June 2004 News Stories

June 2004 News Stories (Back to Archived News Stories) (Back to Main News Page)

The Defiance of Science, by Andrew Buncombe, The (London) Independent, June 29, 2004
Forecast for New York This Century Hotter and Wetter, by Anthony dePalma, New York Times, June 27, 2004
Senate Leaders Narrow Differences on Asbestos, by Susan Cornwell, Reuters, June 25, 2004
Utah Rescue Dogs Part of World Trade Center Follow-Up Study, by Elizabeth Neff, The Salt Lake Tribune, June 29, 2004
EPA Releases 2002 Toxic Release Inventory Right-to-Know Compromised, OMB Watch, June 28, 2004
E.P.A. panel continues to debate what to do, by Elizabeth O’Brien, Downtown Express, Volume 17 • Issue 5 | June 25 - July 1, 2004
IBM Cancer Data Fuel Debate Over Publication, by Antonio Regalado and Willima M. Bulkeley, The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2001
Senate Bill Includes Compensation for Cold War-Era Workers, by Libby Quaid, Associated Press, June 23, 2004
IBM settles cancer lawsuits, A.P., June 23, 2004
State Department Report Shows Increase in Terrorism, by Steve R. Weisman, New York Times, June 23, 2004
Mayor Rescinds Invitation to a G.O.P. Congressman, by Michael Slackman, New York Times, June 22, 2004
Sick lungs, strong proof Post-9/11 air wasn't safe, Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, June 21, 2004
House Rejects Extra Security Aid to High-Risk Cities, by Raymond Hernandez, New York TImes, June 19, 2004
Opposition Mounts to CDC Reorganization, by John Nash, Occupational Hazards, June 18, 2004
Mayor Takes Broader View When He Is the Donor, by Mike McIntire, New York Times, June 16, 2004
Fire retardants' effects arouse safety debate, by Stephanie Ebbert, Boston Globe Staff, June 14, 2004
U.S. Wrongly Reported Drop in World Terrorism in 2003, AP, New York TImes, June 10, 2004
Soot raises risk of lung ailments, by Matt Pacenza, Albany Times-Union, June 10, 2204
A Routine Drill at a New York Power Plant, With a New Focus on Terrorism, by Ian Urbina, New York Times, June 9, 2004
'Safe' levels of lead, cadmium, AHA Journal News report, June 7, 2004
Government May Delay Respirator Standards, by Brian Tumulty, Green Bay Press-Gazette Washington bureau, June 5, 2004
Asbestos Bankruptcies Face Setbacks on Two Fronts, by Jonathan D. Glater, New York Times, June 4, 2004
Dust on gadgets is toxic, Flame retardants used on computers called health risk, Benjamin Pimentel, San Francisco Chronicle, June 4, 2004
Film found on windows after 9/11 reveals higher level of pollutants, Environmental Science & Technology, Public June 3, 2004
Chemical Facilities Owned by "Dangerous Dozen" Endanger Millions of Americans, Press Release, U.S. PIRG, June 3, 2004
Stage Set to Rebuild Ground Zero, Development Board Says, by David W. Dunlap, New York Times, June 3, 2004
This Is Not a Traditional Groundbreaking, by David W. Dunlap, New York Times, June 3, 2004
U.S. Finds Flaws, Not Crimes, at Nuclear Site in Washington State, by Matthew L. Wald, New York Times, June 3, 2004
Concerns rise over chemicals as targets, by Charlie Savage, Boston Globe, June 1, 2004

The Defiance of Science, by Andrew Buncombe, The (London) Independent, June 29, 2004

http//news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=535644
More than 4,000 scientists have signed a petition accusing George Bush of twisting their work to further his political agenda. Andrew Buncombe investigates the war between the White House and the men in white coats
For Michael Greene, there was little hesitation. The Harvard professor has spent much of his life working in the field of reproductive health, and when - in his capacity as a member of a federal advisory committee - he was asked his opinion about a new emergency contraception, he had few doubts about recommending that it be licensed.

And neither did the overwhelming majority of his colleagues on the committee, formed by the US federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Indeed, the distinguished panel voted 23-4 in favour of selling the "morning after" pill Plan B without prescription. The FDA almost always follows its experts' recommendations.

But not this time. Despite the wealth of expert opinion, the FDA rejected the committee's view, claiming that there was insufficient data. Committee members were incensed. E-mails flew back and forth, talking of resignation and political interference in the scientific process. "People are very angry," says Greene. "The issue here is much larger than just Plan B. The decision is blatantly contrary to the science and the facts, and so blatantly politicised."

But critics say that this is just one modest example among dozens of the way in which the administration of President George Bush is manipulating and twisting science for its own extreme ideological ends. On issues from global warming to lead in drinking water and the alleged link between breast cancer and abortions, this administration, like no other before it, is turning science into a political battleground.

Suddenly, science is responding in what is almost certainly an unprecedented revolt against the government. Earlier this year, the non-profit group, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), put together a petition that has so far been signed by more than 4,000 scientists, among them 20 Nobel prize-winners, demanding that the Bush administration change its behaviour. It also published a 38-page report detailing the government's scientific distortions.

"Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States the world's most powerful nation, and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy," the report says. "Although scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid perilous consequences. Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George Bush has, however, disregarded this principle."

The result of this politicisation, say disgruntled scientists, has resulted not only in flawed policies but the very undermining of American scientific ideals - and even perhaps the nation's founding principles. What has transpired, Lewis Lapam noted recently in Harper's Magazine, which he edits, has been "the systematic substitution of ideological certainty for reasonable doubt across the entire spectrum of issues bearing on the public health and welfare... [a] rejection of the scientific method in favour of the conviction that if the science doesn't prove what it's been told to prove, then the science has been tampered with by Satan or the Democratic Party".

There are few issues where the evidence of scientific distortion is more apparent than that of reproductive health. On 22 January 2001, four days after his inauguration, Bush reinstated the so-called Mexico City policy, which denies federal funds to family- planning groups that provide abortion counselling or services overseas.

Since then, led by its born-again evangelical leader, the government has waged war on anything that might be considered a "liberal approach" towards reproductive health. Condoms have been condemned as ineffective, and the administration has adopted "abstinence only" as the official approach towards sex education. Over the last three years, Congress has given more than $100m in grants to organisations that promote abstinence-only education.

A report published last year by the House of Representatives committee on government reform noted that this had only been achieved by manipulating the facts. "The Bush administration has consistently distorted the scientific evidence about what works in sex education," it said. "Administration officials have never acknowledged that abstinence-only programmes have not been proven to reduce sexual activity, teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. Instead, [it] has changed performance measures for abstinence-only education to make the programmes appear successful, censored information on effective sex education programmes, and appointed to a key panel an abstinence-only proponent with dubious credentials."

If the administration can use science to turn common sense on its head - does anyone really believe that simply telling teenagers not to have sex will prevent pregnancies? - there is little wonder that it is prepared to manipulate the facts in more obviously "scientific" areas where ordinary people may be less equipped to decide for themselves. In one incident, the administration altered the National Cancer Institute's website to suggest that there was a link between abortion and breast cancer. The federally funded institute was forced to change the site after an outcry from scientists insisting that there was no such link.

It was in this environment that Barr Laboratories, the makers of Plan B, sought federal approval for their new emergency contraception. Though Greene's panel, along with the Non-Prescription Drugs Advisory Panel, voted last December to license the product, it was only this month that the FDA's acting director, Steven Galson, announced that he was overruling his experts. Galson denied that anyone outside the FDA had influenced his decision. "As is the case with a lot of these difficult decisions, there may not be agreement among people who are experts in data analysis," he said. He failed to mention, however, that 44 members of Congress had written to those on the committee urging them to reject the contraception.

James Trussell, a professor at Princeton University's Office of Population Research and a panel member, said that he believed that Plan B will only get approved if there is a change of government. "It is being done to reflect the philosophy of the administration. It is a very sad day," he said. "But this is not just limited to the FDA and just one decision. It's not an isolated thing. Bad policy is being made."

Indeed, the report drawn up by the committee on government reform lists 20 different topics, ranging from agricultural policy to ecological problems in the Yellowstone National Park, in which science had been twisted. The report concluded "The Bush administration, however, has repeatedly suppressed, distorted or obstructed science to suit political and ideological goals. These actions go far beyond the traditional influence that Presidents are permitted to wield at federal agencies, and compromise the integrity of scientific policy-making."

