The White House’s White-Out Problem
As we've recently heard, the adminstration frequently alters scientific reports whenever facts and reality don't conform to its agenda. Think Progress has compiled a lengthy list of such acts, from climate change to hog farming.
posted by Management at 7:48 PM
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The Bush administration has gotten into the nasty habit of doctoring its reports whenever the facts don’t match its preconceived agenda. Here are some instances of the White House’s magic pen at work:
Cattle Grazing: “The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing relaxed grazing limits on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study…conclusions that the proposed rules might adversely affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised and replaced with language justifying less-stringent regulations favored by cattle ranchers.”
Hog Farming: Nationally respected Agriculture Department microbiologist Dr. Zahn discovered that hog farms were emitting drug-resistant airborne bacteria that “if breathed by humans, would make them harder to treat when ill. Zahn presented his findings at a scientific conference in 2000, but the Bush administration stopped him from publishing his data 11 times between September 2001 and April 2002, he said. When Danish researchers sought to learn more about his work, Zahn wasn’t allowed to share his techniques.”
Climate Change: “A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents…[The] official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.”
Air Quality at Ground Zero: “In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available. That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency’s news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.”
Toxicology of Mercury: “The White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) made changes to a report from the National Academy of Sciences on the toxicology of mercury, a powerful neurotoxin that is especially dangerous to pregnant women and young children…White House staff made editorial interventions in the report, which was commissioned by Congress to establish the science on the risks associated with mercury. The White House’s alterations downplayed the risks of mercury, replaced specific enumerations of mercury-related harms with bland, general references, and introduced additional emphasis on uncertainty.”
Effectiveness of Condoms: “The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead.”
Effects of Oil Drilling on the Arctic Refuge: “Interior Secretary Gale Norton substantially altered biological findings from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concerning effects of oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before she transmitted them to Congress, according to documents released October 19 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.” In one instance, Norton’s defense was that she “simply made an error in her testimony – saying ‘outside’ when she meant to say ‘inside.’”
Abortion: “The removal from a National Cancer Institute website of a scientific analysis concluding that abortions do not increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer. That move, in November 2002, contradicted the broad medical consensus, and members of Congress protested the change. In response, the NCI updated its website to include the conclusion of a panel of experts that induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.”
HIV/AIDS: “During the latter half of 2002, the Administration began removing scientific information, relating to the spread of HIV, from government websites, including those of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Much of the information that was removed contracted [sic] claims made by the administration’s abstinence-only agenda.”
Cancer: Earlier this year, “EPA’s guidelines acknowledge[d], for the first time, that children under 2 years of age are 10 times more likely to get cancer from certain chemicals than adults who are similarly exposed. But the White House Office of Management and Budget undermined that acknowledgment by inserting language in the guidelines that make it easy for industry to block EPA from following them when assessing cancer-causing chemicals.”
Stem Cell Research: “[The] Bush administration dismissed Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a leading cell biologist, and Dr. William May, a prominent medical ethicist, from the President’s Council on Bioethics…[Blackburn] was removed from the panel soon after she objected to a Council report on stem cell research. In an essay in the April 1, 2004, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Blackburn recounted how the dissenting opinion she submitted, which she believes reflects the scientific consensus in America, was not included in the council’s reports even though she had been told the reports would represent the views of all the council’s members.”
Ground-Water: Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company Halliburton “pioneered” an oil-drilling technique that “can contaminate drinking water supplies with carcinogens and is therefore required by law to be regulated by the EPA.” Halliburton has spent years trying to get the federal government to exempt the technique from environmental regulations.” A senior Environmental Protection Agency recently revealed that “the EPA [initially concluded] that the technique can be dangerous to public health, but then [deleted] the conclusion after Cheney’s office demanded it.” Furthermore, six of the seven EPA panel members who decided that the technique was “safe” had all come from the energy industry.
Saturday, June 18, 2005, 12:00 A.M. Pacific
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Administration excised scientists' warnings in grazing report
By Julie Cart
Los Angeles Times
The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing relaxed grazing limits on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study.
A government biologist and a hydrologist, who both retired this year from the Bureau of Land Management, said their conclusions that the proposed rules might adversely affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised and replaced with language justifying less-stringent regulations favored by cattle ranchers.
A BLM official acknowledged changes were made in the analysis but said they were part of a standard editing and review process and were based on "good science."
Critics often complain that the Bush administration has made a practice of distorting scientific studies to weaken regulations to serve its political objectives. Philip Cooney, a White House official who previously worked as an oil-industry lobbyist, resigned last week amid accusation that he repeatedly edited government climate reports in a way that downplayed links between greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming.
Grazing regulations, which affect 160 million acres of public land in 11 Western states, set the conditions under which ranchers may use that land, and guide government managers in determining how many cattle may graze, where, and for how long without harming resources.
The original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife, but that phrase was removed. The BLM now concludes that the grazing regulations are "beneficial to animals."
Eliminated from the final draft was another conclusion that read: "The Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general."
Also removed was language saying how the rules changes could affect endangered species adversely.
"This is a whitewash; they took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees," said Erick Campbell, a former BLM state biologist in Nevada and a 30-year BLM employee who retired this year. Campbell wrote sections of the report pertaining to impacts on wildlife and threatened and endangered species. "They rewrote everything. It's a crime," he said.
