Sludge Watch ==> Award-Winning Toxicologist Dismissed from PBDE Evaluation Team

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

PBDE is a flame retardent chemical that persists and bioaccumulates.  It is 
now found in human breast milk at ever higher levels.

It enters the sewer system from industrial, household, and landfill leachate 
deposition.  It is found - sometimes a very high concentrations - in sewage 
sludges.

Not just big towns have high levels.  The tiny town of Picton Ontario was 
found to have some of the highest levels tested in North America.

Cattle grazing sludge spread fields can ingest the PBDE.  It is then found 
in milk and meat.

This scientist was dismissed because she spoke of the dangers of the 
chemical in the environment.
Physicians take an oath to 'do no harm' and their job is provide guidence to 
achieve and maintain good health.  Are scientists not allowed to 'advocate' 
for health and safety?
..........................................


Outspoken Scientist Dismissed From Panel on Chemical Safety
   By Marla Cone
   The Los Angeles Times

   Friday 29 February 2008

Deborah Rice, an award-winning toxicologist, was removed from a group of 
experts researching a widely-used flame retardant after industry lobbyists 
complained that she was biased.

   Under pressure from the chemical industry, the Environmental Protection 
Agency has dismissed an outspoken scientist who chaired a federal panel 
responsible for helping the agency determine the dangers of a flame 
retardant widely used in electronic equipment.

   Toxicologist Deborah Rice was appointed chair of an EPA scientific panel 
reviewing the chemical a year ago. Federal records show she was removed from 
the panel in August after the American Chemistry Council, the lobbying group 
for chemical manufacturers, complained to a top-ranking EPA official that 
she was biased.

   The chemical, a brominated compound known as deca, is used in high 
volumes worldwide, largely in the plastic housings of television sets.

   Rice, an award-winning former EPA scientist who now works at the Maine 
Department of Health and Human Services, has studied low doses of deca and 
reported neurological effects in lab animals. Last February, around the time 
the EPA panel was convened, Rice testified before the Maine Legislature in 
support of a state ban on the compound because scientific evidence shows it 
is toxic and accumulating in the environment and people.

   Chemical industry lobbyists say Rice's comments to the Legislature, as 
well as similar comments to the media, show that she is a biased advocate 
who has compromised the integrity of the EPA's review of the flame 
retardant.

   The EPA is in the process of deciding how much daily exposure to deca is 
safe - a controversial decision, expected next month, that could determine 
whether it can still be used in consumer products. The role of the expert 
panel was to review and comment on the scientific evidence.

   EPA officials removed Rice because of what they called "the perception of 
a potential conflict of interest." Under the agency's handbook for advisory 
committees, scientific peer reviewers should not "have a conflict of 
interest" or "appear to lack impartiality."

   EPA officials were not available for comment Thursday.

   Environmentalists accuse the EPA of a "dangerous double standard," 
because under the Bush administration, many pro-industry experts have served 
on the agency's scientific panels.

   The Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, 
reviewed seven EPA panels created last year and found 17 panelists who were 
employed or funded by the chemical industry or had made public statements 
that the chemicals they were reviewing were safe. In one example, an Exxon 
Mobil Corp. employee served on an EPA expert panel responsible for deciding 
whether ethylene oxide, a chemical manufactured by Exxon Mobil, is a 
carcinogen.

   Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, called 
it "deeply problematic from the public interest perspective" for the EPA to 
dismiss scientists who advocate protecting health while appointing those who 
promote industry views.

   Lunder said it is unprecedented for the EPA to remove an expert for 
expressing concerns about the potential dangers of a chemical.

   "It's a scary world if we create a precedent that says scientists 
involved in decision-making are perceived to be too biased," she said.

   Rice was unavailable for comment Thursday.

   In addition to her testimony for the Maine Legislature, Rice has been 
quoted in media reports saying there is enough scientific evidence to 
warrant bans on deca. "We don't need to wait another five years or even 
another two years and let it increase in the environment, while we nail down 
every possible question we have," she told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 
last March.

   In a May letter to an assistant administrator at the EPA, Sharon Kneiss, 
a vice president of the American Chemistry Council, called Rice "a fervent 
advocate of banning" deca and said she "has no place in an independent, 
objective peer review." She told the EPA that Rice's role on the panel 
"calls into question the overall integrity" of the EPA's evaluation of 
chemicals and that Rice may have influenced the other panelists in their 
review of deca.

   Top EPA officials met with the industry group's representatives in June 
and promised to take action, according to a letter that EPA Asst. 
Administrator George Gray sent to the group last month. In that letter, Gray 
said the EPA found "no evidence" that Rice "significantly influenced the 
other panelists."

   Environmentalists are concerned that Rice's removal could result in a 
less protective standard.

   After EPA officials dismissed her from the five-member panel, they 
removed her comments from the panel's report on deca and removed all mention 
of her. Three months later, at the request of the chemical industry group, 
the EPA added a note to the panel report that Rice was removed "due to a 
perception of a potential conflict of interest" and that none of her 
comments were considered in their review of the chemical.

   EPA documents show that Rice's comments while serving on the panel 
focused on technical, scientific issues. For example, she advised the EPA to 
consider the cumulative effects of not just deca, but chemicals with similar 
neurological effects.

   Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Committee on Oversight 
and Government Reform, said he was disturbed by Rice's dismissal and the 
Environmental Working Group's findings about pro-industry panelists.

   "If this information is accurate, it raises serious questions about EPA's 
approach to preventing conflicts of interest on its expert scientific 
panels," Waxman said.

   The conflict of interest policies of another environmental institute, the 
National Toxicology Program, also has come under fire. Last March, a major 
consultant for a federal center that evaluates reproductive hazards of 
chemicals was fired after The Los Angeles Times reported that the firm had 
financial ties to 50 chemical companies or associations.

   Rice specializes in neurotoxins - chemicals that harm developing brains. 
Before she went to work for the state of Maine, she was a senior 
toxicologist at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Research, where 
she had a major role in setting the EPA's controversial guideline for 
exposure to mercury in fish.

   In 2004, the EPA gave Rice and four colleagues an award for what it 
called "exceptionally high-quality research" for a study that linked lead 
exposure to premature puberty in girls.

   Many toxicologists and other environmental scientists have said they are 
highly concerned about flame retardants known as PBDEs, polybrominated 
diphenyl ethers.

   In laboratory tests, PBDEs have been found to skew brain development and 
alter thyroid hormones, slowing the learning and motor skills of newborn 
animals.

   Two of the compounds, called penta and octa, were banned in 2004. Before 
the ban, amounts in human breast milk and wildlife were doubling in North 
America every four to six years, a pace unmatched for any contaminant in at 
least 50 years. Now they are decreasing.

   Scientists had initially thought that the deca compound was not 
accumulating in people and animals as the other PBDEs were. But it appears 
that deca turns into other brominated substances when exposed to sunlight, 
and now many scientists say it, too, is building up in the environment 
worldwide. Deca has similar effects on animals' developing brains as the 
banned PBDEs.

   The chemical industry contends that low doses pose no danger and that the 
compound is necessary to prevent fires in many consumer products. In 
addition to TVs and other electronics, deca is used in furniture textiles, 
building materials and automobiles. About 56,000 tons were used worldwide in 
2001, mostly in the United States and Asia.

   Only Maine and Washington state restrict use of deca; both passed laws 
last year that phase out some uses. Similar bills have been introduced in 
California but have not passed.