Critics say that the administration has adopted three strategies to twist facts. The first is to manipulate the membership of advisory committees, stacking them with people who share its views. Elizabeth Blackburn, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, found out in February that she and a colleague were not to be reappointed to the panel after speaking out in support of research on human stem cells. They were replaced by three new members who opposed such research. "Not one of the newly appointed members is a biomedical scientist," she said.

In other cases, people with links to the industries that the panels are supposed to be monitoring have been appointed. Elsewhere, people have been asked about their views on abortion and the death penalty and their voting record. The Bush administration is even prepared to block the appointment to international bodies of American scientists. In April 2002, it ensured that Robert Watson - a critic of America's energy policy - was voted out of his job as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, after being lobbied by the ExxonMobil oil company.

The second strategy is simply to misrepresent the truth. In August 2001, Bush banned federal funding of research on new stem-cell lines, saying that there were already 60 such lines available. He was not telling the whole truth. In May 2003, the director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) confirmed that there were just 11 such lines available to researchers.

The final strategy, outlined by Martin McKee and Thomas Novotny in an article in the European Journal of Public Health, is to block funding for controversial issues. A federal analysis on air pollution that might have come up with information uncomfortable to the administration was blocked, while researchers applying to the NIH for funds on HIV research have been told to avoid using phrases such as "sex worker", "gay" and "anal sex" in their applications.

The administration dismisses charges of distortion. In April, Dr John Marburger, the President's chief science adviser, issued a report rebutting many of the accusations levelled by the UCS and others. (The UCS, in turn, issued an equally detailed rebuttal of his rebuttals.) "The accusations in the document are inaccurate, and certainly do not justify the sweeping conclusions of either the document or the accompanying statement," Marburger told Congress. "I believe the document has methodological flaws that undermine its own conclusions, not the least of which is the failure to consider publicly available information, or to seek and reflect responses or explanations from responsible government officials."

In a telephone interview, Marburger did not deny that there may be individual cases where scientists dispute the view of the White House. But he said "What I am denying is that there is a systematic practice of undermining science, or manipulating or distorting it." He also said that as science pushed at the boundaries it was bound to come into contact with contentious issues. He regretted that science had become politicised, but blamed groups such as the UCS for that.

Marburger's office sent me information claiming that the Bush administration has raised the funding of research and development to levels not seen since 1968 and the Apollo programme. It also said that the National Academies' National Research Council had come out in favour of Bush's strategic plan for global warming, which it had earlier criticised. The academy actually said that the plan was "much improved" compared with an earlier draft, but that commitments to fund many of the newly proposed activities were lacking.

Despite Marburger's assertions, what appears beyond question is that an unprecedented number of American scientists believe that science is being manipulated as never before. Their anger is now seeping from the pages of medical journals and reaching the mainstream.

Kurt Gottfried, professor of physics at Cornell and the UCS chairman, said his organisation, as well as collecting the signatures of 4,000 scientists, had had many messages of support from people working for the government who were unable to make their concerns public. "In the first Bush administration, there were no problems. This whole issue is unprecedented."

� 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

Forecast for New York This Century Hotter and Wetter, by Anthony dePalma, New York Times, June 27, 2004

http//www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/nyregion/27study.html

It will not happen the day after tomorrow. Nor a decade from now.

But well before this century ends, global warming will make New York City and the metropolitan area that surrounds it a hotter, wetter and significantly less healthy place to live and work, according to a federally financed study released on Friday by a group of scientists at Columbia University.

The three-year study by the New York Climate and Health Project is the most detailed look ever at the effects of global warming on New York. It makes no doomsday predictions, but it paints a worrisome portrait of New York's vulnerability to global climate change.

As global temperatures rise by 2.4 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, a densely developed area like New York City will be hit even harder, the scientists said, because it has so few trees and so much heat-retaining concrete and asphalt.

Higher temperatures intensify the creation of ozone, worsening air pollution and making the city unhealthier for the elderly and other vulnerable groups, including children in poor neighborhoods that now have some of the highest rates of asthma in the country.

According to the study, heat-related deaths, which averaged about 840 a year in the region through the 1990's, could more than double by the 2050's and increase by 258 percent by the 2080's if higher temperatures are accompanied by unchecked development. The study showed that four of New York's five boroughs - Staten Island was not included - would endure the sharpest increase in deaths related to the heat, while in the less developed parts of the 31-county metropolitan region the rise would be less severe.

For the three-year study project, scientists, doctors and environmental specialists from Columbia and other universities joined in an unusual collaboration, sharing information and insights to assess global warming's effects on public health.

While previous studies looked at areas no smaller than the entire northeastern United States, this one covered areas as small as 2.5 square miles. As work on the project continues, projections could eventually be made for single neighborhoods; this would create important policy implications.

"Climate change is not going to impact all communities equally," said Cecil Corbin-Mark, program director of West Harlem Environmental Action. He said the study should help city officials realize that crucial decisions on land use and policy, even some as simple as deciding how many air-conditioned "cooling centers" the city needs on heat emergency days, "cannot wait to be made."

The coming environmental changes will be caused not just by global warming but also by increased urbanization.

"If we're not careful, we'll have our own global warming situation right here, just because of the way we're building things," said Dr. Barry H. Lynn, a meteorologist at Columbia University and the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies who worked on the study. Temperatures in the city will be driven up 2 to 3 percent over the next 50 years by continued development in New York, he said, unless developments are designed in a way that reduces their environmental effects.

Measures like rooftop gardens and rain collection systems are already being included in the designs for some new buildings in New York. Dr. Lynn said that such initiatives help, but that officials will have to change building codes and offer more incentives if they are to have a real impact on the city's climate and public health.

Besides the direct effect of the higher temperatures, the study outlines many secondary or related results of climate change. For instance, devastating floods that now are expected to occur once a century could hit the area every 40 years. Melting ice would raise the oceans and rivers, driving insects and vermin, along with the diseases they carry, from the water's edge into the city. Molds, allergens and water-borne illnesses would spread rapidly.

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Senate Leaders Narrow Differences on Asbestos, by Susan Cornwell, Reuters, June 25, 2004

http//www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5518171&pageNumber=0
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate leaders have narrowed their differences over a proposed fund to compensate asbestos victims and are talking about a fund of between $131 billion and $141 billion, aides and others close to the talks said on Friday.

Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota proposed a fund of $141 billion, a Senate Democratic aide told Reuters. Sources close to the talks say Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist suggested a fund of about $131 billion, although Frist's staff has not confirmed that number.

The leaders are trying to agree on the outlines of an asbestos fund that could then be written into legislation.

"He (Daschle) did make the offer of $141 billion," the Senate Democratic aide said. He said there was also the possibility of including some $4 billion in assets from existing asbestos bankruptcy trust funds, bringing the total of pool of money for a national fund to $145 billion.

But an organized labor official said while Daschle's proposal was a step forward, it was not enough.

"It is a step forward in some key respects," said Peg Seminario, occupational health official with the AFL-CIO. "We still think this legislation will fall short of the mark ... We think the minimum that is needed is $149 billion."

Frist declined to comment on the details of his asbestos talks with Daschle. "We are going back and forth," he told reporters at a news conference on the Senate's agenda.

"We probably talked about it three times in the last week, but that's not unusual," Frist, who is from Tennessee, said.

Asbestos was widely used for fireproofing and insulation until the 1970s. Scientists say inhaled fibers are linked to cancer and other diseases. Companies have paid an estimated $70 billion on some 730,000 asbestos personal injury claims, according to the RAND Institute for Civil Justice.

Several senators have been working for over a year on legislation that would set up a compensation fund, to be financed by asbestos defendants and insurers, while ending the right of victims to sue in court.

Daschle and Frist said last month they would keep open the possibility of a deal on asbestos, after an effort by a senior appeals court judge to mediate among asbestos companies, insurers and labor representatives failed.

Labor representatives in those talks wanted $149 billion to cover claims stretching into the future, while businesses and insurers at that time were offering about $128 billion.

Frist told reporters that the hardest part was deciding how much money was needed to compensate victims adequately.

"If we can crack that piece, by working together at the leadership level, I think asbestos reform will become a reality. We still have a lot of work to do. It's very complicated," Frist said.