Former BLM hydrologist Bill Brookes, who assessed the rules' impact on water resources, said in the original draft that the proposed rule change is "an abrogation of (BLM's) responsibility under the Clean Water Act."
"Everything I wrote was totally rewritten and watered down," Brookes said Thursday. "Everything in the report that was purported to be negative was watered down. Instead of saying, in the long term, this will create problems, it now says, in the long term, grazing is the best thing since sliced bread."
Campbell and Brookes were among more than a dozen BLM specialists who contributed to the environmental-impact statement (EIS). The others could not be reached or did not return calls seeking comment.
Ranchers hailed the rules.
"We're hopeful that some of the provisions will strengthen the public-lands grazing industry and give our members certainty in their business," said Jenni Beck of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. "We are encouraged that this EIS demonstrates the benefits of grazing on public lands."
Vast acreage is needed to support a comparatively small number of livestock because topsoil is thin and grass generally is sparse in the arid West. Only 2 percent of U.S. beef is produced from cattle on public lands.
The new rules, published yesterday by the BLM, a division of the Department of Interior, ensure ranchers expanded access to public land and require federal land managers to conduct protracted studies before taking action to limit that access.
The rules reverse a long-standing agency policy that gave BLM experts the authority to determine quickly if livestock grazing is inflicting damage. The regulations also eliminate the agency's obligation to seek public input on some grazing decisions. Public comment will be allowed but not required.
Concerns about the condition of much Western grazing land have been heightened by persistent drought that has denuded pastures in some areas, causing BLM managers to close some pastures, and leading many ranchers to sell their herds.
The new rules mark a departure from grazing regulations adopted in 1995 under President Clinton and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Those regulations reflected the view of range scientists that a legacy of overgrazing in the West had degraded water resources, damaged native plant communities and imperiled wildlife.
"It's an explicit rollback," Thomas Lustig, staff attorney for the National Wildlife Federation in Boulder, Colo., said of the new rules. "What (Interior Secretary Gale Norton) did was take Babbitt's regs and found parts where they could put a hurdle in to undermine the reforms."
BLM officials said the new rules represented a step forward in improving the agency's management of livestock grazing.
Bud Cribley, the agency's manager for rangeland resources, said the report was written by specialists from different BLM offices. When it was finished, in November 2003, the agency believed it "needed a lot of work," Cribley said.
"We disagreed with the impact analysis that was originally put forward," he said. "There were definitely changes made in the area of impact analysis. We adjusted it.
"The draft that we published we felt adequately addressed the impacts. We felt the changes we did make were based on good science."
Background on Cooney was provided by Seattle Times archives.
Bush accused of distorting science
Researchers say politics overrule facts
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Published on: 02/19/04
WASHINGTON -- A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past Republican presidents, accused the Bush administration Wednesday of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes.
In a 46-page report and an open letter, the scientists accused the administration of "suppressing, distorting or manipulating the work done by scientists at federal agencies" in several cases. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a liberal advocacy group based in Cambridge, Mass., organized the effort, but many of the critics aren't associated with it.
White House science adviser John Marburger III called the charges "like a conspiracy theory report, and I just don't buy that." But he added that "given the prestige of some of the individuals who have signed on to this, I think they deserve additional response and we're coordinating something."
The protesting scientists welcomed his response.
"If an administration of whatever political persuasion ignores scientific reality, they do so at great risk to the country," said Stanford University physicist W.H.K. Panofsky, who served on scientific advisory councils in the Eisenhower, Johnson and Carter administrations. "There is no clear understanding in the [Bush] administration that you cannot bend science and technology to policy."
The report charges that administration officials have:
(per mille sign) Ordered massive changes to a section on global warming in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2003 Report on the Environment. Eventually, the entire section was dropped.
(per mille sign) Replaced a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet on proper condom use with a warning emphasizing condom failure rates.
(per mille sign) Ignored advice from top Department of Energy nuclear materials experts who cautioned that aluminum tubes being imported by Iraq weren't suitable for use in nuclear weapons.
(per mille sign) Established political litmus tests for scientific advisory boards. In one case, public health experts were removed from a CDC lead paint advisory panel and replaced with researchers who had financial ties to the lead industry.
(per mille sign) Suppressed a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist's finding that potentially harmful bacteria float in the air surrounding large hog farms.
(per mille sign) Excluded scientists who have received federal grants from regulatory advisory panels while permitting the appointment of scientists from regulated industries.
"I don't recall it ever being so blatant in the past," said Princeton University physicist Val Fitch, a 1980 Nobel Prize winner who served on a Nixon administration science advisory committee. "It's just time after time after time. The facts have been distorted."
White House adviser Marburger, also a physicist, said, "I don't think that these incidents or issues add up to strong support for the accusation that this administration is deliberately acting to undermine the processes of science."
Each example cited was a separate case, Marburger said, often decided at the agency level for good reasons. He declined to defend any case.
Russell Train, an EPA administrator in the Nixon and Ford administrations who spoke on the protesters' behalf, described the Bush administration's treatment of science and scientists as so "dictatorial" that it was causing good scientists to leave the federal government.
James Zahn, a former Agriculture microbiologist, said he discovered accidentally that pig farms in southwestern Minnesota, northern Missouri and Iowa were emitting airborne bacteria. Because pigs are often fed antibiotics, Zahn speculated that airborne bacteria from farms could include drug-resistant bacteria, which, if breathed by humans, would make them harder to treat when ill.
