicals to
consumers who are kept clueless.
Chapter 3, "Science for Sale," documents the following techniques
used routinely by chemical corporations:
** Falsifying data.
** Subtly manipulating research results.
** Creating front groups with names like the American Crop
Protection Association (formerly called the National Agricultural
Chemicals Association) to conduct PR campaigns to convince the
public that dangerous chemicals are safe and that life would be
impossible without them.
** Co-opting academic researchers to control the research agenda
and get the desired research results.
** Attacking independent scientists.
These techniques have allowed the chemical manufacturers to keep
dangerous products on the market, set the fundamental direction
of scientific research, and define the terms of the scientific
and policy debates.
Here is some of the evidence:
Falsifying data. "The U.S. regulatory system for chemical
products is tailor-made for fraud," say Fagin and Lavelle. They
tell the story (among others) of Paul Wright, a research chemist
for Monsanto. In 1971, he quit Monsanto and went to work as the
chief rat toxicologist for Industrial Biotest (IBT), a laboratory
which at the time was conducting 35% to 40% of all animal tests
in the U.S. Wright then conducted a series of apparently
fraudulent studies of the toxicity of Monsanto products.
Eighteen months later, Monsanto hired him back with a new title,
manager of toxicology. On Monsanto's behalf Wright then approved
the very studies he had conducted on Monsanto products. When he
was testing Monsanto's herbicide called Machete, Wright added
extra lab mice to skew the results --"a bit of trickery that was
left out of the final report to EPA [U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency]," according to Fagin and Lavelle. In two
studies of monosodium cyanurate, an ingredient in a Monsanto
swimming-pool chlorinator, Wright replaced raw data with
after-the-fact invented records, concealed animal deaths, and
filed reports describing procedures and observations that never
happened. Wright got caught because an alert FDA scientist
smelled something fishy; a federal investigation ensued.
According to Fagin and Lavelle, "In all three cases, the [team of
federal] investigators wrote in an internal memo, there was
evidence that Monsanto executives knew that the studies were
faked but sent them to the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug
Administration] and the EPA anyway." If true, this would be a
serious federal crime. The Monsanto executives were never
prosecuted and a company spokesperson claims this is evidence of
Monsanto's innocence.
Manipulating scientific research results. Fagin and Lavelle
document that this is "part of the everyday strategy of chemical
companies enmeshed in regulatory battles." They describe a
typical case: formaldehyde. In 1980, the Chemical Industry
Institute of Toxicology (CIIT) released a study showing that rats
that inhaled formaldehyde got cancer. Formaldehyde is a common
glue in wood products such as plywood and particle board. Kip
Howlett, then director of safety and environmental affairs for
Georgia-Pacific (a giant wood products manufacturer) laid out a
strategy for countering the bad news:
** Claim that rats aren't the right animal to study because they
breathe through their noses, never through their mouths;
** Claim that the exposure levels were unrealistically high (even
if they were scientifically too low);
** Pay for new studies that will produce different results;
** Hire academic researchers to give "independent" testimonials
to the safety of formaldehyde and to put a positive spin on any
studies that shows cancer in rats;
** Attack any scientist who says formaldehyde is dangerous;
** Move aggressively to fund universities and other research
institutions to steer research in directions that play down
formaldehyde's dangers.
This is a fairly typical corporate strategy for using "science"
to achieve corporate goals. Together, these tactics are often
called "sound science" by corporate polluters and anything else
is often called "junk science." Georgia-Pacific needed to counter
the bad news about formaldehyde and Kip Howlett laid out a game
plan that would be followed by all formaldehyde manufacturers for
years to come. It worked. Howlett then graduated to a much more
important position: he now heads the Chlorine Chemistry Council
where he oversees teams who manipulate science for the purpose of
keeping numerous dangerous chlorine compounds on the market.
The keystone of the formaldehyde strategy was to get new data
that cast doubt on the CIIT study. Once there is doubt, the
regulatory process slows to a crawl or stops entirely. And
scientific doubt is relatively easy to create. In this case, the
Formaldehyde Institute hired a small laboratory to conduct a new
rat inhalation study. They limited the concentration of
formaldehyde to 3 parts per million (ppm) whereas the CIIT study
had used 15 ppm. EPA scientists said they believed even 15 ppm
was too low, but the Formaldehyde Institute used 3 ppm and got
what it wanted. In 1980, long before the 3 ppm study was
completed, the Institute issued a press release saying, "A new
study indicates there should be no chronic health effect from
exposure to the level of formaldehyde normally encountered in the
home." When the study was published three years later, it showed
that, even at 3 ppm, rats suffered from "severe sinus problems"
and had early signs of cancer in their cells. Furthermore, they
had decreased body and liver weights --sure signs of ill effects.
The Formaldehyde Institute did not issue a press release about
these unwanted findings.
