The EPA is toying with changing the way it estimates the potential cancer risk for people who inhale asbestos fibers. The corporations that use or formerly used asbestos are on one side and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization and physicians who have treated thousands of asbestos victims are on the other.
Scientists paid by the asbestos industry are pressuring the EPA to pronounce that chrysotile asbestos, which made up the bulk of asbestos used in the United States, isn’t really harmful, even if other types of asbestos are deadly. The asbestos corporations—looking for a way to avoid compensating asbestos victims—have spent millions to support “research” to show that their asbestos products are safe.
But Dr. Michael Silverstein of the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences has submitted a report signed by 83 of the nation’s premier public health authorities outlining the harm caused by this science-for-hire practice. David Michaels, former assistant secretary of the Department of Energy for Environment, Safety and Health, has also documented how this bogus science is conducted on behalf of manufacturers of not just asbestos, but other hazardous substances as well. The corporations’ scientists profit by helping corporations to weaken public health and environmental protection and to fight personal injury claims, explains Michaels. The EPA’s own experts have advised the agency that the reason for the asbestos industry’s urgency in getting a new risk assessment passed is their lobbyists’ recognition that big business may not long have such a good friend in the White House and in EPA Administrator Steve Johnson.
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