EPA Paper Faults Agency for Thousands of Deaths

by Elizabeth Shogren

All Things Considered, October 3, 2006

· Internal government documents obtained by NPR
indicate that the Environmental Protection Agency
could have saved thousands of lives each year if it
set a stricter standard for soot in the air we
breathe.


Last month, when EPA administrator Steven Johnson set
a new standard for how much soot is safe to breathe,
he rejected EPA's scientific advisors recommendation
to make it tougher. A draft EPA analysis shows that if
he had taken their advice, the stricter standard would
have saved about twice as many lives each year.


John Walke from the environmental group Natural
Resources Defense Council says the documents show how
deadly Johnson's decision will be for Americans.


"What these explosive charts reveal is that by
refusing to strengthen our air quality protections,"
Walke said, "EPA's political boss sacrificed the lives
of five to 10,000 Americans each year, who will now
die from air pollution related strokes and heart and
lung disease."


Walke provided the documents to NPR. A Bush
administration official confirmed their authenticity.


The documents show estimates of how many lives would
be saved by the new soot standard -- and how many more
would have been saved by the stricter standard
recommended by the science advisors.


In estimates from 12 scientists who had been
hand=picked by the EPA, all agreed that more lives
would be saved if the EPA had chosen a stricter
standard. Most of them put that number at more than
4,000.


New York University Medical school professor Morton
Lippmann was one of the 12 experts whose opinion was
listed. Lippmann said that the decision has serious
consequences, because fine particles from power
plants, vehicles and factories are lethal.

"You can mention a few other things that affect public
health more," Lippmann said, "like cigarette smoking,
but you have to get to an issue like that before you
get something with more impact than the effect of fine
particles on mortality."

Lippmann was also a member of the scientific panel
whose advice was originally rejected when EPA
announced the new standard. The scientists wrote a
letter to EPA Administrator Steven Johnson. According
to the letter, the standard "does not provide an
adequate margin of safety requisite to protect the
public health."


In most cases, the EPA releases analysis of the costs
and benefits of a new standard when it announces
changes. But in this case, that still has not
happened.


Lippman says that the EPA seemed to go out of its way
to ignore the strong message scientists were sending
-- and to make it hard for the public to see just how
strong that message was.


"There's very little doubt that it's not only
inappropriate to ignore the evidence readily at hand,"
Lippmann said, "but it doesn't seem to be consistent
with past practice either."


EPA officials declined to speak on the record. In a
statement, EPA press secretary Jennifer Wood did not
comment on the internal documents. She said that the
soot standard is the most protective in history. And
she said EPA officials still are working on an
analysis of the risks and benefits of the new
standard.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6189892