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Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:50:06 -0500 (EST)
To: Andrew Skol <askol &AElig umich.edu>
cc: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Politics hijacking science and our health
Status: O

 From this week's onion:

EPA To Drop 'E,' 'P' From Name
 WASHINGTON, DC -- Days after unveiling new power-plant pollution
regulations that rely on an industry-favored market-trading approach to
cutting mercury emissions, EPA Acting Administrator Stephen Johnson
announced that the agency will remove the "E" and "P" from its name.
"We're not really 'environmental' anymore, and we certainly aren't
'protecting' anything,"  Johnson said. "'The Agency' is a name that
reflects our current agenda and encapsulates our new function as a
government-funded body devoted to handling documents, scheduling meetings,
and fielding phone calls." The change comes on the heels of the Department
of Health and Human Services' January decision to shorten its name to the
Department of Services.


--- \/   FROM Andrew Skol AT 05.03.22 09:47 (Yesterday)   \/ ---

> Hi all,
>     Below are the first three paragraphs of a WP article that talks
> about how the EPA not just ignored, but kept from public record, a
> Harvard University study that showed that the current mercury level
> regulations being put forth by that agency are insufficient to protect
> public health.  And can you imagine if we just allowed industry to
> regulate itself, as Bush would like.
>
> Andrew
>
> New EPA Mercury Rule Omits Conflicting Data
> (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55268-2005Mar21.html)
> Study Called Stricter Limits Cost-Effective
>
> By Shankar Vedantam
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Tuesday, March 22, 2005; Page A01
>
> When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to
> limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized
> that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to
> industry already far exceeded the public health payoff.
>
> What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by
> the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other
> EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion.
>
> That analysis estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA
> did, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public
> documents, said a staff member who helped develop the rule.
> Acknowledging the Harvard study would have forced the agency to consider
> more stringent controls, said environmentalists and the study's author.
>

-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  google://"Daniel Reeves"

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."
 -- Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television.