Zahn presented his findings at a scientific conference in 2000, but the Bush administration stopped him from publishing his data 11 times between September 2001 and April 2002, he said. When Danish researchers sought to learn more about his work, Zahn wasn't allowed to share his techniques.
"It was truly a new problem with potential impact on human health," Zahn said.
The protest occurred on the same day that the independent National Academy of Sciences released its study of the Bush administration's plans for global warming research. The national academy's report warned strenuously about the dangers of politicizing climate change science, but said the Bush research plan was on the right track, though it noted that it was underfunded.
James Mahoney, who directs the global warming research plan, acknowledged that the Bush administration had cut the research budget from $2.2 billion this year to $1.96 billion next year.
William Schlesinger, dean of the School of Environment at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and a participant in the academy's study and the scientists' protest, gave the Bush administration's climate plan a grade of "B-."
But, he added, the administration's science policy is too politicized and gets a "D."
He said, "Scientists are very disappointed at this administration's use and regard of science," Schlesinger said.
Published on Wednesday, June 8, 2005 by the New York Times
Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming
by Andrew C. Revkin
A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.
The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.
Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.
Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.
The documents were obtained by The New York Times from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group for government whistle-blowers.
The project is representing Rick S. Piltz, who resigned in March as a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research. That office, now called the Climate Change Science Program, issued the documents that Mr. Cooney edited.
A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, said yesterday that Mr. Cooney would not be available to comment. "We don't put Phil Cooney on the record," Ms. St. Martin said. "He's not a cleared spokesman."
In one instance in an October 2002 draft of a regularly published summary of government climate research, "Our Changing Planet," Mr. Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word "extremely" to this sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."
In a section on the need for research into how warming might change water availability and flooding, he crossed out a paragraph describing the projected reduction of mountain glaciers and snowpack. His note in the margins explained that this was "straying from research strategy into speculative findings/musings."
Other White House officials said the changes made by Mr. Cooney were part of the normal interagency review that takes place on all documents related to global environmental change. Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, noted that one of the reports Mr. Cooney worked on, the administration's 10-year plan for climate research, was endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. And Myron Ebell, who has long campaigned against limits on greenhouse gases as director of climate policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group, said such editing was necessary for "consistency" in meshing programs with policy.
But critics said that while all administrations routinely vetted government reports, scientific content in such reports should be reviewed by scientists. Climate experts and representatives of environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Mr. Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries that have long fought greenhouse-gas restrictions.
In a memorandum sent last week to the top officials dealing with climate change at a dozen agencies, Mr. Piltz said the White House editing and other actions threatened to taint the government's $1.8 billion-a-year effort to clarify the causes and consequences of climate change.
"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Mr. Piltz wrote. "But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program."
A senior Environmental Protection Agency scientist who works on climate questions said the White House environmental council, where Mr. Cooney works, had offered valuable suggestions on reports from time to time. But the scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because all agency employees are forbidden to speak with reporters without clearance, said the kinds of changes made by Mr. Cooney had damaged morale. "I have colleagues in other agencies who express the same view, that it has somewhat of a chilling effect and has created a sense of frustration," he said.
Efforts by the Bush administration to highlight uncertainties in science pointing to human-caused warming have put the United States at odds with other nations and with scientific groups at home.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who met with President Bush at the White House yesterday, has been trying to persuade him to intensify United States efforts to curb greenhouse gases. Mr. Bush has called only for voluntary measures to slow growth in emissions through 2012.
Yesterday, saying their goal was to influence that meeting, the scientific academies of 11 countries, including those of the United States and Britain, released a joint letter saying, "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."
The American Petroleum Institute, where Mr. Cooney worked before going to the White House, has long taken a sharply different view. Starting with the negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty in 1997, it has promoted the idea that lingering uncertainties in climate science justify delaying restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases.
On learning of the White House revisions, representatives of some environmental groups said the effort to amplify uncertainties in the science was clearly intended to delay consideration of curbs on the gases, which remain an unavoidable byproduct of burning oil and coal.
"They've got three more years, and the only way to control this issue and do nothing about it is to muddy the science," said Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a private group that has enlisted businesses in programs cutting emissions.
Mr. Cooney's alterations can cause clear shifts in meaning. For example, a sentence in the October 2002 draft of "Our Changing Planet" originally read, "Many scientific observations indicate that the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change." In a neat, compact hand, Mr. Cooney modified the sentence to read, "Many scientific observations point to the conclusion that the Earth may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change."
A document showing a similar pattern of changes is the 2003 "Strategic Plan for the United States Climate Change Science Program," a thick report describing the reorganization of government climate research that was requested by Mr. Bush in his first speech on the issue, in June 2001. The document was reviewed by an expert panel assembled in 2003 by the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists largely endorsed the administration's research plan, but they warned that the administration's procedures for vetting reports on climate could result in excessive political interference with science.
Another political appointee who has played an influential role in adjusting language in government reports on climate science is Dr. Harlan L. Watson, the chief climate negotiator for the State Department, who has a doctorate in solid-state physics but has not done climate research.
In an Oct. 4, 2002 memo to James R. Mahoney, the head of the United States Climate Change Science Program and an appointee of Mr. Bush, Mr. Watson "strongly" recommended cutting boxes of text referring to the findings of a National Academy of Sciences panel on climate and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that periodically reviews research on human-caused climate change.