Shares of companies with outstanding asbestos liabilities rose between 2 and 10 percent Friday morning on the perception that progress was being made on the issue in Washington. But the stocks dropped back in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shares of building materials maker W.R. Grace & Co. were up 37 cents at $6.29, below an earlier year-high of $6.75. Energy services company McDermott International Inc. was up 25 cents to $10.12, below its session high of $10.79.

USG Corp., a building materials maker, was up 89 cents at $17.87, down from its early high of $18.50. Shares of insulation maker Owens-Illinois Inc. were up 31 cents to $16.81 after hitting a year-high of $17.40 earlier. Packaging products maker Crown Holdings Inc. was up 35 cents to $10.20, down from a year-high reached earlier in the session of $10.60. (Additional reporting by Janet McGurty)

� Copyright Reuters 2004.

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Utah Rescue Dogs Part of World Trade Center Follow-Up Study, by Elizabeth Neff, The Salt Lake Tribune, June 29, 2004

http//www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06292004/utah/179682.asp

It has been almost three years since Utahn Nancy Hachmeister and her German Shepard, Ivey, searched through the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York for survivors.

But now researchers are using medical technology designed for humans to see whether Ivey and other rescue dogs used after Sept. 11 might pay a price for their service.

Sniffing for survivors through smoke, dust, jet fuel, and asbestos exposed the dogs to known carcinogens that could lead to higher cancer rates, said veterinarian Liesa Stone. Working with the Iams Pet Imaging Center in Washington, Stone is taking MRI images of the dogs' head and nasal region to check their health as part of a five-year study.

Two of the 24 dogs taking part in the free imaging study, Ivey and a Labrador named Jake, live in Utah. A total of about 90 rescue dogs are also having their blood drawn and chest X-rays taken as part of the study in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania and the American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation.

So far, 10 dogs that worked as part of the 9-11 disaster team have been found to have cancer. Among them is Rookie, a Michigan police dog with a tumor in his right jawbone that was discovered early enough to be removed.

Still, no definitive link between the dogs and their work at the World Trade Center has been established.

"You can't make any conclusions until the end of the study because statistically you have to look at everything the age of animals, breed, locations of cancer, the normal risk," Stone said.

Mary Flood of Bountiful and her 9-year-old Lab, Jake, flew to Virginia last year for an MRI.

"It's fabulous what they are doing," she said. "They've got a baseline now of how Jake is, and he's doing fine."

The research could lead to owners finding ways to help their rescue dogs avoid cancer in the future, whether through diet or otherwise, Flood said.

She and her dog will head to Boston in August to get Jake recertified as a Federal Emergency Management Agency search specialist dog, a task that includes tests of agility, obedience, and ability to find victims in rubble.

Hachmeister's Ivey -- the fourth rescue dog she has owned in more than 20 years of working with them -- is also feeling fine.

She called the study a good idea.

"If it helps me down the road with my next dog, then it's worth it to me," said Hachmeister of Bountiful.

Ivey's reward for a job well done, her owner says, is getting to play fetch and a game of tug of war with her favorite toy -- a ball attached to a rope.

"It's all a game for them," she said. "Some dogs work for food, some dogs like Ivey work for a ball, and she'll go all day."

Any rescue dogs involved in 9-11 can get a free MRI scan at the Iams center, even if they are not a part of the study.

Using MRI machines on dogs has enabled veterinarians to make better diagnoses in recent years, Stone said.

"Before, we didn't know dogs had strokes," she said. "Now with MRI we do know they have them."

Getting an MRI for your family pet can be expensive, ranging between $800 to $1,000. But it can show what might otherwise require several exploratory surgeries, Stone said.

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EPA Releases 2002 Toxic Release Inventory Right-to-Know Compromised, OMB Watch, June 28, 2004

http//www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/2259/1/218

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2002 data for the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) shows a 5 percent increase in toxic releases to the environment. The agency's premier right-to-know program released the new data on June 23, one day after the Environmental Integrity Project published a report documenting levels of air toxins four to five times higher than previously reported.

Although EPA published the 2002 data online, it did not publish a full Public Data Release (PDR) as it has done in previous years. The lack of full analysis by EPA is putting the public's right to know at risk.

RTK NET, operated by OMB Watch, made the TRI data available on its site June 24.

Background

Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) in 1986 shortly after the Union Carbide chemical disaster in Bhopal, India killed thousands of people. The law aims to alert the public of any chemical facilities emitting toxins in their communities in order to avoid a disaster of the Bhopal magnitude.

The Toxic Release Inventory was created in 1987 under EPCRA, and mandates the collection of data on releases and transfers of certain toxic chemicals from industrial facilities for public disclosure. TRI has expanded over the years and is now EPA's premier database of environmental information. RTK NET developed a searchable online database for TRI and other environmental data in 1989.

Increase in Toxic Releases

Overall, toxic releases reported for 2002 fell 15 percent from 2001. However, this number is misleading due to massive underreporting by the mining sector. A 2003 court decision, Barrick Goldstrike Mines, Inc. v. Whitman, allows mining facilities to report far less toxic waste because they do not have to include waste rock. Barring the mining waste numbers that significantly skew the data, EPA reports that

Total disposal or releases of TRI chemicals increased by 5 percent (151 million pounds);
On-site disposal increased by 7 percent (196 million pounds);
Off-site disposal decreased by 8 percent (44 million pounds);
Total production-related wastes managed decreased by 4 percent (1.05 billion pounds);
Disposal or releases of persistent bio-accumulative and toxic chemicals increased 3 percent (11 million pounds);
Lead releases increased 3 percent (14 million pounds);
Dioxin releases decreased 5 percent (7,082 grams) from 2001, although these had increased by 43 percent from 2000 (42,188 grams); and
Mercury releases or disposal increased by 10 percent (465,962 million pounds).
The primary metals and utilities sectors reported the largest increases in disposal or releases. Primary metals' waste increased 39 percent (209 million pounds) and electric utilities increased by 3.5 percent (37 million pounds).

Underreporting

The June 22 report by the Environmental Integrity Project and Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention, indicates that EPA and state agencies are underreporting toxic air emissions by at least 16 percent, essentially hiding actual levels of emissions from the public. The study compares data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the EPA and then applies it nationwide.

The study examined 10 hydrocarbons covered by TRI that cause rapid ozone formation. Several of these chemicals, like benzene and butadiene, are known carcinogens. The report estimates at least 330 million pounds a year of these emitted toxins are not reported. Additionally, EPA's state pollution rankings change dramatically when the report's finding are applied nationwide.

The differences in reporting are largely attributed to the techniques regulated facilities use when reporting emissions -- most estimate releases instead of monitoring them. Furthermore, the estimated releases that facilities calculate can change drastically when different emission factors are used. EPA previously acknowledged that its emission factors are not accurate. Despite this, EPA completed a rulemaking earlier this year rolling back requirements for air monitoring by facilities.

The report contains a number of recommendations EPA should adopt, including more stringent regulations for air monitoring, a review of state-issued permits to ensure proper monitoring, and a re-examination of emission factors.

Public Data Release

While EPA posted the TRI data online, it no longer publishes a full Public Data Release (PDR), which includes easy-to-understand overviews of the data, detailed analysis, and supporting tables and information. Additionally, EPA no longer makes the companion State Fact Sheets report available in hard copy; this tool provides state-by-state data summaries, maps and other information.

The PDR serves as the official governmental figures on toxic releases. It is used by a large segment of the public through libraries and other avenues. It has been printed and widely disseminated each year since inception of the TRI program, in compliance with legal requirements to produce an annual report. For the first time ever in the TRI history, EPA is downsizing the PDR from the two-volume report, spanning hundreds of pages, to a six-page report.

EPA claims the public can access the same information previously available in PDRs from the online data. Not only is this a complicated and arduous task, but much of the information from the PDR cannot be obtained through the online services offered by EPA. Moreover, given there are updates to the TRI data throughout the year, there will be no "official" figures to use for comparative purposes. Thus, any future analyses will likely be criticized because numbers are unlikely to match in any two research efforts.

OMB Watch posted an action alert, urging EPA to continue publishing the full PDR in both online and paper formats.

� 2001-2004 OMB Watch

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E.P.A. panel continues to debate what to do, by Elizabeth O’Brien, Downtown Express, Volume 17 • Issue 5 | June 25 - July 1, 2004

http//downtownexpress.com/de_59/epapanelcontinues.html

Members of the public told an Environmental Protection Agency panel on Tuesday that the agency was losing time and jeopardizing their trust in its efforts to determine whether World Trade Center toxins remain in their communities.