The Formaldehyde Institute then entered into a contract with the
National Cancer Institute (NCI) to conduct a joint study of
26,000 workers exposed to formaldehyde. The study eventually
showed a 30% increase in lung cancer deaths among workers exposed
to formaldehyde, but the Institute put its own "spin" on the
results and got the NCI to go along: the excess cancers may have
been caused by something besides formaldehyde, the NCI concluded.
(The study design made it impossible to rule out other causes.)
Formaldehyde was thus seemingly exonerated.
What was never revealed (until TOXIC DECEPTION told the story)
was that the contract between the Formaldehyde Institute and NCI
contained the following clauses:
** The Formaldehyde Institute, not NCI, would select which
workers that would be studied;
** NCI researchers were denied access to the raw data: job
histories, death certificates, information about plants,
processes or exposures --in sum, the basic data needed to conduct
and evaluate such a study.
Thus NCI had no way to judge the accuracy or the reliability of
the data being handed them by the Institute, and no way to check
what assumptions and judgments had been made in gathering the
data.
Despite this, NCI helped the Institute explain away the 30%
cancer increase that the study revealed. It was a clear
demonstration of the raw power of the corporation over a federal
agency's science.
Corporations assert their influence over academia as well. In
the field of weed science, for example, there are few independent
scientists. The federal government has 75 weed scientists on
staff and the nation's universities have 180. The chemical
corporations have 1400. Furthermore, most of the university
scientists are not independent researchers. Rather than seeking
less-dangerous alternatives, the vast majority conduct studies
that promote the continued use of dangerous chemicals. The
chemical companies give at least a billion dollars to
universities and foundations for agricultural research. "If you
don't have any research [funding] other than what's coming from
the ag chem companies," says Alex G. Ogg, Jr., former president
of the Weed Science Society, "you're going to be doing research
on agricultural chemicals. That's the hard, cold, fact."
If academic researchers become too independent, they are
attacked. Peter Breysse, a professor of environmental health at
the University of Washington gathered evidence that people were
being harmed by exposure to formalde-hyde in mobile homes and
elsewhere. The Formaldehyde Institute hired a consultant to
visit Breysse's superiors at the University to criticize and
discredit his work.
Criticizing scientific studies is a standard, even a knee-jerk,
corporate tactic. Often any criticism --no matter how
far-fetched --serves industry's purpose of deflecting attention
away from the real problem.
Fagin and Lavelle describe a study that carefully evaluated
exposure to formaldehyde through inhalation, taking into account
smoking and exposure through drinking water. Nevertheless, in
scientific conferences, corporate scientists attacked the study
for failing to take into account smoking and exposure through
drinking water.
It is easy to criticize a scientific study, whether the
criticisms have any basis or not. The effect on government
regulators is predictable: no one wants to base a regulation
(which will almost certainly be challenged in court) upon
scientific studies that have been criticized. So criticism
--whether valid or not --helps derail the regulatory process.
Most importantly, these corporate tactics for manipulating the
regulatory process have succeeded in tying up the chemical
industry's only nationally-visible adversaries --the mainstream
environmental movement. The movement is caught up in endless
unsuccessful attempts to regulate corporate behavior around the
edges, never tackling the central issue, which is the
illegitimacy of corporate power.
Grass-roots environmentalists, on the other hand, are usually
engaged at the local level in a power struggle with one
corporation or another, directly challenging the corporation's
right to poison the local environment. THIS IS THE KEY ISSUE,
but eventually it will need to be moved from the local level to
larger arenas. When we do that, we will find the larger arenas
already occupied by the mainstream environmental movement which
seems never to ask fundamental questions. They never ask, "By
what authority do corporations spread their poisons into the
environment?" and, "What will it take for the American people to
reassert the right they used to take for granted, the right to
DEFINE corporations, not merely try to regulate them?" After
more than 100 years of regulation, we now know without doubt
that it does not work and cannot work. Yet the mainstream
environmental movement seems unable to think of other, more
fundamental, approaches.
No wonder the environment is continuing to deteriorate.
--Peter Montague
(National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)
===============
[1] Dan Fagin, Marianne Lavelle, and the Center for Public
Integrity, TOXIC DECEPTION (Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing
Group, 1996).
Descriptor terms: Descriptor terms: chemical industry;
regulation; environmental movement; formaldehyde; toxic
deception; cancer; carcinogens; monsanto; dupont; corporations;
formaldehyde institute; dan fagin; marianne lavelle;
georgia-pacific; kip howlett; junk science; corporations;
chlorine chemistry council; mci; national cancer institute; peter
brysse;
################################################################
NOTICE
Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic
version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge
even though it costs our organization considerable time and money
to produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service
free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution
(anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send
your tax-deductible contribution to: Environmental Research
Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036. Please do
not send credit card information via E-mail. For further
information about making tax-deductible contributions to E.R.F.
by credit card please phone us toll free at 1-888-2RACHEL.
--Peter Montague, Editor
################################################################