The boxes, he wrote, "do not include an appropriate recognition of the underlying uncertainties and the tentative nature of a number of the assertions."
While those changes were made nearly two years ago, recent statements by Dr. Watson indicate that the admnistration's position has not changed.
"We are still not convinced of the need to move forward quite so quickly," he told the BBC in London last month. "There is general agreement that there is a lot known, but also there is a lot to be known."
Published on Saturday, August 23, 2003 by the Long Island, NY Newsday
EPA Misled Public on 9/11 Pollution
White House ordered false assurances on air quality, report says
by Laurie Garrett
NEW YORK -- In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.
That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.
"When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced . . . the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."
On the morning of Sept. 12, according to the report, the office of then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman issued a memo: "All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC (National Security Council in the White House) before they are released." The 165-page report compares excerpts from EPA draft statements to the final versions, including these:
The draft statement contained a warning from EPA scientists that homes and businesses near ground zero should be cleaned by professionals. Instead, the public was told to follow instructions from New York City officials.
Another draft statement was deleted; it raised concerns about "sensitive populations" such as asthma patients, the elderly and people with underlying respiratory diseases.
LEVELS OF ASBESTOS
A statement about discovery of asbestos at higher than safe levels in dust samples from lower Manhattan was changed to state that "samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern."
Language in an EPA draft stating that asbestos levels in some areas were three times higher than national standards was changed to "slightly above the 1 percent trigger for defining asbestos material."
This sentence was added to a Sept. 16 news release: "Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York's financial district." It replaced a statement that initial monitors failed to turn up dangerous samples.
A warning on the importance of safely handling ground zero cleanup, due to lead and asbestos exposure, was changed to say that some contaminants had been noted downtown but "the general public should be very reassured by initial sampling."
The report also notes examples when EPA officials claimed that conditions were safe when no scientific support was available.
New York's leaders responded with dismay.
Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, called for a Justice Department investigation. "That the White House instructed EPA officials to downplay the health impact of the World Trade Center contaminants due to 'competing considerations' at the expense of the health and lives of New York City residents is an abomination," he said in a news release.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in an interview it was "understandable that in the midst of a crisis the White House did not want the EPA to sound alarmist." But, he warned, "If the public loses faith that things are safe when the government says so, we'll have done more damage than a pointed statement the week after 9/11 would have."
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
EPA CHIEF
Acting EPA Administrator Marianne Horinko, who sat in on EPA meetings with the White House during the attack's aftermath, said in an interview that the White House had played a coordinating role, assembling information from various federal agencies.
"It was a role someone had to play," Horinko said. "There was a potential for a Tower of Babel, and we needed to speak with one voice."
The National Security Council played the key role, filtering incoming data on ground zero air and water, Horinko said. "I think that the thinking was, these are experts in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), so they should have the coordinating role."
The focus at EPA, she continued, was on gathering data and making it public as rapidly as possible.
"Under unbelievably trying conditions, EPA did the best that it could," she said.
White House Changes Experts' Report on Health Effects of Mercury
» OMB Watch » Home » Publications » The OMB Watcher » OMB Watcher Vol. 5: 2004 » April 19, 2004 Vol.5, No.8
Published 04/19/2004 06:15 PM
The White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) made changes to a report from the National Academy of Sciences on the toxicology of mercury, a powerful neurotoxin that is especially dangerous to pregnant women and young children.
According to documents obtained by the New York Times, White House staff made editorial interventions in the report, which was commissioned by Congress to establish the science on the risks associated with mercury. The White House's alterations downplayed the risks of mercury, replaced specific enumerations of mercury-related harms with bland, general references, and introduced additional emphasis on uncertainty.
The examples speak for themselves:
This language from the National Academy of Science experts on exposure to high levels of Hg and Ni--
Exposure . . . has been
demonstrated to cause
adverse health effects on the
reproductive and central
nervous systems; kidney
damage; and cancer.
--was replaced with this far blander version:
Exposure . . . has been
demonstrated to cause a
variety of adverse health
effects.
And this clear reference to additional studies--
Recent published studies
have shown an association
between methylmercury
exposure and an increased
risk of heart attacks and
coronary disease in adult
men.
--was muddied up by the White House revision:
[I]t has been hypothesized
that there is an association
between methylmercury
exposure and an increased
risk of coronary disease in
adults; however, this
hypothesis warrants further
study as the few studies
currently available present
conflicting results.
The White House's revision of the experts' report coincided with the EPA's design of new regulations that make it easier for power companies to release mercury into the air.
White House Web Scrubbing
Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A05
It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history.
White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.
Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.
This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site.
Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the Natsios case is particularly pernicious. "This smells like an attempt to revise the record, not just to withhold information but to alter the historical record in a self-interested way, and that is sleazier than usual," he said. "If they simply said, 'We made an error; we underestimated,' people could understand it and deal with it."
For months after the April 23 Natsios interview on ABC's "Nightline," USAID.gov displayed the transcript. "You're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?" an incredulous Ted Koppel asked Natsios.
"Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do," Natsios said. "This is it for the U.S. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada and Iraqi oil revenues. . . . But the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."
A White House spokesman, asked later about these remarks, responded vaguely that he had not seen the statement in question. Then, sometime this fall, USAID made it easier for the administration to maintain its veil of ignorance on the subject by taking the transcript off its Web site.