Residents and workers voiced their frustrations about the pace of the panel’s inquiry during public comment periods at the June 22 meeting. Formed in March, the panel of government and independent experts is charged with recommending further action for the E.P.A. to take to measure the environmental impact of the World Trade Center disaster.

On Tuesday, panelists debated their responsibilities to sound science and to people who are anxious for answers about the health consequences of the Twin Towers’ collapse nearly three years after 9/11. Many panelists acknowledged the public’s support was critical to their efforts.

"If we spend a lot of money and a lot of time coming up with a program that the community has no faith in, then we’ve wasted our time yet again," said David Prezant, deputy chief medical officer for the New York Fire Department and a panelist.

The specter of the E.P.A.’s early response to 9/11 has hung over the panel since its inception. Last August, the agency’s independent inspector general released a report judging the E.P.A. acted without sufficient evidence when it declared the air Downtown safe to breathe one week after the World Trade Center collapse. Then, in 2002, the agency instituted a residential cleanup program that many Downtowners found to be poorly designed and run.

"Once trust is lost, then it’s very hard to regain, and I think some of the issues we’re facing right now are because of that," said Micki Siegel de Hernandez, a labor representative who served at the meeting as an alternate for Catherine McVay Hughes, the panel’s community liaison.

The panel has distanced itself from its original charge of overseeing the retesting of select Lower Manhattan apartments that registered for the E.P.A.’s voluntary cleanup, a program that sampled solely for asbestos in most of the approximately 4,200 participating apartments. Instead of the retesting approach, which would have gauged whether any recontamination occurred after the cleanup, panelists have recommended broader testing that would determine whether any W.T.C. toxins remain in areas exposed to the dust cloud, regardless of whether they resulted from recontamination or from the original event.

To this end, the panel has for the past few months discussed whether World Trade Center dust has a chemical fingerprint that would distinguish its origins beyond a doubt. Members continued to grapple with this topic at Tuesday’s meeting, asking questions related to the design of a testing protocol for example, would a certain proportion of man-made fibers, a characteristic element of W.T.C. dust, in a sample also indicate the presence of lead, mercury, or other contaminants of potential concern?

Community members pushed the panel on Tuesday to move beyond what they called its academic preoccupation with a W.T.C. dust fingerprint to the speedy application of a testing program that would sample for a wide array of contaminants.

"We know everyone has a day job and we’re trying to cut down and solidify the discussions," de Hernandez said.

By the end of the day, panelists showed support for an investigation into a W.T.C. fingerprint along with testing for a broad spectrum of contaminants.

"I think it’s perfectly reasonable for the labor and residential community to want to know after two and a half years, for the first time, what, if any, contaminants are in their workplaces and residences," Dave Newman, a panelist and an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, said after the meeting. "I’m pleased the panel seems to be moving forward in a comprehensive and expeditious manner."

Dr. Paul Gilman, E.P.A. assistant administrator for research and development and chairperson of the panel, told Downtown Express that the group was doing its best to meet its "diffuse charges."

"Everyone would like to do it a bit differently, and it is a challenge," Gilman said.

In March, Gilman said he hoped to have recontamination testing completed by the end of June. The process has lengthened considerably since the panel decided it would not follow in the footsteps of the previous E.P.A. cleanup, but instead will recommend a broader testing program. Under a rough timeline presented by a panelist on Tuesday, collection of samples could begin in approximately five months.

Members of the public also asked for a more formal mechanism for their participation at the panel’s monthly meetings, requesting among other provisions that funding be provided for an experienced facilitator to guide community involvement.

"The community does not wish to keep coming in here and making the same complaints," said Jo Polett, a Duane St. resident who has suffered respiratory problems her doctors attribute to the presence of World Trade Center dust in her apartment.

Michael Brown, an E.P.A. spokesperson, said after the meeting that the E.P.A. was exploring ways to engage an expert to facilitate community input and review of a sampling and testing plan. Brown also said the agency is also considering community members’ demand for a transcript to be made of each panel meeting.

Gilman said the next steps for the panel include selecting laboratories to participate in the testing program and identifying already existing samples of World Trade Center dust that could aid in the investigation.

Panelists and the public have asked for a budget for their proposed efforts, citing the difficulty of planning in the absence of any financial guidelines.

Gilman said he has tried to focus panel members away from monetary concerns at this stage. He said some Federal Emergency Management Agency funds remained from the initial E.P.A. cleanup, but that he did not want to engage the scientific experts on the panel in financial discussions.

"I’m trying not to have people talk about a budget context," Gilman told Downtown Express. "I want to hear what people believe to be the best approach�not the cheapest."

The E.P.A. is not bound to act on the panel’s recommendations. However, given that the panel was formed largely to restore public trust in the E.P.A. and its post-9/11 cleanup process, it is likely the agency will adopt whatever suggestions its resources will allow.

Elizabeth@DowntownExpress.com

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IBM Cancer Data Fuel Debate Over Publication, by Antonio Regalado and Willima M. Bulkeley, The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2001

http//online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108804002293846186-email,00.html

Efforts by International Business Machines Corp. to bar courtroom use of a controversial study of cancer-related deaths among its employees has erupted into a battle over academic freedom between health researchers and giant publisher Reed Elsevier.

A group of 13 occupational-health scientists said they have withdrawn their articles from a quarterly issue of the scholarly journal Clinics in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, owned by Reed Elsevier, after it declined to publish research indicating employees at IBM manufacturing plants have elevated rates of brain and other cancers.

The dispute reflects another twist in the continuing debate over environmental causes for cancer, and highlights the murky world where courtroom litigation and academic research intersect.

The study in question was prepared for the plaintiffs in a recent environmental-law case against IBM. It was conducted by Rebecca Johnson, a private consultant with Epi center Inc. in Circle Pines, Minn., and Richard Clapp, a well-known Boston University epidemiologist who once helped to document the link between cancer in Vietnam veterans and Agent Orange.

The research paper, a copy of which has been shared with media outlets, indicates that IBM employees at several electronics-manufacturing plants suffer elevated rates of kidney, brain and other cancers. The cases have sparked concern that chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing could become the next asbestos-scale threat, potentially leading to crippling judgments against IBM and other major corporations.

IBM lawyers have labeled the analysis "junk science" and tried to stop its use in a series of lawsuits in California and New York.

In October, during a case brought by workers against IBM, California Superior Court judge Robert A. Baines ruled that Dr. Clapp's study was inadmissible given the circumstances of the case. He said in court "This same study, again, assuming that it is a valid study, could be used to show any number of things, such as if ... everyone in manufacturing drank coffee in the company cafeteria ... coffee served in the company lunch-room causes cancer."

Yesterday, several separate cases brought by workers against IBM in California Superior Court in San Jose were dismissed under settlement terms that weren't disclosed. The dismissals eliminate a cloud for IBM, although it still faces more than one hundred cases in other states. (See related article.2)

Dr. Clapp's research grew out of work he did as a plaintiff's expert witness for cancer-stricken workers from an IBM disk-drive plant in San Jose. Their case, the one tried last winter, was the first to reach the courts of over 200 cases charging that IBM exposed workers to chemicals that allegedly caused cancers or birth defects.

During that trial, plaintiffs' lawyers obtained death-benefits records IBM kept on more than 30,000 deceased employees. Those records, known as "corporate mortality" files, are a potential gold mine for researchers, but few outside the company have ever had access to them.

But one of IBM's attorneys, Mary Ellen Powers, from the Washington, D.C., office of Jones Day, objected to Dr. Clapp's analysis being admitted. "It is a phony, litigation-driven study," she said, adding "This isn't peer-reviewed, it isn't published, and it wouldn't qualify for publication in any legitimate scientific journal." The judge agreed and IBM won the case.

In March, IBM says its lawyers sent a letter to Steven Phillips, a New York lawyer representing claimants in a number of New York cases against IBM, cautioning that Dr. Clapp should not attempt to publish his analysis because it was protected by court orders guaranteeing its confidentiality.

As IBM suspected, Dr. Clapp had been trying to publish his work, submitting it to the journal Clinics in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Dr. Clapp says he thought he should publish his study because there is a "dearth of scientific literature about the health of workers in the semiconductor industry and our results can help fill that gap." He says workers and their families who work in the industry should have access to the data.

