Politics clouding objective science: Secondhand smoke; EPA manipulated information to fit policy

Letter to the editor Copyright 1998 Ventura County Star August 30, 1998

A serious question now arises following the recent decision by U.S. District Court Judge Osteen invalidating a portion of the Environmental Protection Agency's 1993 report on the respiratory health effects of passive smoking. Did the EPA commit to this conclusion before the research had even begun? And did the EPA disregard some important research and make its initial findings on selective information?

For example, the EPA's final study did not include the statistical analysis from two other important studies that were available at the time. Those studies, even using the same methodology as the EPA, would have shown that environmental tobacco smoke led to no statistically significant increases in the risk of lung cancer.

The EPA announced in 1992 that secondhand smoke posed a major risk of lung cancer. Also that year, the Occupation Safety and Health Administration suggested that secondhand smoke posed a major risk to workers.

Based on the EPA's finding, states and municipalities continued to ban or restrict smoking in public places. Since then, businesses have spent millions of dollars to comply with local smoking restrictions.

Then, in November 1995, after a 20-month analysis, the Congressional Research Service released a comprehensive analysis of the scientific data used by the EPA in making its determination. It found that the EPA used a lower standard of risk assessment than the agency had used for other substances, and questioned the EPA's conclusions.

For example, the human and animal evidence that diesel exhaust is carcinogenic appears to be stronger than that for environmental tobacco smoke. However, in 1994, the EPA provisionally classified diesel exhaust as a "probable human carcinogen."

The standards of objectivity that prevail in legitimate science were repeatedly violated in the EPA's risk assessment of secondhand smoke. EPA utilized individuals with anti-smoking biases. For example, one member of the EPA was an active member of a major U.S. anti-smoking organization.

Further, the Science Advisory Board that examined the EPA's secondhand smoke work included a leading anti-smoking activist and others who were outspokenly critical of tobacco. Objectivity was further placed in jeopardy when some of the work related to risk assessment was contracted out to one of the founders of a major anti-tobacco organization.

The two most important studies (at the time) excluded for consideration by the EPA were studies by Brownson, et al., which was published in 1992, and Fontham, et al. Had these two studies been considered, it would have resulted in a risk assessment that was not statistically significant, even using the 90-percent confidence interval. With its entire study results at risk, it is easy to see how the EPA excluded these works from its analysis.

This makes one suspicious that the EPA is not practicing objective science, but rather "political science." Other scientists apparently share the same concern. Alvin Feinstein, a Yale University epidemiologist, said that he heard a prominent epidemiologist admit that the EPA's secondhand smoke study was "rotten science, but it's for a worthy cause. It will help us get rid of cigarettes and to become a smoke-free society." But should we use corrupted science as a basis for public policy? Should science be adjusted to fit policy?

The debate about environmental tobacco smoke, to me, a nonsmoker, is not really about smoking, but rather it is a debate about the integrity in science and how the EPA manipulated that science for political purposes.

-- Robert L. Sexton is a professor of economics at the School of Public Policy and Seaver College in Malibu.

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