By Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica
When Sen. David Vitter persuaded the EPA to agree to yet another
review of its long-delayed assessment of the health risks of
formaldehyde, he was praised by companies that use or manufacture a
chemical found in everything from plywood to carpet.
As long as
the studies continue, the EPA will still list formaldehyde as a
“probable” rather than a “known” carcinogen, even though three major
scientific reviews now link it to leukemia and have strengthened its
ties to other forms of cancer. The chemical industry is fighting to
avoid that designation, because it could lead to tighter regulations and
require costly pollution controls.
“Delay means money. The
longer they can delay labeling something a known carcinogen, the more
money they can make,” said James Huff, associate director for chemical
carcinogenesis at the National Institute for Environmental Health in the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The EPA’s chemical risk assessments are crucial to protecting the
public’s health because they are the government’s most comprehensive
analysis of the dangers the chemicals present and are used as the
scientific foundation for state and federal regulations. But it usually
takes years or even decades to get an assessment done, or to revise one
that is outdated. Often the industry spends millions on lobbying and on
scientific studies that counter the government’s conclusions.
The
EPA has been trying since 1998 to update the formaldehyde assessment, which was first written in 1989. But the
agency’s efforts have repeatedly been stalled by the industry and
Congress.
This time, the resistance came from Vitter, a
Republican senator from Louisiana, where, ironically, thousands of
Hurricane Katrina victims say they suffered respiratory problems after
being housed in government trailers contaminated with formaldehyde. Last
year Vitter blocked the nomination of a key EPA official until the
agency agreed to ask the National Academy of Sciences to weigh in on the
assessment. Vitter’s spokesman, Joel DiGrado, told the media that
“because of the FEMA trailer debacle, we need to get absolutely reliable
information to the public about formaldehyde risk as soon as possible.”
Vitter’s ties to the formaldehyde industry are well known. According
to Talking
Points Memo, his election
campaign received about $20,500 last year from companies that produce
large amounts of formaldehyde waste in Louisiana. But ProPublica found
that Vitter actually took in nearly twice that amount if contributions
from other companies, trade groups and lobbyists with interests in
formaldehyde regulation are included. Among those contributors is
Charles Grizzle, a top-paid
lobbyist for the Formaldehyde
Council, an industry trade group that had long
sought a National Academy review
of the chemical.
Congress stalled the formaldehyde risk
assessment once before. In 2004, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., persuaded (PDF) the EPA to delay it, even though
preliminary findings from a National Cancer Institute study had already
linked formaldehyde to leukemia. Inhofe insisted that the EPA wait for a
more “robust set of findings” from the institute.
Koch
Industries, a large chemical manufacturer and one of Inhofe’s biggest
campaign contributors, gave Inhofe $6,000 that year. That
same year Koch bought two
pulp mills from Georgia-Pacific, a
major formaldehyde producer and one of the world’s largest plywood
manufacturers. The next year Koch bought all of Georgia-Pacific.
The “more robust” findings that Inhofe asked for weren’t released until
five years later — in May 2009 — and they reinforced the 2004 findings. Of the nearly 25,000
workers the National Cancer Institute had tracked for 30 years, those
exposed to higher amounts of formaldehyde had a 37
percent greater risk of death
from blood and lymphatic cancers and a 78 percent greater risk of
leukemia than those exposed to lower amounts.
The Formaldehyde
Council immediately released a statement disputing those findings and calling for
a full review by the National Academy of Sciences. Such an evaluation
could take as long as four years, according to an EPA spokesperson.
But
this time it wasn’t Inhofe who stepped in on the industry’s behalf, but
Vitter, who like Inhofe sits on the Environment and Public Works
Committee.
On the day the study came out, Grizzle, the
Formaldehyde Council lobbyist, donated
$2,400 to Vitter’s re-election
campaign, the maximum an individual can give to a federal
candidate in a single election cycle. Grizzle didn’t respond to phone
calls and e-mails asking for comment for this story.
Grizzle
started his own lobbying firm in 1993, after serving as an EPA assistant
administrator in the late 1980s. He joined George W. Bush’s transition
team in 2001, and raised
more than $500,000 for Bush’s
2004 campaign, earning the title of fundraising “pioneer.” A
Philadelphia Inquirer investigation found that Grizzle used his friendship
with Bush aide Karl Rove to help get Stephen Johnson the job as
assistant administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and
Toxic Substances at EPA. When Johnson went on to lead the EPA, he
changed the risk assessment system so other federal agencies could
comment more frequently and forcefully on the EPA’s science, a move that
prolonged the process. In the waning days of the Bush administration,
Johnson asked the National Academy of Sciences to do a full review of
the formaldehyde assessment.
DiGrado, Vitter’s spokesman, didn’t
respond to questions about Vitter’s ties to the industry. Instead, he
sent ProPublica copies of two letters. One
showed that three Democratic lawmakers
also wanted the review. The other letter was written by an EPA official
in the final week of the Bush administration, saying that the agency
would “seek input” from the academy.
Several public health
experts interviewed by ProPublica think the industry’s goal is to delay
the assessment as long as possible and to undermine the credibility of
the EPA’s chemical risk assessment program.