According to his lawyer, Indira Talwani of Segal, of Roitman & Coleman in Boston, Dr. Clapp has the right to publish because IBM failed to seal a lengthy deposition taken in the San Jose case that contained parts of the analysis.

Dr. Clapp acknowledges that his science is mixed with activism, but that he is fighting to uncover environmental health dangers in an area where companies wield significant control.

The dispute landed at London-based publisher Reed Elsevier in May, when Dr. Clapp's article was submitted as part of a special issue of the quarterly on occupational health in the semiconductor industry. Elsevier says it decided that it couldn't publish Dr. Clapp's article because it was "original" research, and that the journal publishes only review articles. The journal is not peer-reviewed.

That explanation didn't sit well with Joseph LaDou, the journal's guest editor and director of the International Center for Occupational Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He had accepted the article, but, in an unusual move, was overruled by Elsevier executives. "I think they are really stretching it. They found a reason to reject it," says Dr. LaDou.

A spokesman for Elsevier insists its decision was based only on the article's format, and that IBM didn't threaten it with legal action. IBM says it never contacted the publisher or tried to stop publication. Elsevier, the publisher of 1,800 scientific journals, says it even tried to help Dr. Clapp find a more suitable outlet. Eventually, it suggested he publish in a journal owned by another company.

As of yesterday, Dr. LaDou says all 13 contributors to Elsevier's quarterly had agreed to pull their articles in protest.

Some of the authors involved in the boycott also played a role in the suits against IBM in San Jose. One professor, Robert Harrison from the University of California at San Francisco, was previously paid for his expert testimony on behalf of victims suing IBM. Dr. LaDou had been scheduled to testify for the plaintiffs before the judge ruled his testimony irrelevant.

The Elsevier authors now say that several other journals have expressed interest in publishing their work alongside the IBM study. However, Dr. Clapp says he is holding off while he revises his article to make sure it steers clear of any confidentiality orders. He also awaits further advice from his lawyers.

Write to Antonio Regalado at antonio.regalado@wsj.com3 and William M. Bulkeley at bill.bulkeley@wsj.com4
Senate Bill Includes Compensation for Cold War-Era Workers, by Libby Quaid, Associated Press, June 23, 2004

http//www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/politics/8994997.htm
WASHINGTON - James Mitulski died Sunday. Bob Anderson is hospitalized, recovering from surgery to remove his thyroid.

They and thousands of others developed cancer and other illnesses from radiation exposure at Cold War nuclear plants in Missouri and Iowa. The Senate voted Wednesday to compensate the former workers, adding the provision to a defense spending bill that is moving toward passage.

"They were the atomic warriors and they made what nobody knew at the time were great sacrifices of their health so we could end World War II," Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., said Wednesday on the Senate floor.

The measure would offer automatic medical payments of $150,000 apiece to former nuclear workers who have any one of 22 specific cancers and worked for St. Louis-based Mallinckrodt Chemical Co., a uranium dioxide producer for the Manhattan Project, and for the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Burlington, Iowa, which made high-explosive components and did final weapons assembly for the Atomic Energy Commission.

Current law already allows the former workers to seek compensation from the federal government, but they must apply individually through a system considered burdensome and time-consuming. It requires documents that show proof of employment as well as exposure to radiation, records that often are missing or were never kept.

"In Iowa over the last four years, we've discovered virtually no documents that exist that show what workers at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant were exposed to between 1947 and 1975," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

"These are people who are suffering, dying and who need help, and they have no place to turn to for help other than here in the United States Congress," Harkin said.

Harkin described how Anderson, a former Iowa ammunition plant worker who now lives in suburban Chicago, first brought the problem to the government's attention. He said Anderson recently had his thyroid removed because of cancer and is suffering from non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

"As we stand here today, Bob Anderson lies in a hospital bed, fighting yet another cancer," Harkin said. "All Bob Anderson is asking for is fair treatment."

Bond told colleagues how Mitulski, who lived in O'Fallon, Mo., lost his right foot to cancer and had at three other cancers. Mitulski slipped into a coma last week and died Sunday.

Sponsored by Bond and Harkin, the measure would extend the payments by creating a special designation for the Iowa and Missouri workers, a designation already extended to Cold War nuclear sites in Kentucky, Alaska, Ohio and Tennessee. Bond and Harkin maintain that similar circumstances apply to former workers in their states.

Denise Brock, whose father worked at Mallinckrodt from 1945 to 1960 and died of lung cancer in 1978, said the measure would change lives. Brock, of Moscow Mills, Mo., is an advocate for the former workers.

"It doesn't take cancer away," Brock said in an interview. "But I've watched my mom live on less than $1,000 a month."

Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., applauded the effort, saying, "There have been many tragic instances where people have fought for this compensation, have waited for what the law says they are entitled to, and have never gotten it.

"This amendment holds out hope now that we will be able to do justice in these cases," Talent said.

In Missouri, the measure would extend to workers at the St. Louis site as well as in Weldon Spring.

The government has little doubt the workers were exposed. In October, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reported radiation exposure to Mallinckrodt workers that was up to 2,400 times higher than what is considered permissible today.

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State Department Report Shows Increase in Terrorism, by Steve R. Weisman, New York Times, June 23, 2004

http//www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/politics/23TERR.html

WASHINGTON, June 22 � The State Department announced Tuesday that the number of significant international terrorism episodes rose slightly last year, and that the number of those injured in all international terrorism episodes went up by more than 50 percent. Both trends contradicted earlier findings cited by the Bush administration as evidence that it was winning the campaign against terrorism and later disowned as erroneous.

The new report, reflecting two weeks of efforts led by the State Department to review the original statistics, showed that the total number of international terrorist episodes rose to 208 last year from 205 in 2002. A first report, issued April 29, said the number had fallen to 190 from 198. The number of injuries resulting such episodes rose to 3,646 from 2,013 last year, instead of falling to 1,593 as the earlier report said.

The number of "significant events" in international terrorism rose by more than the State Department had earlier said, to 175 from 138 instead of to 170.

"Our effort is to put out the most accurate information we can," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said at a news conference on Tuesday, adding that "we have identified how we have to do this in the future in order to make sure that we don't run in to this kind of problem again."

The report's release was accompanied by an unusually testy exchange between Mr. Powell and reporters, who asked repeatedly about the comments made by Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage in April that the first report presented "clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" against terrorism.

"I'm aware of what Mr. Armitage said, and what Mr. Armitage said reflected the report as he received it on the 29th of April," he said.

Asked if the new statistics meant that the United States was not "prevailing," Mr. Powell said that he had to leave for a meeting at the White House but that two specialists would explain. "Here are the experts," he said. "They will tell you."

Left behind were J. Cofer Black, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, and John O. Brennan, director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, who asserted that a combination of technical and human errors, including an obsolete database and computer program, caused the errors.

For example, Mr. Brennan said that in preparing tables for the original report, titled "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003," a computer failed to generate statistics for the period after mid-November, leaving out several incidents. Officials vetting the information at the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department then failed to recognize what happened. But Mr. Brennan and Mr. Black insisted that there were no political motivations or efforts to gloss over the trends.

"We here in the Counterterrorism Office, and I personally, should have caught any errors that marred the `Patterns' draft before we published it," Mr. Black said. "But I assure you and the American people that the errors in the `Patterns' report were honest mistakes, and certainly not deliberate deceptions as some have speculated."

But the political damage appeared likely to continue as Democrats seek to make an issue of the administration's credibility, citing the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq and the assertions by President Bush and others of links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

But the Democratic lawmaker who had helped expose the flaws in the first terrorism report, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, commended the State Department for acting to correct it. He said he accepted Mr. Powell's explanation that the errors resulted from "incompetence," not politics.

"I give Secretary Powell a great deal of credit for admitting they have made a mistake and trying to rectify it," Mr. Waxman said. "He is the only administration official I can recall who has admitted to making a mistake."

Democrats charged that by saying the report showed the Bush administration was "prevailing," Mr. Armitage was taking a document that has been issued annually for 22 years and thrusting it into the political arena. State Department officials say Mr. Armitage had intended to cite the broad information in the report, including the progress in specific areas like Afghanistan.

In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Armitage said "I'm pleased that an accurate report has now been submitted, and of course we are going to prevail in the war on terrorism. But the numbers in the new terrorism report show that it's going to be a tough and difficult slog."