For a while, the agency left telltale evidence by keeping the link to the transcript on its "What's New" page -- but yesterday the liberal Center for American Progress discovered that this link had disappeared, too, as well as the Google "cached" copies of the original page.
USAID spokeswoman Lejaune Hall, asked about this curious situation, searched the Web site herself for the missing document. "That is strange," she said. After a brief investigation, she reported back: "They were taken down off the Web site. There was going to be a cost. That's why they're not there."
But other government Web sites, including the State and Defense departments, routinely post interview transcripts, even from "Nightline." And, it turns out, there is no cost. "We would not charge for that," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "We would have no trouble with a government agency linking to one of our interviews, and we are unaware of anybody from [ABC] making any request that anything be removed."
Interior Secretary Lied To Congress, Watchdog Group Says
(ENS) WASHINGTON -- Interior Secretary Gale Norton substantially altered biological findings from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concerning effects of oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before she transmitted them to Congress, according to documents released October 19 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
On May 15, 2001, Senator Frank Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who then chaired the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, asked Norton for the Interior Department's official assessment of the impacts of oil drilling on the Porcupine caribou herd in the Arctic Refuge (ANWR). Secretary Norton asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the agency responsible for managing ANWR, with developing answers to those questions.
The resulting USFWS findings were transmitted to Norton's office. However, Norton's official reply to Senator Murkowski on July 11 was markedly different from the scientific input she had received, show the documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national alliance of local, state and federal resource professionals.
Murkowski sent Norton a series of questions to "help Congress analyze this issue" -- the proposal raised by the Bush administration that a portion of the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge --a site known as the 1002 Area -- be opened to oil and natural gas exploration.
Four of the questions relayed to Norton concerned the 130,000 member Porcupine caribou herd, which calves in and around the coastal plain. The region is considered sacred by the Gwich'in nation, a native Arctic people which depend on the caribou herd as a traditional source of food, skins and other necessities.
Questions relating to caribou included:
1. What is the Porcupine caribou herd's historic calving range?
2. Are there portions of the 1002 area where core calving does not historically occur?
3. What has been the impact of development in Prudhoe Bay on the Central Arctic caribou herd?
4. Over 1,000 miles of seismic exploration was conducted in the 1002 area during the winters of 1984 and 1985. Concurrently, a well was drilled on Native lands over two winters in the area. Did this exploration have any negative impact on the Porcupine caribou herd?
The variations in the answers provided to Norton by the USFWS, and those which Norton transmitted to the Senate, tell a story about the disagreements between the Interior Secretary and the Interior Department's prime wildlife agency -- which does not yet have a Bush administration appointed leader.
For example, while the USFWS did not provide any figure for the size of the herd's calving range, Secretary Norton told Congress that the "calving range of the Porcupine caribou herd (PCH) covers an area of approximately 8.9 million acres."
In response to the question regarding calving within the 1002 Area, the USFWS noted that "there have been PCH [Porcupine caribou herd] calving concentrations within the 1002 Area in 27 of the last 30 years." The Interior Department changed those numbers to say "Concentrated calving occurred primarily outside of the 1002 Area in 11 of the last 18 years."
Norton spokesperson Mark Pfeifle said that Norton simply made an error in her testimony -- saying "outside" when she meant to say "inside."
Yet Norton also told Congress that, "Surveys indicate that no calving occurred in the 1002 area in 2001." The USFWS did not provide that information; in fact, surveys for the year 2001 had not yet been conducted by the time that Norton testified before Congress, PEER says.
Norton told Congress that the herd's core calving area "varies from year to year depending on snow melt conditions.... Furthermore, since 1983, the concentrated calving area has never extended to the undeformed area west of the Marsh Creek anticline in the 1002 Area" -- the primary region where oil exploration is being considered.
The USFWS, however, told Norton that, "calving concentrations have not occurred on a relatively small portion (Canning delta and northern coastal margin) of the Arctic Refuge '1002 Area.' Portions of the eastern segment of the Central Arctic Herd use the Canning River delta area for calving."
The USFWS also emphasized that the "calving and early summer seasons (late May to early July) are the periods of greatest sensitivity of caribou."
The agency provided figures to Norton showing concentrations of caribou in the 1002 Area. Norton did not pass these figures on to Congress, instead offering a different figure showing only figures for a time period in which the caribou used less of the 1002 Area.
Norton testified that, "In years when the snow melt occurs late in the spring, as it did this past year, the concentrated calving area tends to be further to the south and east into Canada outside the 1002 area entirely."
However, the USFWS warned that "Snow melt conditions and associated plant phenology vary annually. Therefore, caribou require free passage to these variable areas before giving birth, and maternal females with young must be able to freely move to optimal forage throughout the early summer season."
In fact, fewer caribou calves are born and fewer survive in years when the majority of calves are not born in the ANWR coastal plain, the USFWS noted.
Regarding the effects of oil development in Prudhoe Bay on the Central Arctic caribou herd, Norton testified that "The Central Arctic Herd has grown since the beginning of oil field development from an estimated 5,000 animals in 1975 to 20,000 animals in 1997."
The USFWS noted that the herd actually declined during the early 1990s, then rebounded. During periods of severe weather, the portions of the herd living near oil development areas declined far more than the portions of the herd living far from human development, the agency emphasized.
