BY BECKY FENGER | MAY 23, 2012
EPA's human testing
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
~ Sir Walter Scott
It's high time for Americans to realize that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is our enemy, and not our friend and savior. Foaming-at-the-mouth employees there have been pulling some really bone-headed moves for quite some time now, but the discovery of their latest maneuver should be the last straw.
Did you know that the EPA conducted air pollution experiments on live human subjects that discredit its claims that fine particulate matter (PM2.5) kills people? Of course not. It took use of the Freedom of Information Act for Steve Malloy, author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, to ferret out their scandalous behavior. His findings appeared in a Washington Times article but were not picked up by the major media.
Malloy asks us which we find more shocking: that the EPA conducts experiments on people that its own risk assessments claim are potentially lethal, or that they hide the results from Congress and you and me because the findings prove their risk assessments wrong? Either they knew they were telling bold-faced lies about fine particulate matter or they didn't give a damn and needlessly risked the lives of test subjects. Take your pick. Neither one is pretty.
EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson testified before Congress last September to the delight of Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., who asked her to compare the benefits of reducing airborne PM2.5 to the fight against cancer. Ms. Jackson answered: "If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels, it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our country." Rep. Markey asked her to repeat herself so her remarkable statement would appear in the official record twice.
Cancer kills about 570,000 Americans per year (according to the American Cancer Society). Therefore, Malloy points out that Jackson's claim amounts to PM2.5 being responsible for roughly 25 percent of all deaths in the U.S. annually!
It's important to note that Ms. Jackson testified that "Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn't make you sick. It's directly causal to dying sooner than you should." By this she meant deaths are supposed to occur within a day or two of exposure to soot and airborne dust. It is for this reason the EPA has been trying to reduce PM2.5 by issuing rules and regulations since 1997 such as the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury and Air Toxic Standard.
The EPA conducted their air pollution tests from January 2010 until June 2011, using 41 living, breathing people. It's not even known if the subjects knew they would be exposed to material that the EPA claims under oath is super hazardous to man.
Of these 41 subjects, clinical effects were reported by the EPA in only two cases, eliminating the two from further testing. One was a 58-year-old woman who experienced atrial fibrillation. However, she had so many pre-existing health maladies it was unethical she was even allowed in the trial. Another subject's temporary increase in heart rate was controversial and probably caused by other factors.
As reported, the other 39 study subjects were exposed to PM2.5 levels up to 21 times greater than the EPA's own permissible exposure limit for PM2.5 on a 24-hour basis. Yet, no instances of deaths occurred, nor were any clinical effects reported despite these high exposures.
Although the agency's human testing was completed months before Ms. Jackson testified to Congress on the deadliness of airborne pollutants and the necessity of ever-more stringent regulations from the EPA, she never uttered a peep about the neutral results of the tests to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
As Malloy is quick to spot, these experimental results invalidate the EPA's cost-benefit analyses for its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury and Air Toxic Standard and should raise concerns about the legal bases for these rules.
In its most recent document on PM2.5, the EPA in plain language states that even short exposure to these pollutants can cause heart attack or death. I find it impossible to believe that 41 people would knowingly submit to a test that they knew could kill them. Luckily for them, the fraudulent science spouted by the EPA is a lie. Unluckily for the rest of us, policymakers have bought into it.