When the first report was published, there was little coverage.

Nearly three weeks later, an op-ed article in The Washington Post by two professors said the figures did not add up. A letter from Mr. Waxman was released about that time.

Then, after a story in The Los Angeles Times, Mr. Powell's staff reviewed the matter, and the department announced June 10 that the report contained many errors. Mr. Powell said he was "not a happy camper."

According to Mr. Black and Mr. Brennan, the main problem was that two years ago, the State Department, which had compiled terrorism statistics in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency, handed the job over to a new agency created as as a clearinghouse on terrorism data.

With fewer than 150 employees, this unit, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, is supposed to analyze threats reported overseas and domestically and figure out from where the next attacks may come.

But according to administration officials, C.I.A. and State Department officials then passed what they regarded as a tedious job of producing statistics for the annual report to the unit, which was understaffed and handicapped by turnover, old computers, software that did not work and other problems.

But some officials said Tuesday that the statistics themselves are arbitrary, dictated by American law. For example, the report does not include attacks by citizens of a country against citizens of the same country, because these are not regarded as "international" terrorism.

Nor does it include civilians killed accidentally by military action inside a country. Thus, foreigners killed by suicide bombs in Israel are included, but civilians killed accidentally by Israeli forces are not. American soldiers killed in Iraq are not included unless they are in a civilian setting, such as in a hotel bombing.

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Mayor Rescinds Invitation to a G.O.P. Congressman,by Michael Slackman, New York Times, June 22, 2004

http//www.nytimes.com/2004/06/22/nyregion/22mayor.html

A lunch planned for two Republican Congressional leaders at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's town house was canceled when the mayor disinvited an Ohio congressman who had voted against a plan that would have sent nearly $450 million to New York for domestic security, according to people who were scheduled to attend the lunch.

The lunch had been scheduled for the Republican leaders to tap wealthy New York donors. While the mayor has in the past called for wealthy donors to stop writing checks to politicians who act against the city's interests, his decision to personally withdraw an invitation to a member of Congress was the starkest example yet of his willingness to punish fellow Republicans when they go against the city's interests.

Mr. Bloomberg had originally agreed to hold the luncheon in his Upper East Side town house with the two Republican leaders, Representative Thomas Reynolds, who is from the Buffalo area and is chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and Bob Ney, an Ohio Congressman who is co-chairman of the committee's incumbent-retention effort. The purpose of the lunch was to help sell tickets to a July dinner at which President Bush is the scheduled keynote speaker.

But the invitation to Mr. Ney was canceled after he voted on Friday against an amendment that sought to shift $446 million from a nationwide antiterrorism program to one specifically aimed at New York City and other high-risk urban areas, according to people who were scheduled to attend the event. Mr. Bloomberg agreed to still host the lunch, but Congressional Republicans decided to cancel it altogether, said someone who was scheduled to attend the event. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 237 to 171, with lawmakers split largely along regional lines.

After the vote, Mr. Bloomberg accused Congress of making domestic security a pork-barrel program by giving money to rural areas at the expense of New York, which he said is more at risk as a terror target.

Mr. Bloomberg's aides declined to comment, though it was clear that while Washington officials were not eager to promote the conflict, City Hall had no such reservations. Mr. Bloomberg, who became a Republican shortly before running for office, has continually had to work to reconcile his loyalties to the party that helped make him mayor and to a constituency that is overwhelmingly Democratic. That balancing act has become even more delicate as the city prepares for the Republican National Convention, to be held in the city from Aug. 30 through Sept. 2.

In Washington, some Congressional aides questioned the mayor's motivations in rescinding the invitation.

"Perhaps they feel this can benefit the mayor in New York," said a Republican congressional aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It is not necessarily a smart thing to do, attacking members of your own party in Congress when you will continue to need to work together."

Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Ney had planned to ask people attending the lunch to buy tickets to the annual presidential dinner, an event to raise money to help elect and re-elect Republicans to Congress, said Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Mr. Forti would not say why the lunch had been rescheduled.

Mr. Reynolds, an upstate congressman, has supported New York's efforts to get more security dollars from Washington, but in his Republican leadership role he also has strong obligations to the national party.

One potential donor to the party, who also spoke on the condition of not being identified, said that other would-be contributors from New York support Mr. Bloomberg's decision.

"We have been talking about this for a long time," the potential donor said. "Anybody who knows the disparity between the amount of money we send to Washington in tax dollars and fund-raising, and what we get back, knows we lose out."

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Sick lungs, strong proof Post-9/11 air wasn't safe, Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, June 21, 2004

http//www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/205035p-176983c.html

After the hijacked planes struck the twin towers on 9/11, Julio Roig was among thousands of downtown workers who poured into the narrow streets from nearby buildings to watch the raging fires.

Like many on that terrible day, Roig, a project manager for an engineering consulting firm, was soon caught in the ferocious dust storm unleashed by the collapse of the first tower.

Nearly three years later, Roig suffers from granulomatous pulmonary disease, a severe scarring of the lung. The disease has so reduced his breathing capacity that his pulmonologist recently advised him he may need a lung transplant.

Roig, however, is one of the few people to demonstrate a direct link between his illness and toxic dust from Ground Zero.

His doctor, Benjamin Safirstein, a pulmonologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center, concluded in a peer-reviewed scientific article published in Chest Journal in January 2003 that "exposure to dust at the WTC accounted for his illness."

Safirstein was not simply guessing.

Roig, then 37, had returned to work in lower Manhattan on Oct. 3, and within two weeks he was suffering from shortness of breath, wheezing, severe cough and constant body aches.

In November 2001, chest X-rays and a CAT scan revealed numerous abnormal nodules in Roig's lungs, but none of the doctors he initially consulted could explain their origin. A chest X-ray taken ayear earlier during a regular checkup had detected no problems.

Roig eventually went to Safirstein, who advised him that only a lung biopsy could explain the source of the problem. Safirstein proceeded to collapse Roig's lungs and cut through his back to remove tissue samples.

Safirstein then reported that an electron microscopy scan of the tissue and other tests had revealed "large quantities of silicates" in Roig's lungs - the kind of silicates found in World Trade Center dust.

"The analysis came out pretty negative," Safirstein said last week. "We confirmed these strange granuloma," a form of pulmonary fibrosis.

Roig's worst symptoms were reduced substantially with months of steroid treatments, but the scarring of his lungs remains. Meanwhile, his breathing capacity has steadily worsened.

"He's declined about 20% over the past three years," Safirstein said. "If he continues to decline, then we have a serious concern."

And Roig may not be the only downtown worker or resident to suffer long-term health problems from WTC dust.

"All bets are off," Safirstein said. "We may not find the answers for years to come. These environmental disasters give us more information than any bench research can."

As for Roig, he's furious that federal and city officials advised New Yorkers that downtown's air was safe to breathe after 9/11.

"They should have declared the whole area a Superfund site and cleaned it up completely," he said.

Meanwhile, he's still battling with the federal government for adequate compensation. After applying for help from acompensation board set up by Congress, he was offered less than $50,000 for pain and suffering and is appealing the decision.

If he ends up needing a lung transplant because of that terrible day, Roig figures, his government owes him and his family something more.

All contents � 2004 Daily News, L.P.

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House Rejects Extra Security Aid to High-Risk Cities, by Raymond Hernandez, New York TImes, June 19, 2004

http//www.nytimes.com/2004/06/19/nyregion/19aid.html

WASHINGTON, June 18 - In a blow to the New York metropolitan region's antiterrorism efforts, the House rejected a move Friday to provide nearly $500 million to pay for security initiatives in cities believed to be at greatest risk of attack.

By a vote of 237 to 171 that largely split lawmakers along regional lines, the House rejected an amendment that sought to shift $446 million from a nationwide antiterrorism program to one specifically aimed at New York City and other high-risk cities.

The action brought swift condemnation from New York officials, who have long complained that the federal government gives out millions of dollars in security money to every state, regardless of its vulnerability, in pork-barrel fashion.

The harshest criticism came from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a Republican who announced that New York City was canceling its membership in the National Association of Counties to protest the group's opposition to the measure.

"We are not getting our fair share of Homeland Security money," Mr. Bloomberg said. "To say it's a disgrace is being too charitable."

"The fact of the matter is that when you catch a terrorist with a map in their pocket, the map is of New York City," the mayor said. In Albany, Gov. George E. Pataki, also a Republican, expressed his disappointment with the vote, noting that New York was far more vulnerable to a terrorist attack than other parts of the country.

