Document 3NxxQxaa822zKagqrmz6pEomO

volume number date iMarch 2!>/ 1982 CertainTeedH PLAINTIFF'S EXHIBIT CT-238 A/CPipe & Health Bulletin TO: ALL DISTRICT SALES MANAGERS ALL DISTRICT SALES ENGINEERS cc: A/C S. Health Bulletin BinderStandard Distribution FTO-I: Jay F. Baker SUBJECT: EPA PROPOSED POLICY CN ORAL STATEMENTS AND RESEARCH RESULTS BY EMPLOYEES The September 18, 1981 issue of Science published an article outlining plans by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "to prevent researchers fra?, making discomfitting pubLic statements about environmental problems." (copy of article attached). The article's importance to us is made in the following statement: "(EPA Deputy Administrator) Hernandez also cites as inappro priate fare the presence of pro-regulatory remarks in recent reports on the leaching of asbestos into drinking water from pipes and on the presence of dioxin in Great lakes fish." This is a clear reference to statements made by Lae McCabe and James Milistte (EPA-Health Effects Research laboratory) in the presentation, "The Need to Control Asbestos Fibers in Potable Water Supply Systems" (Amsterdam, 1980) and "Asbestos Cement Materials Used in Water Supply" (Water Engineering and Management, March 1981). The above two publications, or transcripts of speeches, are frequently referenced by protagonists of A/C pipe as proof that EPA has an official negative position on A/C. This is clearly not true as Mr. Hernandez clearly states. Please keep this letter, and the attached article, available should the two gentleruen (McCabe and Millctts) be cruoted by anyone and use it as a rebuttal. (This information should be filed in the "Current Situation" section of the A/C u Health binder./ CTD033668 REC 8 1982 TMI-2. which the GAO estimates will cost $600 million in unsecured revenues. Nor is it clear how the company will finance the S400 million in long-term debt obligations or the $2.3 billion in construction programs that come due between this year and 1985. The finan cial pinch will lighten this fall, for the 45 banks that cooperated in extending GPU an emergency line of credit have lowered the borrowing limit from $412 million to $200 million, effective 1 October. The greatest unknowns are the cost and the amount of time needed to clean up the damaged reactor. The company's own cost estimate is around $1 billion, of which about $200 million has already been spent. It is quite possible that with regulatory delays, financing troubles, and unexpected technical problems, the cosi will rise. The company has had a couple of recent disappointments, typi cal of the kind of setbacks that drive expenses up. The director of the cleanup program, expressing "dismay" that funds were so tight, resigned in July after a year and a half on the job. Then in September the system intended to de contaminate the water in the contain ment building developed serious prob lems. Meanwhile, the Bechtel Corpora tion, the contractor in charge of the operation, continues to raise cost esti mates. In explaining the changes, a Bechtel spokesman said last week, "Es timating what it would cost at first was like asking in 1958 how much it would cost to send a man to the moon: it had never been done before." As the engi neers began looking inside the contain ment building this summer, they began to draw up more detailed projections of the work to be done. Richard Thornburgh, the governor of Pennsylvania, made a strong plea for federal help in July. His proposal, proba bly the best publicized of several, asks that the cost of cleaning TMi-2 be shared by the federal government (25 percent), the nuclear and electric utility industries (25 percent), Pennsylvania and New Jer sey (6 percent). GPU (32 percent), and the insurance fund (12 percent). The key to success in this case is to gel Washing ton to make its pledge first.(But accord ing to a White House energy policy maker, neither the Administration nor Congress is enthusiastic about making such a large commitment. The official said the Administration agrees in princi ple that it should help out. so that the nuclear industry can get back on its feet. But he said the help would probably be limited to handling TMI-2 waste and definitely would not amount to a 25 percent contribution to the general cleanup effort. The 1982 budget allocates $37 million to the Department of Energy (DOE) for research and development on cleanup technologies for TMI-2--which is just "peanuts," as one DOE official said. The Edison Electric Institute, the na tional organization of investor-owned utilities, also likes Thornburgh's idea "in principle." And, like the White House, it does not want to pledge such a large commitment. The Institute's board of directors and a special task force on TMI-2 will both be in Kansas City on 10 September for meetings. GPU hopes that they will produce a tangible offer of help, for lacking this, the future looks dark. --Eliot Marshall Tight Screening Plan for EPA Data 0,0038888 't EPA scientists are upset by a new proposal