Officials Claim EPA's Asbestos Risk Assessment Reform Endangers the Public

July 25, 2008 – Further insight into why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed to alter asbestos regulations has been attained after meetings with public officials and a scientific panel. The public meetings took place on July 21 and 22 in Washington D.C., where many authorities on asbestos and asbestos-related disease spoke out on the proposed changes.

The scientific panel denounced the EPA’s plans to change the way it measures the cancer-causing risks of asbestos, claiming the changes will dilute the regulation of the toxic mineral. Currently, only six types of asbestos are regulated by the government, and the new regulations would alter how the toxicity of those six types is defined.

Though the EPA claims the changes will improve current methods of assessing asbestos risks at Superfund sites, public health officials, scientists, and medical professionals warn these changes will water down asbestos regulations and place workers and the public at risk.

Apparently, pressure to have federal agencies dilute the regulation of hazardous substances comes from the Bush White House. Members of Congress are presently in the process of asking why the Labor Department sent plans to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that change how workers are protected from chemical hazards. Oddly enough, many government physicians and scientists who are usually intimately involved in such matters say they haven’t even seen the proposal.

According to employees at EPA headquarters, the hurry to change asbestos regulations is spawned in part by OMB’s motive to please the mining, chemical, construction, and automotive industries that are dealing with asbestos-related lawsuits. Yet again, politics are being put before public health and safety. This comes to no surprise, as the Bush administration has consistently sided with the industry’s position concerning asbestos issues. Bush even openly fought for almost four years for asbestos tort reform to put an end to workers’ rights to sue employers.

A total of 20 experts were appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board’s asbestos panel, who heard testimony and statements from more than two dozen witnesses at the public meetings earlier this week. Many witnesses spoke out against the validity of industry-financed studies cited in the EPA proposal.

Despite the fact that these studies are proven to have no scientific credibility, the EPA is submitting the fallacious studies as evidence for the proposed changes. These erroneous studies claim chrysotile asbestos, the most commonly used type of asbestos, is not dangerous and does not cause mesothelioma cancer.

The bogus studies go against decades worth of scientifically solid and credible studies that have long established chrysotile asbestos as a serious carcinogen, which has been proven to cause asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma.

Lawyers who defend corporations involved in asbestos lawsuits explain passage of the new asbestos risk assessment methods would greatly affect asbestos litigation, making it much easier to argue that the asbestos used by these companies was and is not hazardous.

Counting down its final months in power, the Bush administration has little time to push the reform through the system, which needs no stamp of approval from the scientific panel that denounced the EPA’s plans. It seems the asbestos scandal, which is considered one of the biggest cover-ups in U.S. history, is reluctantly far from over.

By Michelle Whitmer

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under Asbestos Exposure, Asbestos Legislation, Asbestos Litigation, Mesothelioma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.