Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

https://theintercept.com/2021/07/02/epa-chemical-safety-corruption-whistleblowers/

by voisin • 5 years ago

253 58 5 years ago

sschueller• 5 years ago

It won't be a vaccine that makes you sterile. It will be one of the chemicals that end up everywhere because of corruption at the only agency that would protect us.

This is also why those people for a unregulated free market are insane. Sure the company pedaling the dangerous chemical will eventual go out of business. But how many people will die and suffer and does anyone think that the people responsible will still around the decades later until the crime is found out?

All new chemicals should be assumed dangerous and require rigorous safety studies and we need to make absolutely sure these studies are independent.

Pumping millions of gallons of corexit into an oil spill should not be permitted if the ingredients are a trade secret. We need to know what goes where, same goes for chemicals used in fracking.

voxic11• 5 years ago

New chemicals save lives as well, they may be safer than existing alternatives or enable safer processes to be used or they may enable some new technology that saves lives (there is almost unlimited potential here, few areas of technological advancement are as wide impacting as improvements to materials).

It sounds like you are advocating for the precautionary principle, but what do you think about the counterargument that by blocking technological improvements before actually investigating their risk you could be doing more harm than you prevent.

Strong formulations of the precautionary principle... when applied to the principle itself as a policy decision, beats its own purpose of reducing risk. The reason suggested is that preventing innovation from coming to market means that only current technology may be used, and current technology itself may cause harm or leave needs unmet; there is a risk of causing harm by blocking innovation. As Michael Crichton wrote in his novel State of Fear: "The 'precautionary principle', properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle."
For example, forbidding nuclear power plants based on concerns about low-probability high-impact risks means continuing to rely on power plants that burn fossil fuels, which continue to release greenhouse gases and thousands of certain deaths from air pollution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Intern...

OnlineGladiator• 5 years ago

I'd never heard of the precautionary principle before, but the way you explain it is just circular reasoning used to straw man it as nefarious. Arguing for validation is not arguing to ban innovation - we just need some actual accountability (and ideally transparency) included in the process. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, whereas the article points out we are straight-up falsifying documents in order to push sales for chemical corporations.

What's the harm in actually knowing scientific data about the chemicals we're buying?

michaelmrose• 5 years ago

by blocking technological improvements before actually investigating their risk

How is not doing this not an obvious recipe for doom. The only ridiculous thing here is you have stated this as a binary instead of a continuum.

IfOnlyYouKnew• 5 years ago

If you allow the sale & use of new chemicals before they are proven to be safe, you don’t just run the risk of them eventually turning out to be unsafe. You also remove all incentives to actually investigate their safety.

We’ve also found most of the low-hanging fruits of material science. Can you think of a single new chemical that came out in the last decade or two that is worth the risk of something like, say, Teflon seeing widespread use and then being shown to be carcinogenic?

…and Michael Crichton’s State of Fear is his pseudoscientific turn to the dark side, a wild recounting of dozens of superficial arguments trying to proof that climate change isn’t real, years after they had been disproven.

specialist2• 5 years ago

Do you release products without testing them? That's the precautionary principle.

revolvingocelot• 5 years ago

New chemicals save lives as well [...] what do you think about the counterargument that by blocking technological improvements before actually investigating their risk you could be doing more harm than you prevent.

What about chemicals that are relentlessly studied, but for some reason can't seem to be regulated at all? Try reading a little about PFAS, darling wonderchemical of DuPont, which is in everything from takeout containers to furniture to dental floss, will never break down in the environment, and causes everything from low birth weight to decreased penis size to cancer. [0]

This is preventable harm, but note how this awful chemical is regulated by no one, and can barely be tested for. Oh, wait, they're going to regula--

"Amid growing public concern, the EPA announced in February it would begin the process of regulating PFOA and PFAS in the next two years (these regulations, if issued, would not apply to other PFAS chemicals)." [0]

Look at how incredibly difficult it is to prevent the blanketing of the world with PFAS, and how toothless the too-late regulation of it -- and not its structural analogues -- will be. The only entities seemingly capable of new chemistry are utterly disinterested with the consequences, and the impotent regulators won't force them to care: it's insane to support new chemical development. It's going to be poison.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/23/pfas-everyda...

atatatat• 5 years ago

This is also why those people for a unregulated free market are insane.

Unfair tangent, because if it was a truly free market, the government wouldn't hold a monopoly on violence.

