Saving Secret Science
By Steven Milloy and Michael Gough
Copyright 1999 New York Post
May 24, 1999
Rep. James Walsh, an upstate Republican, apparently wants New
Yorkers to spend
billions of dollars annually based on the
Environmental Protection Agency's
"secret science."
In 1996, the
EPA proposed new, more stringent national air-quality standards,
estimated to cost
New
Yorkers as much as $3.3 billion annually and a loss of 10,000 jobs.
The
EPA's justification? It claimed the rules would save 15,000
American lives per year.
But that claim was based on a single scientific study (the
"Pope study"). And that study wasn't published in (and
therefore peer-reviewed via) a
top-line journal such as the New England Journal of
Medicine, but a journal of the American Lung Association - a group
that gets
millions in
EPA grants and lobbied actively for the new air-quality
regulations.
Only the
EPA has ever seen the Pope study data - and when Congress requested
the data for
independent examination, the
EPA refused.
Under political pressure, it relented - and the researchers took up
the
stonewall.
They claimed proprietary right to the data - event though
the study was paid
for with taxpayer dollars, was being used to impose huge costs and
was
requested by a Congress hardly interested in going into the
scientific research
business.
The
EPA then cavalierly disregarded all objections - from its own
science advisers,
Congress and a bipartisan group of governors and mayors - and
imposed the new
regulations.
Industry sued. Congress legislated.
A new law extends the Freedom of Information Act to cover
taxpayer-funded
studies which are used to justify federal
regulations. This would prevent agencies from regulating on the
basis of
"secret science."
Now Rep. Walsh is leading a charge to have this
"sunshine in the government" law repealed: He's set to
present an amendment today to block the law.
The
EPA is confident the
"data access" law is doomed: It's now using the
Pope study to justify new rules covering gasoline's sulfur content
and
sport-utility-vehicle tailpipe emissions.
The
EPA claims the rules will cost $3.5 billion a year - to save up to
2,400 lives per
year. Is that claim accurate? Who knows? The
EPA continues to
refuse access to the Pope study.
Fortunately for now, a federal court this month found the
EPA's air-quality standards to be unconstitutional. But the
EPA is unlikely to give up. Assuming the agency can figure out a
constitutional
way of regulating, Rep. Walsh is helping ensure that the
science won't face public scrutiny.
Steven Milloy is an adjunct scholar with the Cato
Institute. Michael Gough is a senior scientist with the Competitive
Enterprise Institute.
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