Sludge Watch ==> Hinkley Update - Retraction of Phoney Chromium/Cancer Study

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgewatch Admin:

And speaking of Hinkley - the comment period on the scoping of the Env 
Impact Report for sludge compost site Nursery Products LLC in Hinkley has 
been extended another month -  Comments welcome until July 5, 2006.

Now read below how a phoney study was apparently used to undermine the 
settlements of sick people in Hinkley.

.............................................................

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 2, 2006
11:03 AM

CONTACT: Environmental Working Group
Bill Walker or Renee Sharp, (510) 444-0973
http://www.ewg.org <http://www.ewg.org/>


Real-Life Epilogue to "Erin Brockovich":
Medical Journal Retracts Fraudulent Chromium/Cancer Study
EWG Investigation Exposes Fakery of Firm Headed by Bush Appointee


(WASHINGTON, June 2) - In a real-life epilogue to "Erin Brockovich,"
a peer-reviewed medical journal will retract a fraudulent article
written
and placed by a science-for-hire consulting firm whose CEO sits on a key
federal toxics panel. The retraction follows a six-month internal review
by the journal, prompted by an Environmental Working Group (EWG)
investigation.

The July issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
(JOEM), the official publication of the American College of Occupational
and Environmental Medicine, will carry a retraction of a 1997 article
published under the byline of two Chinese scientists, JianDong Zhang
and ShuKun Li.

The article appeared to be a reversal of an earlier study by Zhang that
found a significant association between chromium pollution of drinking
water and higher rates of stomach cancer in villages in rural northeast
China. Since its publication, the fraudulent article has influenced a
number of state and federal regulatory decisions on chromium.

"It has been brought to our attention that an article published in JOEM
in the April 1997 issue by Zhang and Li failed to meet the journal's
published editorial policy in effect at that time," says the retraction,
written by JOEM Editor Dr. Paul Brandt-Rauf and obtained by EWG.
"Specifically, financial and intellectual input to the paper by outside
parties was not disclosed."

In an email to the JOEM editorial board, Brandt-Rauf acknowledged that
for legal reasons the retraction is "carefully worded and kept to the
barest
minimum of facts." But EWG's investigation, confirmed by a Wall Street
Journal report in December 2005, found that Zhang and Li were not the
actual authors of the article.

Under the state Public Records Act, EWG obtained and posted online
documents from California regulators and court records that showed the
article was actually the work of ChemRisk, a San Francisco-based
consulting firm whose clients include corporations responsible for
chromium pollution. The documents and the story they outline are at
www.ewg.org

"In order to ensure continued faith in the scientific process such
serious
breaches of ethics cannot be tolerated," EWG Senior Vice President
Richard
Wiles wrote to Brandt-Rauf in December. "The scientific community must
be
notified that a paper circulating in the published literature is
fraudulent,
the paper must be retracted, and those responsible for the incident
must be appropriately disciplined."

ChemRisk's founder and CEO, Dennis Paustenbach, is a Bush Administration
appointee to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control advisory panel on toxic
chemicals and environmental health. His firm holds a lucrative contract
with the CDC and the Energy Department to investigate radioactive and
toxic releases from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

In this case, ChemRisk was working for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E),
a San Francisco- based utility whose dumping of the industrial chemical
chromium-6 had contaminated the drinking water of the small town of
Hinkley, Calif. Hinkley residents' lawsuit against the company, which
PG&E
eventually paid $333 million to settle, was the basis for the film "Erin
Brockovich," starring Julia Roberts as the legal investigator who
uncovered
the dumping.

PG&E hired ChemRisk to conduct a study to counter Hinkley residents'
claims of cancer and other illnesses from chromium-6 in their water.
ChemRisk tracked down Zhang, a retired Chinese government health
officer,
and paid him about $2,000 for his original data. ChemRisk distorted the
data to hide the chromium-cancer link, then wrote, prepared and
submitted
their "clarification'" to JOEM under Zhang and Li's byline, and over
Zhang's
written objection.

Zhang has since died. But JOEM located his co-author, ShuKun Li, who
agreed that the article should be retracted.

Zhang's original work remains the only study of people ingesting
chromium-6 in their drinking water. The JOEM article reversing its
findings was cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in
allowing
continued use of chromium in a wood preservative, and by the Agency for
Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in a report that discounted
chromium-6 as an oral carcinogen.

Most significantly, the fraudulent article was cited by a scientific
panel whose 2001 report forced California health officials to revise a
recommendation for how much chromium-6 should be allowed in drinking
water. A member of that panel was ChemRisk's Paustenbach, who has
made a career out of consulting and testifying on behalf of major
industrial
polluters including PG&E, ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical.

Independent scientists blasted Paustenbach's 2002 appointment to the
Board of Scientific Counselors for CDC's National Center for
Environmental
Health as part of a Bush Administration pattern of packing environmental
panels with industry-friendly experts. EWG has provided CDC with
documentation of ChemRisk's fraud in the Zhang case and demanded that
Paustenbach be removed from his post when his term expires in June, but
CDC has refused to take action.

"It is abundantly clear that CDC's contractor, ChemRisk, does not have
the
necessary scientific or ethical integrity to engender public trust,"
EWG's
Wiles wrote to CDC Director Julie Gerberding in March. "It is also clear
that
ChemRisk founder and president Dennis Paustenbach has been directly
involved in the firm's unethical behavior."

EWG has earned a reputation as a watchdog of suspect science. When the
group reported to the EPA a failure by DuPont to disclose internal
company
tests of drinking water and workers for a toxic chemical used to make
Teflon,
the government sued the company and in 2005 extracted the largest
administrative settlement in history for such offenses.

In 2000, EWG caught ABC News' John Stossel reporting nonexistent test
results in an "investigation" critical of organic food that was
broadcast
on the network's 20/20 magazine program. The disclosure forced a rare
on-air retraction and apology from Stossel.

FYI: Paustenbach will be up for reappointment shortly to the CDC panel
mentioned below. Hexavalent chromium is the chemical now favored by the
wood industry to pressure-treat lumber since arsenic was phased out.

RELATED LINK JOEM Notice of Retraction --
http://www.ewg.org/reports/chromium/retraction.php

EWG is a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C., that
uses the power of information to protect human health and the
environment