“This gives the
appearance of another congressman being more interested in industry than
the health of the public,” said Dr. Peter Infante, a former director of
the Office of Carcinogen Identification and Classification at the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “The public should not
think that because a government document is undergoing NAS review, that
that review is going to be competent.”
Other public health
experts point to the National Academy’s recent review of the EPA’s assessment of
perchloroethylene, or PCE, as an example of how additional studies can
drag out the assessment process.
PCE is used in dry cleaning and
is found in high concentrations at military bases. Like formaldehyde, it
has been linked to leukemia, and the EPA has been trying to update the
chemical’s assessment since 1998. In 2008 the agency submitted its
findings to the National Academy, and in February the academy sent the
assessment back to the EPA with a long list of questions. Although the
academy agreed with the EPA’s conclusion that PCE was a “likely”
carcinogen, it suggested that the safety standards should be
significantly weaker than those the EPA had proposed. The EPA is now
responding to the academy’s comments.
Democrats in Congress and public health watchdogs
have criticized the academy in the past for being slanted toward
industry, because some of the scientists who serve on its review panels
have written studies paid for by chemical companies whose products they
are evaluating. An academy spokeswoman said it thoroughly vets its
panelists and has strict financial conflict of interest rules.
The
Road to Review
Vitter began his push for a National
Academy review of formaldehyde in a June
29 letter to the EPA. It
included a list of questions about the formaldehyde assessment and urged
the EPA
to ask the National Academy to
weigh in on it, according to documents ProPublica obtained through a
Freedom of Information Act request.
The EPA responded on July 8,
defending its plan to have the assessment reviewed by its own external
peer review panel, the Scientific Advisory Board. The letter noted that
the advisory board could do the review in 12 to 16 months for about
$200,000, while the average National Academy review takes 18 to 24
months and costs $800,000 to $1 million.
In September, two more
major scientific reviews raised concerns about the dangers of
formaldehyde. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a
division of the World Health Organization, concluded it had enough
evidence (PDF) to show that
formaldehyde exposure can cause leukemia. And the National Toxicology
Program changed its categorization
of formaldehyde from
“reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen” to “known carcinogen.”
But
Vitter continued pressuring the EPA for more review.
On Sept.
23, he confirmed to reporters that he had placed a hold on the
nomination of Paul Anastas, the Obama administration’s choice to head
the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. He said he wouldn’t
release the hold until the EPA agreed to send the formaldehyde
assessment to the National Academy. To smooth the way for that review,
he tried to add an amendment (PDF) to an EPA appropriations bill
mandating that the agency set aside $1 million for a National Academy
review. Grizzle, the Formaldehyde Council lobbyist, worked to get
support for the amendment, according to one of his lobbying disclosure forms (PDF). (The amendment wasn’t included in
the final bill.)
On Sept. 24 EPA chief Lisa Jackson met with
Vitter and offered a compromise: She would ask the National Academy for
its advice on the formaldehyde assessment.
That same day, an EPA
spokeswoman told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that the chemical didn’t
need more review, and that the
EPA was ready to begin finalizing its assessment.
“This is not
the time for more delay,” said EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy.
But Vitter didn’t budge.
In November, a political action
committee created by the American Chemistry Council, whose members
include formaldehyde producers Hexion Specialty Chemicals and DuPont, gave
Vitter a $2,500 campaign
contribution, in addition to the $1,500 it had given him earlier in the
year. On Dec. 2, Koch Industries gave Vitter’s political action
committee a check for $5,000. On Dec. 7, Grizzle gave
Vitter (PDF) $200. On Dec. 17,
the Society of the Plastics Industry, which represents formaldehyde
manufacturers BASF and DuPont, hosted a fundraiser for Vitter at its headquarters,
recommending donations of $1,000 per person.
On Dec. 23, Vitter
got what he wanted. Jackson agreed to send the study to the National
Academy. But
in a letter Jackson sent to the Formaldehyde Council that day, she indicated it would not be
the exhaustive study the industry had pushed for but would instead be
done under a “compressed timeframe.” Dr. Peter Preuss, who heads the
EPA’s chemical risk assessment program, said it will likely be completed
in a year.
Vitter removed his hold on Anastas’ nomination on
Christmas Eve, and the Formaldehyde Council released
a statement praising his work.
“Overcoming the agency’s intransigence in engaging NAS on
formaldehyde would have been impossible without the timely intervention
of U.S. Senator David Vitter,” Betsy Natz, the council’s executive
director, said in the news release. The statement said Jackson had
contacted the council directly to notify it of the news.
Last
month the National Academy began gathering public comments about the 13
scientists it has selected for the formaldehyde panel. The Natural
Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, has already
written a letter raising questions about two of the
candidates. One worked for the Hamner Institute, an industry-supported
laboratory that lists the Formaldehyde Council as one of its sponsors.
The other worked for more than a decade at Dow Chemical, which is a
member of the Formaldehyde Council and has contributed to Vitter’s
campaigns.
On March 24, Grizzle, the Formaldehyde Council
lobbyist, co-hosted a fundraiser for Vitter at the Capitol Hill Club, an
exclusive Republican gathering place. The suggested donation was $1,000
per person.