More dubious cries of doom

Editorial Copyright 1998 Boston Herald August 2, 1998

A couple of events last week prompt a warning: Beware environmentalists crying doom.

The CATO Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, called attention to the Environmental Protection Agency's attempted end runs around its own outside scientific advisers to cozy up to international agencies so they would support its drive to convince everybody that dioxin causes cancer.

And the Public Interest Research Group joined the Clean Air Network in claiming that "millions" of people are breathing "air that is dangerous to their health" - air that fails to meet EPA's new, not-yet-effective standards for ozone, a major component of smog.

Dioxin is a powerful cause of cancer in lab rats. Many scientists have been looking for proof of dioxin-caused human cancer for two decades.

The EPA's Scientific Advisory Board said in 1995 the only human disorder known to be caused by dioxin is chloracne, a nasty skin disease sometimes produced in workers accidentally exposed to large quantities of the stuff. The board told the agency to revise its risk assessment and resubmit it, something that still hasn't been done.

In the meantime, the EPA has been busy helping the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the World Health Organization. The cancer agency said last year that dioxin does cause cancer, and the health organization said this year it might be causing "subtle" other effects as well.

These things might be true. But they are pronouncements from closed-door meetings of bureaucrats. The meetings of the agency's Scientific Advisory Board, whose members come not from government but from universities, industry and advocacy groups, are public, CATO points out. All its studies and minutes are available, and anybody may submit comments. Its conclusions are entitled to much greater respect than those reached in a closed process.

It's always difficult to change your mind in the light of new facts, but EPA's opinions seem to need small nuclear explosions to revise.

As for air pollution, the "millions at risk" proposition is a crock of nonsense that environmental groups try to sell the public every year. By law, EPA must set pollution standards with an adequate margin of safety to protect sensitive groups. The new standards incorporate such a margin.

So the fact that some people are breathing substandard air means nothing more than that they are breathing air contaminated somewhere within that margin of safety. Without knowing how many people are vulnerable at each concentration of ozone, the Public Interest Research Group has no way of knowing how many people really are at risk.

Nonsense like this puts in jeopardy much good work against real environmental problems.

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