for peer review of oral statements and research results The new Reagan Administration over seers of scientific research at the Envi ronmental Protection Agency (EPA) have developed an accressive plan to prevent researchers from making dis comfiting public statements about envi ronmental problems. The plan would re quire every oral presentation by an EPA scientist, scientific consultant, or re search contractor to be reviewed at four levels of the EPA bureaucracy for what the agency terms "inappropriate policy statements or conclusions." The plan, which has been circulated by EPA's new research director, An drew Jovanovich, would also establish an unusually rigorous system of peer review, in which everything from slide presentations to computer software would have to be approved by at least seven officials before it could be dis played or released. Scientific manuals and reports would have to follow a circu itous path through the agency involving as many as 30 steps before their conclu- SCIESTE. VOL. 213. 18 SEPTEMBER 1981 sions become known to the general pub lic. The effort is designed to ensure that research results "are of high quality and based on creditable scientific and techni cal knowledge," according to the most recent EPA draft. But it has been wide ly and strenuously criticized within the agency's scientific division. One person there calls it unworkable, while another terms it a disaster. "It could bring things to a screeching halt with its myriad clear ance and feedback loops," says a third, w ho like the others requested complete anonymity because they feared reprisal. Most of the individuals who spoke with Science said that the proposal was well intentioned even if seriously flawed. They say that EPA administrator Anne Gorstich and deputy administrator John Hernandez, like previous political ap pointees. have expressed a serious com mitment to improving the quality of the agency's work. But the Administration's open distaste for new regulatory initia- tives has given rise to suspicions that the program is deliberately intended to en chain a major source of environmental information. As one EPA employee put it, "No published data--no new or re vised pollution risk assessments--no standards which can, therefore, be de fended--viola, you have instant regula tory reform." The suspicions are apparently height ened by the agency's plan to trim the research budget by $60 million next year, or about 33 percent when the effects of inflation arc taken into account. EPA is, for example, ending its support for re search on the health effects of diesel exhaust fumes, utility ashes, indoor air pollution, mining wastes, and offshore oil drilling. It is curtailing research into the environmental effects of pesticides and toxic pollutants. Water quality re search is being drastically cut, and the agency is reducing its support for long term epidemiological studies of the ef fects of air pollutants. Some critics feel 0036-8075/81/0918-134SS01.00/0 Cop &hi C 1981 AAAS D45 :ii the juts are at odds with the Administra tion's call for more and better informa tion before regulations are imposed. The new policy for official review of work and statements by agency scien tists and scientific consultants is a vari ant of a broader EI'A information control program soon to be announced by Gorsuch. That program will require that all "factual or informational" documents with policy implications or a printing cost that exceeds $10,000 to $25,000 to be reviewed by the agency's science adviser and public relations ofTicer be fore they can be released. The more narrow research policy was written by Herbert Wiser, an EPA staff physicist who was formerly the principal science adviser in the research office. His in structions came from Jovanovich, who previously managed an oil shale program at the Denver Research Institute, and once served as vice president of Western United Research, Inc., which makes pesticides. The policy will affect 15 EPA labora tories around the country which have projects under way on politically sensi tive topics such as the effects of expo sure to acid rain on reproduction, the neurologic effects of heavy metals and petroleum products, the long-term risks of chlorinating drinking water, and the effects of pesticides on various hormone activities. The policy will also affect aca demic researchers performing studies for EPA. The proposal requires that newslet the author for revision, whereupon the review proccss'bcgins anew. One EPA employee estimates that un der the new- policy senior officials w ill at present publication rates have to review three full reports a day--to say nothing of numerous anticipated oral presenta tions. Edward Tuerk, an official in EPA's office of air, noise, and radiation, told Hernandez that the process would place "a back-breaking burden on the |EPA] science adviser." Another EPA scientist suggests that the current proc ess of giving timely advice to the states on environmental problems may cease. Some employees will stop appearing