THE ENVIRONMENTALIST PACIFICATION AGENCY

There is plenty more, including fecal studies on children and radioisotope tracers to "tag" the lead getting into human blood from dust and soil. There is, of course, also the occasional exponent of the Sternglass-Holdren type of study, easily recognized by the unmistakable signs: it is rejected by the scientific community, but lovingly embraced by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The press then labels the subject as "controversial."

And what if the campaign to retain the lead standards is not just another environmentalist waste of everybody's money, but a reasonable protection of public health? In that highly improbable case one certainty remains: Nobody at the EPA cares two hoots about the facts anyway. At the July hearings before the EPA Science Advisory Board (an ornamental, powerless body [AtE July 82]), Dr. Jerome F. Cole testified that "only a small fraction of the time was devoted to scientific issues. The great majority of the time was spent in arguments among the large and small petroleum refiners and blenders over who would gain or lose if the regulations were altered... EPA has ignored the scientists whom we have asked to address this issue. [Epacrat] Dr Joel Schwartz submitted a paper to the docket ignoring all of the points we and our consultants had made..."

Schwartz is a Carter hold-over; but Rosalynn would be equally proud of the new Assistant EPAdministrator Kathleen Bennett. Officially, she announced that "testimony provided at public hearings and public opinion strongly supported lead restriction rules," conveniently omitting the fact that little of that testimony was scientific. More truthfully, she sent a memo to EPA head Gorsuch (obtained and reprinted by the newsletter Inside EPA, July 29): "The reaction of the general public will be positive... No special health effect report was prepared because the main part of the package constituting final rule making was not promoted primarily by significant scientific considerations. Therefore Science Advisory Board review is not necessary."

That is, EPA policy is based on pleasing public opinion (molded by the media), not on scientific findings.

Of course, sooner or later a genuine danger to public health may be discovered in gasoline or other parts of the industrial environment. If so, we will have to rely on privately funded science to tell us the truth. Don't count on the EPA to protect the environment; they are in the Public Relations business.

[Sources: Testimony at the May and July 1982 EPA hearings on the regulation of fuel and fuel additives, docket A-81-36; in particular, testimony of J. J. Chisholm, Jr., M.D. (study of lead poisoning among Baltimore children), Claire Ernhart, Ph.D. (effect of lead on intelligence and behavior of children), P.B. Hammond, M.D. (fecal analysis of children's lead levels), Jerome F. Cole, Ph.D. (refutation of Needleman study), and Patrick S.I. Barry, M.D. (blood levels in West Germany after gasoline regulation).