CommanderData• 5 years ago

People and their arguments pushing for less regulation still surprise me. It's a bad idea yet someone will rise from the depths to argue why it isn't.

What doesn't surprise me is there's always someone with a counter argument no matter how illogical it is. The world's a big place.

GaryTang• 5 years ago

I’m willing to bet it will be one of the chemicals introduced to public water by your local utility company.

kingsloi4• 5 years ago

My little girl was born with really rare heart disease and a genetic condition, a boy a few streets behind us developed a really rare cancer.

- https://kingsley.sh/posts/2021/staggering-cost-of-surviving-...

- https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/ind...

This comes a year or so after a ArcelorMittal spilled ammonia and cyanide into Lake Michigan, and didn't sound the alarm for a few days. My wife and I were swimming in it during those days, and not to mention we live down wind from many other steel processing plants, oil refineries, mills of other descriptions, etc. https://elpc.org/projects/suing-lake-michigan-polluter-arcel...

I think during the early pandemic, EPA reporting restrictions were lowered? Given the shoddy response from the 2019 spill, I lost hope that any future spill would be reported, unless many fish/wildlife were also killed and spotted. https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation...

I run an air quality sensor: https://millerbeach.community and hoping to upgrade the sensor to track more pollutants. I'd love to test water quality of Lake Michigan, too. It's stuff like this that make me realise I'm doing a community service running my sensor.

voisin4• 5 years ago

I am sorry to hear about the personal impact to your family.

I think things like the air quality sensor you run are the actual solution here. In the absence of government officials doing their job properly, it is up to individuals to do it for themselves.

I wonder if there would be an open source solution for water quality testing and air quality testing, and if enough could be built by citizen hackers to create a distributed screen and alert system for pollutants.

kingsloi4• 5 years ago

Thank you, I appreciate it. I can only bring awareness to it, one man vs mega polluters is an impossible fight.

I live a stone's throw from the Lake Michigan shoreline, and would happily go out there daily to get a water sample, before my normal 9-5. If anyone is interested in hacking something together.

The air sensor I run is open source, for anyone interested.

briefcomment• 5 years ago

I like PurpleAir's crowdsourced air quality map[1]. Their sensors are one of the few that get down to the .3 micrometer level.

[1]https://www.purpleair.com/map

reedjosh• 5 years ago

In the absence of government officials doing their job properly, it is up to individuals to do it for themselves.

I agree, I just wish the government would also not take my money to not do the job. Worse still is the false sense of safety instilled in the populace.

ClumsyPilot• 5 years ago

"In the absence of government officials doing their job properly, it is up to individuals to do it for themselves."

Does 'it' include seizing the means of pollution and dismantling them brick by brick? Otherwise you'll be in same situation as my town in Russia, where everyone knowns about a polluting zink refunery upwind, and it's still giving thousands of people cancer.

totetsu• 5 years ago

In Japan after 3/11 there was a citizen movement to track radiation because the govenment data, and collection was questionable. Im not.sure of the details, but the govt hit back pretty hard, and even introduced new official secrets legislation.

fogdart• 5 years ago

How did you set up that air quality sensor? Can you post a link to it?

topspin2• 5 years ago

Why are the various 'manager' names carefully avoided in this sort of reporting? Many other names, including the whistleblowers, are prominently offered. What rule is the Intercept complying with that has them bleep out (thus we known these names are known) the name of a manager in the audio and assiduously omit any manager names in the writing?

Names would reveal relationships. Doubtless these managers are former or prospective Dow employees, or related or have some other pedigree of corruption. That's how all of this works. Failure to name names contributes to the problem.

jacquesm• 5 years ago

But if you steal a tin of catfood your name will be in the newspapers for the whole world to read and google three decades later.

kingsloi4• 5 years ago

Same thing applies for dumping ammonia and cyanide in say Lake Michigan, you or I would get charged with water supply terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_terrorism, but do it as part of the steel process and it's a magical loop hole

gumby2• 5 years ago

Typically only once you’ve been arrested.

voisin4• 5 years ago

Probably trying to avoid libel since nothing has been proven in court.

wbl• 5 years ago

Truth is an absolute defense to libel in the US. Furthermore because this is the sort of reporting on a matter of public concern that society benefits from the standard gets tighter: it's not enough to show something was false, you have to show the publication should have known or acted maliciously in publishing. Incredibly high bar.

gumby2• 5 years ago

Why are the various 'manager' names carefully avoided in this sort of reporting? Many other names, including the whistleblowers, are prominently offered.