"To allocate funding across the board to states as opposed to on a threat-based analysis is wrong," Mr. Pataki told reporters.

The battle over money for high-risk cities now moves to the Senate, where members of both parties have been more evenhanded in determining how aid is distributed.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, did not rule out offering an amendment seeking additional money for high-risk cities when the matter comes to the floor in the Senate.

"I'm going to continue to explore every legislative option we have in order to provide an adequate level of funding for New York's security needs," Mrs. Clinton said.

The measure defeated in the House was advanced by a group of New York lawmakers who spent days trying to round up support. Its two chief sponsors were Representative John E. Sweeney, a Republican from the Albany area, and Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat from Manhattan.

If the votes are any indication, the dispute is more complicated than a mere partisan fight. Seventy Republicans - many of them from large urbanized states like California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania- joined with 101 Democrats to support the measure. But 89 Democrats - many of them from heavily rural states - joined 147 Republicans to reject it.

The measure seeking the additional $446 million for high-risk cities was offered as an amendment to a bill that calls for providing $33 billion for the Homeland Security Department next year. The House later on Friday approved the overall $33 billion Homeland Security spending plan by an overwhelming 400 to 5.

The additional $446 million would have been squeezed out of roughly $1.2 billion set aside for emergency workers in communities across the nation, no matter their size or their vulnerability.

In all, the Homeland Security bill the House considered calls for providing slightly over $1 billion for cities believed to be at the greatest risk of an attack. The Senate version of the bill sets aside $1.2 billion for high-risk urban areas.

The issue is crucial to New York City officials. The city spends as much as $1 billion a year on antiterrorism measures, and the Bloomberg administration is seeking $400 million in federal security aid for the budget the mayor proposed for the fiscal year that begins in July.

In his comments on Friday, Mr. Bloomberg seized on the House vote as an opportunity to emphasize his concerns about the way Washington apportions security money.

He said "the political pressures" in Congress had turned the allocation of security money into a pork-barrel program in which small states received far more dollars per person than those states at greater risk, like New York.

The mayor said that New York, for example, gets about $5.47 a person in antiterrorism financing, while Wyoming receives $38 a person and Vermont receives $31.

In rambling comments that reflected his frustration and dismay, Mr. Bloomberg also criticized officials from largely agricultural states who have argued that they, too, desperately need federal money to protect the nation's food supply.

"Everybody can always say, 'Well, we have security issues,' " he said. "You know, one guy said to me that, 'Yeah, the corn and soybean crops are our food supply and therefore this country needs a food supply, we've got to protect it.' You know, I've never seen a terrorist with a map of a cornfield in his pocket. Come on. Let's get serious to what this is about, why this money should be going to places like New York City."

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Opposition Mounts to CDC Reorganization, by John Nash, Occupational Hazards, June 18, 2004

http//occupationalhazards.com/articles/12005

Occupational safety and health organizations, labor unions, academics, independent consultants and staff members from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are expressing opposition to the administration's reorganization of the CDC because they believe the change will dilute the research capabilities of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

The reorganization calls for NIOSH to be placed inside a new entity called the Coordinating Center for Environmental Health, Injury Prevention, and Occupational Health. In addition to NIOSH, the other previously separate CDC agencies included in this new cluster are the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Dr. Henry Falk will lead this coordinating center, and he will report through a new layer of management, called "executive leadership," to the CDC director.

In a June 17 letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) voiced opposition to the move, and suggested it may be time to move NIOSH from HHS to the Department of Labor.

"If these organizational changes proceed as proposed, they may signal an inability on the part of HHS and CDC to provide the necessary dedication to worker safety and health," ASSE President James Kendrick wrote.

A primary concern of ASSE members, the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics, and the Building and Construction Trades Dept., AFL-CIO, is that NIOSH will go from an agency reporting directly to the head of the CDC to an agency under the direction of interests that have no demonstrated commitment to occupational safety and health issues.

In an interview, NIOSH Director John Howard argued that having semi-autonomous agencies reporting directly to CDC's director was precisely the problem.

"All these different offices, centers and institutes had administrative structures and missions, and some of these are duplicative," Howard asserted.

The effort to sell the changes to CDC staff has failed, according to a letter from Frank Bove, of ATSDR. A position paper opposing the reorganization – also called the Futures Initiative – has received "hundreds of messages of support" from CDC staff members. Although Bove wrote that "whole branches and divisions" agreed with the position paper, "many staff at CDC are afraid to speak out against the Futures Initiative out of fear that they would be punished or would lose their jobs."

Among the problems Bove cited

Staff concerns about the changes are not being respected;

The Futures Initiative is being "railroaded" through at a "frenetic pace" via an opaque process;

What's needed at CDC is not structural change, but cultural change, such as "stronger public health advocacy," rather than "health marketing."

Another concern raised by critics of the reorganization is that it violates the intent of Congress in the OSH Act, which called for NIOSH to be an independent agency.

Also opposing the move is consultant and NIOSH critic Linda Chaff. Chaff harshly criticized NIOSH at a recent meeting of the National Advisory Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, saying that it has failed to issue enough Recommended Exposure Limits of hazardous chemicals.

Echoing a concern of other opponents of the reorganization, Chaff believes the reorganization violates the intent of Congress for NIOSH to be an independent agency.

"This will put NIOSH way down on the bureaucratic food chain," Chaff contended. "I don't think that's the way to make NIOSH more effective."

- James L Nash

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Mayor Takes Broader View When He Is the Donor, by Mike McIntire, New York TImes, June 16, 2004

http//query.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F5061FFB35540C758DDDAF0894DC404482
When it comes to giving campaign contributions in return for favors from public officials, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is pretty clear where he stands.
''It's called bribery,'' said the mayor, who has proposed to tightly restrict contributions from lobbyists and others doing business with the city.
But when the solicitous contributor turns out to be the mayor himself, that is a different story.
Mr. Bloomberg has contributed $5,000 to support Representative Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican who is chairman of a House subcommittee on homeland security. The mayor has not been bashful about what he wants in return more federal antiterrorism money for New York City.
Last October, Mr. Bloomberg publicly praised the congressman for helping to direct money to New York, promising ''to run a fund-raiser, personally, for Hal Rogers'' and urging others to do the same. Mr. Bloomberg followed up in March, when he contributed $4,000 to Mr. Rogers's primary and general election campaigns; a month earlier, he contributed $1,000 to a political action committee run by Mr. Rogers.
They are the only contributions to a Congressional candidate that Mr. Bloomberg has made so far this year, and the largest contribution by an individual to Mr. Rogers's campaign, according to federal elections records.
''It is highly ironic,'' said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group. ''What Bloomberg is doing is very targeted and precise because obviously he wants something in return. His giving of contributions is an unabashed acknowledgment that it gets results.''
Aside from an obvious difference -- he is not looking to personally profit from his donations -- the mayor's use of campaign contributions to lobby for domestic security grants looks a lot like the practice he is crusading against in New York. The mayor, a billionaire who finances his own campaigns, is proposing a $250 cap and no public matching money for contributions from people seeking, among other things, ''any grant received from the city.''
He has adopted a tone of moral outrage when speaking about the issue, saying that the expectation of influence inherent in the exchange of money is corrupt, and that ''anybody who doesn't understand that is being very na�ve.''
''If you take a look at who gives money in campaigns,'' Mr. Bloomberg said on Monday, ''it is people with a very big vested interest. They expect something for their donations.''
So how does that square with his own policy of rewarding members of Congress who use their influence to steer federal aid to New York?
William T. Cunningham, the mayor's communications director, said the comparison is unfair because Mr. Bloomberg is using contributions to help ''make the case for New York City, and not for personal gain.'' He said lobbying by government officials in such situations is proper and expected.
''There is a big distinction between what the mayor does on behalf of the city of New York and somebody trying to get business from the city to benefit themselves financially,'' Mr. Cunningham said. ''When you are trying to get federal money for New York City, if the mayor didn't use all means at his disposal, he would be open to criticism.''
Gene Russianoff, a senior attorney with the New York Public Interest Research Group, said that while the mayor's dual roles as critic and participant in various campaign finance systems were ''very unusual,'' he did not see a double standard.
''The distinction is, the mayor's goal here is to benefit the city, and not to line his pockets,'' he said.
Mr. Bloomberg's March contributions came a few days before the start of a series of hearings, presided over by Mr. Rogers, on the performance of the Department of Homeland Security. During the hearings, Mr. Bloomberg managed to have a question posed on his behalf by Representative John E. Sweeney, an upstate Republican, on the issue of federal financing for New York City. The mayor says the city has been shortchanged in such aid.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Rogers's office declined to comment yesterday.
It is not the first time the mayor has used campaign contributions to try to get something that he wanted for the city. Last year, he raised money for Senator Richard C. Shelby, an Alabama Republican and chairman of the Banking Committee, who has significant influence over New York City's request for billions of federal dollars for transit system improvements.
Other contributions he made last year were $25,000 to the Republican National Committee, $2,000 to President Bush's re-election campaign and $4,000 for Senator John McCain of Arizona.
As for Mr. Bloomberg's proposal to overhaul New York's campaign finance system, Mr. Lewis, whose organization investigates the role of money in politics, said it is ''ironic that it would be Bloomberg, of all people, proposing such a reform.'' Mr. Bloomberg spent $73 million of his own money in the 2001 mayoral race.
''Given that stat, and given the reality of how he entered politics, I guess you could say it's like Nixon going to China,'' he said.