The agency also detailed a shift in caribou range and calving grounds -- away from the industrial zone created by the oil drillers.
Regarding Senator Murkowski's fourth question, concerning the effects of seismic exploration on the Porcupine caribou herd, Norton claimed that "There is no evidence that the seismic exploration activities or the drilling of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation exploratory well on Native lands have had any significant negative impact on the Porcupine caribou herd."
But the USFWS noted that, "No studies were conducted to determine the effects of the above activities" on the herd. While the agency said "it is unlikely that there have been significant or direct effects" to the herd, "This does not necessarily mean that future exploration activities would have the same consequences. Rather, these activities must be evaluated on a case by case basis."
Norton's spokesperson Pfeifle noted that Secretary Norton relied not only on the information provided by the USFWS, but also on input from non-agency sources.
One source Pfeifle cited was a peer reviewed study by the Wildlife Society Bulletin, which concluded that oil development has had little impact on caribou in Prudhoe Bay. The study was funded in part by oil company BP Exploration.
"Secretary Norton is fully committed to using peer reviewed science in determining the best course of action regarding issues such as ANWR," Pfeifle said.
PEER charged that the extensive changes made by Norton belie her repeated promises during her Senate confirmation hearings to "provide [Congress] the best scientific evaluation of the environmental consequences...[of] any exploration and production" in the Arctic Refuge.
"It appears Secretary Norton misled Congress and broke her pledge to faithfully convey the best science on the Arctic Refuge," said PEER national field director Eric Wingerter. "Unless Ms. Norton was the victim of her own overzealous staff, she should have the decency to resign."
Politics in the lab hits US scientific integrity
By Barton Reppert
GAITHERSBURG, MD. - In theory, science is supposed to be cold, analytical, dispassionate - and studiously apolitical. But in the real world of competing demands for federal research dollars, savvy scientists of all disciplines - from cognitive psychologists running rats through mazes to nuclear physicists operating massive particle accelerators - recognize that a certain amount of political meddling in their research by policymakers in the executive branch and Congress is to be expected.
However, there are limits - limits the Bush administration has frequently disregarded by imposing stringent political controls on a broad variety of federal scientific programs and activities. This has raised acute concern in the American scientific community that the administration's drive to stamp its conservative values on science isn't just affecting policy decisions, but undermining the integrity of the US research infrastructure itself.
Playing politics with science is nothing new in Washington, of course. President Nixon shut down his White House science office because he didn't like the advice he was getting on arms control and the supersonic transport. Nevertheless, several science-policy experts argue that no presidency has been more calculating and ideological than the Bush administration in setting political parameters for science. President Bush's blunt rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and his decision restricting stem-cell research are only the most obvious and widely publicized examples of what has become a broader pattern across the administration.
At the same time, the president's chief science adviser, atomic physicist John Marburger, who is largely well-regarded in the scientific community, reportedly has very little substantive access to Bush and his senior aides, and his office has been moved out of the White House complex.
Some examples of the Bush administration's interference with science include:
• The removal from a National Cancer Institute website of a scientific analysis concluding that abortions do not increase a woman's risk of breast cancer. That move, in November 2002, contradicted the broad medical consensus, and members of Congress protested the change. In response, the NCI updated its website to include the conclusion of a panel of experts that induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.
• Dropping a leading addiction expert from the University of New Mexico, Dr. William Miller, from consideration for membership on the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse after an administration aide quizzed him about whether he opposed abortion ("no") and had voted for Bush ("no").
• The elimination of the section on global warming in a comprehensive Environmental Protection Agency report on the environment last June. EPA officials decided to eliminate the section on climate change after an earlier draft prompted the White House to demand major revisions.
The politicization of US science has drawn close attention from leading scientific journals. Bush administration interference with federal scientific advisory committees as well as peer-review panels for research grants is an "epidemic of politics," editorialized Science, the influential weekly journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "What is unusual about the current epidemic is not that the Bush administration examines candidates for compatibility with its 'values.' It's how deep the practice cuts, in particular, the way it now invades areas once immune to this kind of manipulation," wrote editor in chief Donald Kennedy.
Prominent Democrats in Congress have expressed frustration over the mixing of politics with science.
"I think what they've done is unprecedented," says Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California, ranking minority member of the House Government Reform Committee. "Even prominent Republicans who served under Presidents Reagan, Ford, and Nixon are alarmed.... Leading scientists both inside and outside the administration have said politics is getting into previously protected areas."
Mr. Waxman's committee issued a report in August concluding that the administration's political interference with science has led to "misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered websites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists."
The report - which can be seen at www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience - alleges abuses in 21 areas ranging from abstinence-only sex education to breast cancer, drinking water, food safety, global warming, prescription-drug advertising, stem-cell research, and workplace safety.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan dismissed the report as "riddled with distortions, inaccuracies, and omissions." And, he said, "This administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people. The only one who is playing politics about science is Congressman Waxman."
Several senior-science policy specialists say that while the Waxman report has a partisan tone, most of its major points are well taken. Neal Lane, who served as director of the National Science Foundation and then as presidential science adviser during the Clinton administration, observed: "It's always the case in the White House ... that science is one of a number of sets of issues that a president, a political policymaker, has to consider when they're making decisions. Sometimes the decision goes in a way that the science would not suggest. But there's such a long list of egregious actions taken by this administration that I think it essentially gives a false impression of what the science really is and strongly suggests the administration simply doesn't care to find out."
