Re: Chemical Secrecy Again

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Citing national security, the
>Environmental Protection Agency earlier
>this month rescinded a Clinton
>administration proposal to increase
>public access to information about the
>potential consequences of chemical plant
>accidents.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/politics/27ACCI.html
>
>--
>
>Michael Perelman

Yeah, I had to laugh when one of the two pimps for the chemical industry
told Moyers that scientists from presigious insitutions like Harvard
University vetted their tests. They must be referring to John D. Graham,
who was appointed by Bush to run the Office of Management and Budget. Ivory
tower? Ivory toilet is more like it:

The New York Times, March 25, 2001, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

REGULATIONS CZAR PREFERS NEW PATH

By DOUGLAS JEHL

BOSTON, March 22 -- For more than a decade, a Harvard professor named John
D. Graham has raised money, eyebrows and hackles by arguing that in many
cases the cost of environmental rules vastly exceeds the benefits.

Dr. Graham, the founder and director of a Harvard center that receives most
of its money from industry, has become a pivotal figure in the battles over
environmental regulation by arguing a theme that is pleasing to his donors'
ears. He asserts that Americans would be far better off if, for example,
the money devoted to pesticide control were spent on very different
priorities, like hospital emergency rooms, even if in considerably smaller
sums. . .

Dr. Graham was testifying at the time in favor of legislation by Senator
Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican, that would have required that any new
regulation issued by the government pass a strict cost-benefit test. That
bill was opposed by the Clinton administration, and it was defeated. A new,
less strict measure now before Congress would require such tests, and if
the costs exceeded the benefits, agencies would have to try to justify
regulations in writing.

In both the environmental organizations and in the academic world, Dr.
Graham's critics say that nothing is inherently wrong with cost-benefit
analysis, and that it should be considered a useful analytical tool. But as
a gauge of any regulation, it must try to take account of many
uncertainties, and the assumptions made will have an enormous effect on the
conclusions.

"It's not inherently good or inherently bad," said Dr. David Ozonoff,
chairman of the department of environmental health at Boston University's
School of Public Health. "It's inherently biased."

Dr. Ozonoff said that much of the research carried out at Dr. Graham's
Harvard Center for Risk Analysis has amounted to "having the client shoot
an arrow, and then the analyst paints a target around it."

Sixty percent of the center's annual budget of $3 million comes from
private gifts and grants, most of them from industry trade organizations
and large companies, including Monsanto, ExxonMobil, 3M, Alcoa, Pfizer, Dow
Chemical and DuPont.  The center's reports have tended to reflect the view
of industry, as in a study last summer, sponsored by AT&T Wireless
Communication, that concluded that the hazards of talking on a cell phone
while driving were relatively small.

In the early 1990's, Dr. Graham solicited money from Philip Morris at a
time when he was criticizing the E.P.A.'s conclusion that second-hand smoke
was a carcinogen, people close to him said. Accepting tobacco money
violated the policy of the School of Public Health, of which the
risk-analysis center is a part, and Dr. Graham was ordered to return the
money. He later accepted an equivalent gift from Kraft, a Philip Morris
subsidiary, the same people said.

Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/25/politics/25RISK.html?searchpv=site02


Louis Proyect
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