at conferences rather than submit their speeches and statements for clearance, the scientist predicts. One victim might be industry, whose representatives at tend such meetings to obtain information and advice. The scientist adds that the intention of the policy is essentially good. The agen cy can be jarred by the release of alarm ing scientific data that have Dot been seen at the upper levels. Wiser notes that the agency lives in perpetual fear of being, surprised by data showing "that 100.000 people are going to die in New York city next weekend, or that a heavi ly-controlled pollutant really has no ef fect." Everyone agrees that EPA has been embarrassed in the past by the premature release of data that later proved of little consequence. Partly as a result, the National Research Council in a 1977 report urged an expansion of "It could bring things to a screeching halt with its myriad clearance and feedback loops," says an EPA scientist. ters. brochures, articles, reports, confer ence and workshop proceedings, films, slides, computer programs, and all oral presentations outside the agency be re viewed for "scientific content and merit, inappropriate policy statements, and edi torial quality," The review' begins with an author's immediate supervisor, who sends the material to two experts else where in the agency. When approved, it goes on to an "intermediate manager," who sends it to two different EPA ex perts. A "technical manager" secs it next, followed by the laboratory direc tor. then an EPA publication review cen ter in Cincinnati. Ohio, then a headquar ters director, then the science adviser, and perhaps Jovanovich. At five differ ent steps, the material can be returned to EPA's peer review system. Under for mer research director Steven Gage, the agency set up a scries of committees to review research proposals and estab lished awards of up to $5000 for the best EPA-funded reports to appear in a peer review journal. The agency's formal sci entific advisory board, composed of about 80 outside experts, has been called upon increasingly for advice and review. Gage, w ho is now in private industry, says that publications arc now much better. But the agency's new appointees dis agree. Jovanovich says that some of the work performed by EPA contractors is still "of very poor quality." Hernandez, a former professor of civil engineering at New Mexico State University, says that *t is his impression that EPA has "tried to hype the American people into believ ing things, such as a great environmental concern on this issue or that issue," by releasing incorrect scientific informa tion. "Sometimes a publication is aimed at generating a conscience on a particu lar item, and it becomes a policy state ment," he says, adding that scientists should not make policy statements. Jovanovich denies that the new- policy will slow the release of scientific infor mation, but his superior. Hernandez, says that there will be fewer reports from EPA in the future. "It is modeled on the peer review system at the United States Geological Survey, which has the repu tation of being the slowest to publish stufT in the world," Hernandez says ad miringly. "1 would much rather have a lot fewer good products than a lot of things that nobody has a lot of confi dence in." Asked for recent examples of EPA research that was released without adequate review, Hernandez cites the' 1979 chromosome study of residents in Love Canal, New York. Other EPA sci entists are quick to point out, however, that the study was leaked inadvertently to the press, and officially released over the opposition of EPA officials, at the direction of the Carter White House. Hernandez also cites as inappropriate fare the presence of pro-regulatory re marks in recent reports on the leaching of asbestos into drinking water from pipes and on the presence of dioxin in Great Lakes fish. Gage says that if the new program is to be at all effective, it has to place more emphasis on external peer review at low er levels of authority. At present, the proposal permits either a lab director or a superior to request such a review, at his or her option--actually a less strin gent requirement than under the previ ous Administration. Wiser says that he wanted extensive internal review first so that outside scientists will not be con fronted with "extremely poor work, or mistakes in grammar and spelling." Gage also criticizes the requirement for review at the upper levels of EPA's research bureaucracy. "Bureaucrats w ho manage research are not often quali fied to provide rigorous scientific re view. Less than half make any attempt to keep up with the scientific literature." Gage is concerned that the proposal "can only increase paranoia." a worry that seems borne out by the strength of the internal sentiment against it. "Hon est differences of opinion within the agency should be allowed to come out." he says. "A bureaucratic system that is too rigid will be counterproductive and ultimately fail."--R. Jeffrey Smith SCIENCE, VOL :iJ CTD033670