Fire retardants' effects arouse safety debate, by Stephanie Ebbert, Boston Globe Staff, June 14, 2004

http//www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/06/14/fire_retardants_effects_arouse_safety_debate/

TORONTO -- For more than 30 years, the stuff of American life -- computers and hair dryers, sofa cushions and auto dashboards -- has increasingly been built from plastic and synthetics treated with chemicals to slow the spread of fire.

And at alarming levels, researchers are discovering, those fire retardants are building up in our bodies as well. A growing body of research shows that the chemicals, known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, are rapidly accumulating in people's blood, in mothers' breast milk, and in animals as remote as Arctic polar bears.

Concern about the rising measures of PBDEs has prompted three states and the European Union to ban two of the three forms of the chemical. Canada just declared all three forms toxic. But as momentum builds, scientists and regulators are running into a nagging knowledge gap Even the experts haven't proven PBDEs are causing humans any harm.

Last week, a conference on PBDEs drew nearly 200 researchers and academics from around the world to share research on the chemicals, which have been shown to cause reproductive and learning problems in animals. But firm data on human health effects remain elusive, and epidemiological studies are only now underway. The US Environmental Protection Agency has been evaluating and funding research into PBDEs, but has not decided that they pose an unreasonable risk to health or the environment.

In the absence of firm evidence on human effects, the movement to ban PBDEs is stoking a long-running debate over possibly toxic chemicals How much evidence is needed before the government steps in? Some manufacturers and scientists say the known benefits outweigh a still-unproven threat, but proponents of the "precautionary principle" maintain that, in the face of uncertainty, suspect substances should be deemed guilty before judged innocent.

"By the time we actually do know, we're going to be dealing with 25 or 30 years of legacy and we can't do anything about it," said Joel Tickner, assistant research director at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, who argues for banning PBDEs and using safer alternatives.

Used since the 1970s, PBDEs have proved popular with manufacturers because they can make plastics flame-resistant without turning them brittle or otherwise changing their properties. "They're the most effective [flame retardants]," said Peter O'Toole, US program director for the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, which represents the world's three manufacturers of PBDEs.

But scientists are growing increasingly alarmed about PBDEs because of their chemical similarities to a more famous family of chemicals largely banned a generation ago that continue to permeate the environment -- polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. The industrial oils, invented in the 1920s, were widely used in fire extinguishers, hydraulics, and transformers because they resisted flames and would not conduct electricity. But they were discovered accumulating in animals in the 1960s, just before an accidental leak into cooking oil in Japan led to children born with a skin disease, growth problems, and hampered IQs. The United States banned their production in 1976. Only later did studies resolve the questions of how they became toxic in the body, and suggest links to cancer and to learning and memory problems in children.

In the 1980s, after PBDEs were measured in the environment, European scientists began to turn their attention to this newer class of chemicals. In the 1990s, studies showed them turning up in women's breast milk; a Swedish study found the levels had increased 60-fold from 1972 to 1997. PBDEs build up in fatty tissues, making breast milk a good indicator of both the mother's exposure and the chemicals in a newborn's diet. Studies since then have found American women's levels to be much higher than women's levels in Europe and Japan; researchers suspect that's because two of the PBDE manufacturers are located in the United States, and because Europe and Japan have been voluntarily phasing out some of the chemicals for years.

"I often say PBDEs are the poster child for the precautionary principle," said Tom Webster, a Boston University School of Public Health professor conducting an analysis of PBDE levels in Massachusetts women. Researchers point to animal studies that showed learning and behavioral problems in newborn mice fed PBDEs at particular points of development, stoking fears that PBDEs could cause learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder in children.

A new analysis compared the "body burden" of chemicals in American women with the levels that caused problems in animals. About 5 percent of the women studied had much higher levels of PBDEs than the others, and those women's levels approached the concentrations of concern in animals, said Thomas A. McDonald, of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in the California Environmental Protection Agency. "They're pretty close, meaning the current margin of safety is small for these women."

Scientists are still trying to quantify how much of people's exposure to the chemicals comes from diet, or whether the chemicals, often found in household dust, are being inhaled. Researchers suspect some flame retardants leach out of plastics during the life of products. Typically, chemical exposure comes from diet, as pollutants in the atmosphere are taken in by fish, animals, and other wildlife, increasing in concentration as they move up the food chain to humans.

Some companies, not waiting for regulations, have already stopped using PBDEs. Dell now uses another flame retardant in its computer equipment, and the furniture maker Ikea has dropped them for alternative chemicals. But new chemicals also present unknowns, and there's an obvious cost-benefit analysis in the debate over a substance intended to promote safety. Untreated polyurethane foam was partly to blame for the fast-burning Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people last year; polyurethane treated with PBDEs burns more slowly.

Because of the difficult tradeoffs, regulators are remaining cautious about one of the three classes of PBDEs, known as deca, which the industry defends as benign. Maine legislators intended to ban all three compounds, but after resistance from the industry they approved a measure that says the state intends to ban deca in 2008 if a nationally available alternative is found. "They still gave themselves an escape valve," said the sponsor, Representative Hannah Pingree. "We were saying you must prove that this chemical is safe, which is, in a lot of ways, the way you wish you had gone with DDT or mercury or a lot of other things that took a lot of years of fighting and proving that there's something wrong with them."

Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at ebbert@globe.com

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U.S. Wrongly Reported Drop in World Terrorism in 2003, AP, New York TImes, June 10, 2004

http//www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/politics/11terr.html

WASHINGTON, June 10 - The State Department acknowledged Thursday that it was wrong in reporting that terrorism declined worldwide last year, a finding the Bush administration had pointed to as evidence of its success in countering terror.

Instead, the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department said. Statements by senior administration officials claiming success were based "on the facts as we had them at the time; the facts that we had were wrong," Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said.

When the report was issued April 29, senior administration officials used it as evidence that the war was being won. J. Cofer Black, coordinator of the State Department's Counterterrorism Office, cited the 190 acts of terrorism in 2003, down from 198 in 2002, as "good news" and predicted the trend would continue. Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, said at the time, "You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight." His office did not respond Thursday to a request for a statement on disclosures that some of the findings were inaccurate. The erroneous report, titled "Patterns of Global Terrorism," said that attacks declined last year to the lowest level in 34 years and dropped 45 percent since 2001, Mr. Bush's first year as president, when 346 attacks occurred.

Among the mistakes, Mr. Boucher said, was that only part of 2003 was taken into account.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Thursday that the errors were partly the result of new procedures for collecting data. "I can assure you it had nothing to do with putting out anything but the most honest, accurate information we can," Mr. Powell said said.

"Errors crept in that, frankly, we did not catch here," he said of the report, which showed a decline in the number of attacks worldwide in 2003.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said this week that the administration had refused to address his contention that the findings were manipulated for political purposes. Mr. Waxman wrote to Mr. Powell in May asking for an explanation.

Mr. Boucher said the department was preparing a reply. "We wanted to make sure that we give the congressman the best and most accurate picture of what we know and what's going on as we can," he said.

"When we are sure we have the new facts, the right facts, we will prepare an appropriate analysis and give you our assessment at that moment," Mr. Boucher said.
He said the errors began to become ap