Opinion

Politics has overtaken science at the EPA

Dr. Gilbert Ross Medical and Executive Director, American Council on Science and Health
Font Size:

Science depends on rigid observation and independent replication. So what happens when government bureaucrats — seeking to promote a political agenda while acting under the guise of protecting the environment and public health — systematically subordinate sound scientific principles to their own goals?

To answer that question, one need look no further than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where unelected bureaucrats, led by the chemophobic Lisa Jackson, have decided to bypass Congress and avoid the possible change in administration in 2013 by rushing to complete an unprecedented number of major risk assessments ahead of the 2012 election. Those assessments, which will evaluate the danger of various chemicals, will have far-reaching public policy ramifications.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Science often kowtows to politics in today’s policy debates.

Activist groups, sensation-craving media and congressional demagogues have a friendly ear at the EPA when they call for stringent restrictions on safe and useful chemicals and products — products with decades-long histories of harmless, widespread use. The attacks exploit public ignorance of the lack of science behind such terms as “endocrine disruptor,” “gender-bender,” and the latest mythological danger, “obesigens”— chemicals that allegedly can cause obesity. Another favorite distortion is the oft-heard claim that sperm counts, or “semen quality,” are declining due to chemicals in our environment. The only problem: Sperm counts are not declining. Cancer rates are declining, however, while longevity increases every year. Scientific groups worldwide confirm that disfavored chemicals like bisphenol-A are safe, but the message does not reach the activists, the media or the EPA.

In 2009, EPA bureaucrats issued a draft assessment of the toxicity of formaldehyde that warned of the chemical’s dangers. But the agency’s methodology was so shoddy that Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) called for a review by the respected National Academy of Sciences (NAS) as soon as the draft was made public. The NAS panel recently issued a sharply worded criticism of the EPA’s rushed methodology in evaluating formaldehyde’s toxicity. The NAS found the EPA’s practices to be in desperate need of “substantial revision” and expressed concern about “the persistence of problems encountered with [the Integrated Risk Information System] assessments over the years.” The NAS concluded that the EPA’s “criteria to identify evidence for selecting and evaluating studies” are fundamentally flawed.

This week, the EPA announced plans to improve the clarity and transparency of its risk assessment program. It says that in the future the data, methodology and decision criteria will be clearer and easier to understand. But given the serious problems in EPA methodology raised by the NAS, how can the EPA continue to conduct its chemical risk assessments in a business-as-usual manner? One reason is apparent: Politics has overtaken science at the EPA.

It’s easy — and politically correct — to call for chemical bans in order to “protect our children.” But from what, exactly? The Jackson-era EPA seems to love using the precautionary principle (“better safe than sorry”) to play whack-a-mole with various chemical “threats.” The ideologues blame chemicals for any ill that befalls us and for which medicine and science have not yet come up with a specific cause or cure. Their mantra is, “there are 80,000 chemicals in the environment and very few have been ‘tested,’ so how do we know they’re ‘safe’?” But most of these chemicals have been around for 50+ years, so why are we only now having more obesity or autism? But alarmism attracts media attention; logic doesn’t.

On June 30, Sen. Vitter and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) followed up on the NAS report with a highly detailed letter to Jackson asking her to restore “scientific integrity” to the risk assessment process.

“The economy and many of our fellow Americans are suffering,” the senators wrote. “To further perpetuate the problems of high unemployment and poverty without strong scientific and economic support for EPA’s calculated efforts would be unwise.”

Vitter and Inhofe deserve a response from Jackson — and so does the American public.

Gilbert Ross, MD, is the Medical Director of the American Council on Science and Health, a public health, consumer-education consortium of over 380 scientists and physicians.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel