The Environmental Protection Agency jiggered the facts to push its notion that passive smoke causes cancer. The EPA's dishonesty was recently laid bare in court. But this was too late for thousands of businesses and towns that responded to the EPA's junk science by passing anti-smoking measures.
In '93, the EPA released a report on secondhand smoke. It claimed that evidence showed that environmental tobacco smoke, or ETS, is a Group A carcinogen. Secondhand smoke causes cancer in humans, said the EPA.
Highly respected scientists questioned the EPA's findings. But the big-government crowd and health storm troopers gleefully waved the report in lawmakers' faces. They demanded that something be done.
Soon, airlines, offices, restaurants and even bars declared smoking verboten. Smokers effectively became lepers. All based on bad science.
Tobacco companies sued. The result? U.S. District Judge William Osteen issued his 92-page ruling against the EPA on July 17. Some of its findings:
* "EPA failed to comply with the procedural requirements set forth by Congress."
* "EPA failed to comply with the requirements" of the Radon Research Act, which it used to conduct its ETS research.
* The EPA's indoor-air quality commission "did not include individuals from industry or representatives from more than one state," as required by law.
* "Using its normal methodology and its selected studies, EPA did not demonstrate a statistically significant association between ETS and lung cancer. . . . Instead, EPA changed its methodology to find a statistically significant association."
* "EPA began drafting a policy guide recommending workplace smoking bans before drafting the ETS Risk Assessment."
* "Rather than reach a conclusion after collecting information, researching, and making findings, EPA categorized ETS as a 'known cause of cancer' in 1989."
* The EPA's "administrative record contains glaring deficiencies."
* "EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun."
* The EPA "adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the agency's public conclusion, and aggressively utilized the (Radon) Act's authority to disseminate findings to establish a de facto regulatory scheme intended to restrict plaintiffs' products and to influence public opinion."
* "EPA disregarded information and made findings on selective information. . . . (The EPA) failed to disclose important findings and reasoning, and left significant questions without answers."
In short, the EPA lied.
How do you go back and undo what the EPA did? You can't. The myth is enshrined. The big lie is fact.
Even with this callous disregard for the truth, the Environmental Propaganda Agency still found that the relative risk associated with ETS and lung cancer is 1.19 - far below the accepted minimal standard of 3 to 4.
For comparison, the relative risk of premature death associated with drinking three cups of coffee per week is 1.3. Drinking whole milk and lung cancer? 2.14.
No word yet on the health risks of passive drinking of coffee or milk. But give the EPA some time.
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