I assume that the whistleblowers quoted spoke directly with the reporter while the managers did not.

Usually a paper will say “we asked the manager for comment but they did not respond”. Who knows if the Intercept even did that?

zug_zug3• 5 years ago

I agree 100%. If I were one of these scientists, my manager's name would be leaked onto social media by some anonymous account and that internet angst would be put to good use. Crimes of corruption that lead to birth defects in babies for the sake of corporate profits are so outrageous that having to answer in the public square for it is befitting.

tru3_power• 5 years ago

I don’t understand what’s in it for the people pushing for these approvals. Are they getting kickbacks?

scrps• 5 years ago

Jobs, google "Regulatory capture"

voisin4• 5 years ago

There is intense pressure to please big corporate interests. I see it in my field often. I have no idea where it comes from. I think maybe fear of the power big corporates have? Fear that their higher ups won’t protect them?

ethbr03• 5 years ago

At the highest level, the revolving door and cushy "retirement jobs" in industry.

And once you have the bosses in your pocket, they exert pressure down the chain.

Middle management isn't getting the real pressure, but their bosses are breathing fire down their necks, telling them expectations.

kbenson• 5 years ago

I always assumed it was the dark corollary of trickle down economics, and one of the few places it works. You throw a bunch of money at a higher up, and the pressure flows downhill. Just like something else that flows downhill that we're all aware of.

Eventually you end up with a system where there's a buffer of a few layers between the people benefitting and the people actually signing off on something, and after a while it's not explicit as much as "a feeling I got that my managers expected this to go through."

sumedh• 5 years ago

I have no idea where it comes from.

One reason could be that company provides jobs so a politician can say he/she brought jobs to the area.

mtreis86• 5 years ago

Do they mention which chemicals were involved?

chrisked• 5 years ago

zug_zug3• 5 years ago

I try not to get emotional, but part of me thinks if death penalty were applicable to such crimes it would be an extraordinarily pragmatic decision. The history of chemicals damaging American lives due to corruption is long and sordid. Many of these chemicals, if improperly classified, can ruin an order of magnitude more lives than any serial killer.

It can be rather shocking and disturbing to remind oneself exactly how fragile our bodies are to even the tiniest amounts of certain chemicals, particularly in vitro.

thescriptkiddie• 5 years ago

I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty and to punitive prison sentences in general, but I do feel like there needs to be some kind of extra harsh treatment for people who do things like this. I'm honestly at a loss for what it might be. Maybe public humiliation, or exile?

autoexec• 5 years ago

mass poisoning is psychopath territory. Take the people responsible and throw them in mental hospitals to be evaluated and hopefully treated. It's that or prison. In any case they need to be kept away from the rest of society because they've already demonstrated that they'll hurt large numbers of people in monstrous ways just to satisfy their own greed. I'm not at all interested in vengeance. I think it's tragic to have to keep some people locked up, but the public needs to be protected from people like that.

yunohn• 5 years ago

I agree with most of your comment around harsher punishments for corruption, especially when it involves public health in this manner. Not sure a death penalty will solve anything though.

The history of chemicals damaging American lives due to corruption is long and sordid.

Is there a reason you specifically called out “American” lives here? Is it that you believe the perpetrators aren’t American somehow? Or that, when American companies harm the public in other countries, it doesn’t matter? Would really like to know more.

anm89• 5 years ago

There should be manslaughter charges here.

graderjs• 5 years ago

This is so tragic, and just wrong. Actively changing scientist's recommendations and assessments because a company "balked" at the very standards and methods that are designed to keep it and its environment safe? This is the very reason the EPA was created to begin with, so this kind of stuff does not happen. That's so fucking sad that it's not only happening on their watch, but from inside the EPA itself. Such a tragedy...And to the commenter who said it had to do with Trump, no this had nothing to do with Trump. While Trump did make many unusual, business-focused appointees for department heads, the issue of corruption is as old as human institutions themselves. I'd only hoped the robust institutions in the states wouldn't so blatantly fall prey to this kind of bogus horseshit. Trying to shift the convo to Trump or suggest this is actually orange man bad's fault is actively harmful to a fruitful discussion about this, because it provides active cover for the real perpetrators. But sure, keeping pointing the finger of blame at Trump for everything while the real perps slip right through your other fingers, chump.

Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

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