http://www.publicintegrity.org/GreatLakes/index.htm?source=home

Here’s the report that top officials of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention thought was too hot for the public to handle—
and the story behind it.
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By Sheila Kaplan

For more than seven months, the nation’s top public health agency has
blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of
environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly
because it contains such potentially “alarming information” as
evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates.

The 400-plus-page study, Public Health Implications of Hazardous
Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was
undertaken by a division of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention at the request of the International Joint Commission, an
independent bilateral organization that advises the U.S. and Canadian
governments on the use and quality of boundary waters between the two
countries. The study was originally scheduled for release in July 2007
by the IJC and the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry (ATSDR).

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns
that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen
“areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago,
Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from
being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other
hazardous pollutants.

In many of the geographic areas studied, researchers found low birth
weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and
elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung
cancer.

Since 2004, dozens of experts have reviewed various drafts of the
study, including senior scientists at the CDC, Environmental
Protection Agency, and other federal agencies, as well as scientists
from universities and state governments, according to sources familiar
with the history of the project.

“It raises very important questions,” Dr. Peter Orris, a professor at
the University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago and one
of three experts who reviewed the study for ATSDR, told the Center.
While Orris acknowledged that the study does not determine cause and
effect—a point the study itself emphasizes—its release, he said, is
crucial to pointing the way for further research. “Communities could
demand that those questions be answered in a more systematic way,” he
said. “Not to release it is putting your head under the sand.”

In a December 2007 letter to ATSDR in which he called for the release
of the study, Orris wrote: “This report, which has taken years in
production, was subjected to independent expert review by the IJC’s
Health Professionals Task Force and other boards, over 20 EPA
scientists, state agency scientists from New York and Minnesota, three
academics (including myself), and multiple reviews within ATSDR. As
such, this is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report,
internally and externally, that I have heard of.”

Last July, several days before the study was to be released, ATSDR
suddenly withdrew it, saying that it needed further review. In a
letter to Christopher De Rosa, then the director of the agency’s
division of toxicology and environmental medicine, Dr. Howard Frumkin,
ATSDR’s chief, wrote that the quality of the study was “well below
expectations.” When the Center contacted Frumkin’s office, a spokesman
said that he was not available for comment and that the study was
“still under review.”

De Rosa, who oversaw the study and has pressed for its release,
referred the Center’s requests for an interview to ATSDR’s public
affairs office, which, over a period of two weeks, has declined to
make him available for comment. In an e-mail obtained by the Center,
De Rosa wrote to Frumkin that the delay in publishing the study has
had “the appearance of censorship of science and distribution of
factual information regarding the health status of vulnerable
communities.”

Some members of Congress seem to agree. In a February 6, 2008, letter
to CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding, who’s also administrator of
ATSDR, a trio of powerful congressional Democrats—including Rep. Bart
Gordon of Tennessee, chairman of the Committee on Science and
Technology—complained about the delay in releasing the report. The
Center for Public Integrity obtained a copy of the letter to
Gerberding, which notes that the full committee is reviewing
“disturbing allegations about interference with the work of government
scientists” at ATSDR. “You and Dr. Frumkin were made aware of the
Committee’s concerns on this matter last December,” the letter adds,
“but we have still not heard any explanation for the decision to
cancel the release of the report.”

Canadian biologist Michael Gilbertson, a former IJC staffer and
another of the three peer reviewers, told the Center that the study
has been suppressed because it suggests that vulnerable populations
have been harmed by industrial pollutants. “It’s not good because it’s
inconvenient,” Gilbertson said. “The whole problem with all this kind
of work is wrapped up in that word ‘injury.’ If you have injury, that
implies liability. Liability, of course, implies damages, legal
processes, and costs of remedial action. The governments, frankly, in
both countries are so heavily aligned with, particularly, the chemical
industry, that the word amongst the bureaucracies is that they really
do not want any evidence of effect or injury to be allowed out there.”

The IJC requested the study in 2001. Researchers selected by the ATSDR
not only reviewed data from hazardous waste sites, toxic releases, and
discharges of pollutants but also, for the first time, mapped the
locations of schools, hospitals, and other facilities to assess the
proximity of vulnerable populations to the sources of environmental
contaminants. In March 2004, an official of the IJC wrote to De Rosa
to thank him for his role in the study, saying that he was
“enthusiastic about sharing this information with Great Lakes Basin
stakeholders and governments,” and adding, “You are to be commended
for your extraordinary efforts.”

Unlike his Canadian counterpart, however, the ATSDR’s Frumkin seems
anything but thankful. De Rosa, a highly respected scientist with a
strong international reputation from his 15 years in charge of ATSDR’s
division of toxicology and environmental medicine, was demoted after
he pushed Frumkin to publish the Great Lakes report and other studies.
De Rosa is seeking reinstatement to his former position, claiming that
Frumkin illegally retaliated against him. Phone calls to ATSDR seeking
comment about the pending personnel dispute were not returned.

“I think this is really pretty outrageous, both to Chris personally
and to the report,” Dr. David Carpenter, a professor of public health
at the State University of New York at Albany and another of ATSDR’s
peer reviewers, told the Center for Public Integrity.

Some members of Congress have also taken De Rosa’s side. That same
February 6 letter to Gerberding, which was co-signed by Rep. Brad
Miller of North Carolina, chairman of the Subcommittee on
Investigations and Oversight of the Science and Technology Committee,
and Rep. Nick Lampson of Texas, chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy
and Environment, expressed concern that “management may have
retaliated against” De Rosa for blowing the whistle on ATSDR’s conduct
related to this investigation and another involving work on
formaldehyde in trailers supplied by the Federal Emergency Management
Agency to victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “The public is well
served by federal employees willing to speak up when federal agencies
act improperly, and Congress depends upon whistle blowers for
effective oversight,” the letter states. “We will not tolerate
retaliation against any whistle blowers.”

Barry Johnson, a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health
Service and a former assistant administrator of ATSDR, told the Center
that before he left in 1999 he recommended that the agency investigate
the dangers that chemical contaminants might pose to residents of the
Great Lakes states.

“This research is quite important to the public health of people who
reside in that area,” Johnson said of the study. “It was done with the
full knowledge and support of IJC, and many local health departments
went through this in various reviews. I don’t understand why this work
has not been released; it should be and it must be released. In 37
years of public service, I’ve never run into a situation like this.”