By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--April 4, 2014
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"In controlled exposure studies, human subjects are intentionally exposed to pollutants under controlled conditions. These studies allow investigators to isolate and explain health events related to such exposures. According to National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL) guidance, the studies can also help estimate 'safe threshold exposures for humans.'"Three EPA studies administered high levels of PM to subjects and two of the studies exposed individuals to large quantities of diesel exhaust and ozone. Although the EPA maintains that particulate matter harms human health, the agency downplays those health risks in the scientific studies it conducts on real, live people. "This lack of warning about PM is also different from the EPA's public image about PM," said the Inspector General's report. In other words, the EPA says one thing about these pollutants to the public and something much different when its officials testify on Capitol Hill. This duplicitousness outrages Milloy. He previously opined:
"Which do you find more shocking: that the Environmental Protection Agency conducts experiments on humans that its own risk assessments would deem potentially lethal, or that it hides the results of those experiments from Congress and the public because they debunk those very same risk assessments?"It's a fair question to ask. The EPA's schizophrenia on particulate matter is explained by the Obama's administration animus toward private industry and markets in general. The agency has been crying wolf while it argues for tougher regulations governing PM2.5, which would undoubtedly hurt businesses, kill jobs, and suffocate the economy. The EPA has moved forward at full speed in its regulatory rulemaking regarding regarding PM2.5 without bothering to wait for its own Inspector General to complete a review of the experiments it conducts on people. "Maybe the biggest reason to slow down the new rule is that the EPA is talking out of both sides of their mouth," Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said previously. "On one side exposure to it is deadly, and on the other they say human exposure studies are not harmful." Critics say EPA is either doctoring the science surrounding PM2.5 to further its regulatory agenda or exposing individuals to dangerous pollutants for minimal scientific gains. "It's alarming how the EPA is purposefully and blatantly ignoring an ongoing investigation of the legality and therefore scientific legitimacy of the use of human testing," Vitter said. "This is another example of the EPA continuing to pick and choose scientific 'facts' to support their overreaching agenda." EPA has long believed that particulate matter can kill. The OIG report references a 2003 EPA document that warns that even brief exposure to PM can lead to heart attacks and cardiac arrhythmias in individuals with coronary disease. Long-term exposure supposedly reduces lung function and can cause death. A 2006 EPA document provides more links between short-term PM exposure and "mortality and morbidity." The EPA regulates particulate matter which itself is a "mixture of harmful solid and liquid particles." PM of 2.5 microns or less, which is about "1/30th the thickness of a human hair," enter the human respiratory system and can harm or even kill a person after a brief exposure. Although the EPA has established PM2.5 primary standards at 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air on an annual average basis, the agency subjected individuals to PM levels of 600 micrograms per cubic meter, or 40 times what the agency considers to be an acceptable standard for air in the outdoors. One person was exposed to "pollutant concentrations that reached 751″ micrograms per cubic meter. EPA policy is to warn people with respiratory or heart diseases, the aged, and children to stay indoors when PM2.5 levels register between about 250 and 500 micrograms per cubic meter. The EPA must be aware that moderate exposure to particulate matter is not harmful. Yet the agency exposed research volunteers to PM levels many, many times in excess of the norm to induce bodily harm and gin up some basis for its crackdown on PM. What the EPA has done has echoes of the Third Reich to it. A research watchdog group called the Alliance for Human Research Protection accepts EPA's public pronouncement that "there is no safe level of PM2.5." Accordingly, the organization slams the EPA for "conducting ongoing poisonous air pollutant inhalation experiments on human beings that defy civilized medical research." During the research sessions, "subjects are cordoned off in a sealed chamber inhaling fine particle pollutants, including diesel exhaust that is piped in from an idling diesel truck." The experiments "demonstrably violate universal ethical, medical and legal standards of civilized medical research, including The Nuremberg Code, The Declaration of Helsinki, and 'The Common Rule' of the US Code of Federal Regulations." The Alliance believes "it is not an overstatement to compare these wholly non-therapeutic poison inhalation experiments, conducted by EPA scientists and EPA-funded academics, to the experiments conducted by the Nazi doctors who were tried and convicted at Nuremberg." The Alliance statement continued:
"EPA exploited human beings who were used as a means to an end. They were deliberately exposed to poisonous substances‚--against their best interest--in order to determine the degree of harm the mixture of pollutants and diesel gas produce in human beings. These unconscionable experiments were conducted by medical doctors and academic scientists--they violate all ethical, medical and legal codified standards of civilized medical research."It's pretty hard to argue with that.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
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