print this window the rachel's website Toxic Deception, Part Two SCIENCE FOR SALE 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.) ** 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 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; |