Prof. Lewis Branscomb, a science policy expert at Harvard and former director of the National Bureau of Standards under Nixon, notes that on the question of stacking federal scientific advisory committees, "I'm not aware that [Nixon] ever hand-picked ideologues to serve on advisory committees, or dismissed from advisory committees very well-qualified people if he didn't like their views.... What's going on now is in many ways more insidious. It happens behind the curtain. I don't think we've had this kind of cynicism with respect to objective scientific advice since I've been watching government, which is quite a long time."
Perhaps the corrosive issue of political interference with science won't be crucial to Bush's reelection chances, but by undercutting the integrity of the scientific community, it may be crucial to the long-term quality of life not just in the US, but also in other countries around the world.
• Barton Reppert, a former Associated Press reporter and editor in Washington, New York, and Moscow, is a freelance science and technology writer.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 29, 2005
2:41 PM
CONTACT: Natural Resources Defense Council
Dr. Jennifer Sass, 202-289-2362 or 301-752-8069 cell
Elliott Negin, 202-289-2405
White House Weakens EPA Cancer Safeguards to Protect Chemical Industry Instead of Children
White House Inserted Language in Guidelines Making it Easier for Chemical Industry to Stymie EPA Chemical Reviews
WASHINGTON -- March 29 -- The Environmental Protection Agency's new guidelines for assessing cancer risk from chemical pollutants will give industry too many opportunities to stifle safeguards that protect children, according to NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).
EPA's guidelines acknowledge, for the first time, that children under 2 years of age are 10 times more likely to get cancer from certain chemicals than adults who are similarly exposed. But the White House Office of Management and Budget undermined that acknowledgment by inserting language in the guidelines that make it easy for industry to block EPA from following them when assessing cancer-causing chemicals.
"The White House decided it was more important to protect the chemical industry than protect our kids from cancer," said Dr. Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with NRDC's environmental health program.
The guidelines announced today, which dictate how EPA regulates cancer-causing chemicals, finalize a draft policy issued by EPA in March 2003. That draft policy included supplemental guidelines for assessing cancer risks to children.
The guidelines had to go through several rigorous scientific reviews before they were released today.
EPA's draft guidelines, including the children's supplemental, first passed through an internal agency review two years ago. The agency's Scientific Advisory Board reviewed the guidelines and agreed with EPA's conclusion that early-life exposures to chemical pollutants increase cancer risk. The board recommended finalizing EPA's draft guidelines as written.
The guidelines then went to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for scrutiny, where they languished until today. Out of public view, OMB substantially weakened the guidelines by adding language that will allow the chemical industry to contest policy decisions more easily, according to NRDC. Specifically, OMB inserted language allowing for "expert elicitation," opening the door for any outside party to challenge the way EPA applies the guidelines to assess chemicals. Such a challenge could slow the agency down for months, if not years, in making a decision on regulating a cancer-causing chemical, according to NRDC. OMB further weakened the guidelines by adding language requiring any EPA cancer evaluation to meet the standards of the Data Quality Act, a law designed by tobacco industry consultants to quash protective regulations. By opening the process to relentless industry challenges, said Dr. Sass, OMB set the bar so high that children will not be adequately protected from many cancer-causing chemicals.
"The White House took what would have been strong guidelines to protect our children from cancer and turned them into an industry punching bag," said Dr. Sass. "Chemical companies will be able to pummel any new safeguard to death. The chemical industry wins, our children lose."
The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has more than 1 million members and online activists nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
reports and research
President's Council on Bioethics This page is an excerpt from the July 2004 update to the February 2004 UCS report Scientific Integrity in Policymaking.
In another clear case of political interference in the science advisory appointment process, on February 27, 2004, the Bush administration dismissed Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a leading cell biologist, and Dr. William May, a prominent medical ethicist, from the President's Council on Bioethics. For three years, Dr. Blackburn had served on the panel, which is charged with advising the president on the ethical implications of advancements in biomedical research. Dr. Blackburn is best known as the co-discoverer of telomerase, an enzyme linked to cancer cell growth. This discovery launched a burgeoning cancer research field. According to Nobel laureate Thomas Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Dr. Blackburn "is a very smart and successful scientist…one of the top biomedical researchers in the world."116 Dr. Blackburn states that she believes she was dismissed because she disapproved of the Bush administration's restrictive position on stem cell research. According to Dr. Blackburn, she and Dr. May frequently disagreed with the administration's positions on the ethics of biomedical research.117 She was removed from the panel soon after she objected to a Council report on stem cell research. In an essay in the April 1, 2004, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Blackburn recounted how the dissenting opinion she submitted, which she believes reflects the scientific consensus in America, was not included in the council's reports even though she had been told the reports would represent the views of all the council's members.118
The removal of Drs. Blackburn and May—and the subsequent appointment of new panel members who are supportive of the administration's stated positions, significantly limits the range of views now available to the president on bioethical issues. This action violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, which requires balance on such advisory bodies.119 As Dr. Blackburn herself has pointed out, she was one of only three full-time biomedical scientists on the panel, which, even prior to her dismissal, was weighted heavily to nonscientists with strong ideological views. While no one disputes that nonscientists should play an important role on a bioethics panel, it is equally important that scientists, with strong biomedical expertise, provide the necessary scientific context for the panel.
The administration has claimed that politics played no role in Dr. Blackburn’s dismissal,120 but in the wake of Dr. Blackburn's firing, some 170 researchers signed an open letter to President Bush protesting the decision.121 Dr. Janet Rowley,122 Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Molecular Genetics at the University of Chicago and current member of the Bioethics Council, has characterized Dr. Blackburn's dismissal as "an important example of the absolutely destructive practices of the Bush administration."123
Among those expressing concerns about Dr. Blackburn's dismissal was the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), which represents 11,000 scientists worldwide. ASCB issued a public statement contending that Dr. Blackburn's dismissal reflected a pattern in the Bush administration in which politics trumps science. As ASCB President Harvey Lodish noted: "In his 2001 speech announcing the creation of the Council, President Bush said the Council would include strong representation from leading scientists. This action significantly undermines the ability of Councilors to base their considerations on the foundation of sound science."124
116. As quoted in Elias, P. 2004. “Scientist lauded after government fires her,” Associated Press. March 18.
117. Author interview with Elizabeth Blackburn, March 2004.
118. Blackburn, E. 2004. “Bioethics and the Political Distortion of Biomedical Science,” The New England Journal of Medicine 350(14):1379-1380. April 1. See also “Science and the Bush administration: Cheating nature?” The Economist, April 7, 2004.
119. See Federal Advisory Committee Act, 5 U.S.C. Appendix 2, Section 5(b) 2 and 3.
120. See, for example, Kass, L. 2004. “We Don’t Play Politics with Science,” The Washington Post. Op-ed. March 3.
121. See Holden, C. 2004. “Researchers blast U.S. bioethics panel shuffle,” Science 303:1447. March 5.
122. Among her many credentials, Janet D. Rowley M.D., D.Sc. is internationally renowned for her studies of chromosomal abnormalities in human leukemia and lymphoma. She is the recipient of the National Medal of Science (1999) and the Albert Lasker Clinical Medicine Research Prize (1998), the most distinguished American honor for clinical medical research. 123. As quoted in Elias, P. 2004. “Scientist lauded after government fires her,” Associated Press. March 18.
124. American Society for Cell Biology. 2004. “Cell Biologists Oppose Removal of Top Scientist.” Press release. March 2. Available online at http://www.ascb.org/newsroom/blackburn.html.
Bush administration distorts science to shield Halliburton from pollution laws
16 March 2005
WASHINGTON, March 16 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will investigate complaints by one of its engineers who said the agency distorts science in order to shield Halliburton from pollution laws, the Los Angeles Times reported today.
The EPA's inspector general agreed to investigate the complaint, which was first exposed by the Times last year by Weston Wilson, who is a senior engineer with the EPA.
According to Wilson, a 30-year employee with the EPA, the Bush administration purposely tampered with environmental science in order to shield a lucrative drilling technique, known as hydraulic fracturing, from all regulations. Wilson says the technique, pioneered by Halliburton, is harmful to drinking water supplies. Halliburton has spent years trying to get the federal government to exempt the technique from environmental regulations.
Wilson and environmental groups say hydraulic fracturing can contaminate drinking water supplies with carcinogens and is therefore required by law to be regulated by the EPA. In addition, activists have documented incidents where hydraulic fracturing has contaminated drinking water supplies with hazardous chemicals.
The extra oil and gas produced each year from hydraulic fracturing boosts Halliburton's revenues by $1.5 billion, which represents 20 percent of the company's energy-related revenue. The technique involves pumping chemicals into the ground to breakup rock formations so that oil and gas can more easily be produced. Halliburton says the chemicals used are benign, but critics say hazardous chemicals have also been used, including benzene, toluene, naphthalene, trimethylnapthalene, ethylbenzene and xylene.
The Bush administration has offered an energy bill that would exempt hydraulic fracturing from federal regulation. The bill is currently pending in Congress and there is little congressional opposition to it.
"If this bill passes, American citizens will not know if toxic fracturing fluids are injected into their groundwater supply," Wilson told the Times.
An EPA panel had decided that hydraulic fracturing is "safe," but six of the seven panel members currently or formerly worked for the energy industry, the Times reported.
The EPA's approval of hydraulic fracturing was written into Vice President Dick Cheney's notoriously-secret Energy Task Force report after the agency initially complained that it can be dangerous to public health. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Mr. Wilson both accuse the EPA of initially concluding that the technique can be dangerous to public health, but then deleting this conclusion after Cheney's office demanded it. Waxman said Cheney's energy task force report "was altered to delete language critical of hydraulic fracturing."
Members of congressional staff who were skeptical of hydraulic fracturing had met with EPA officials who had confirmed that the process could release harmful chemicals into the groundwater supply. A week later, however, those same EPA officials provided a "new analysis, using changed numbers" that were favorable to Halliburton, according to Rep. Waxman. The new EPA analysis showed that hydraulic fracturing would not release dangerous levels of harmful chemicals like benzene into the public's drinking water supply. The explanation for the sudden change in analysis from the EPA was that it was "based on feedback" from unidentified industry sources. The EPA later declared in an official study that the dangers posed by hydraulic fracturing "appear to be low and do not justify additional study."
If the Energy Bill becomes law, it would overturn a 1997 federal appeals court ruling in Alabama that directed the EPA to regulate hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Ever since the court's ruling, Halliburton has lobbied Congress and the president to overturn the decision.
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