Document 93M8r5rme1o4Vqwbb4DQNROz3

Environmental Research Foundation 231 Nassau Street P.O. Box 3541 Princeton, NJ 08543-3541 Dr. William R. Gaffey 11269 Pineside Dr. St. Louis, MO 63146 (609) 683-0707 April 29, 1990 Dear Dr. Gaffey, Thank you for your letter of April 23. I have read it carefully and am writing to you for clarification before I publish anything further about this matter. I certainly want to tell my readers, as accurately as I can, who is saying what about whom regarding dioxin exposures and subsequent occurrence of disease; it is certainly never my intention to misinform my readers, nor it is ever my intention to quote a person whom I know to be lying (except, of course, for the purpose of exposing that that person is lying, and never for the purpose of propagating misinformation). I need clarification from you on several points raised by your letter of April 23. 1) Your first point is, "Zack and Gaffey never studied any aspect of the health risks of the people involved in the 1949 Monsanto accident and cleanuo." The report by "Judith A. Zack and William R. Gaffey," entitled "A Mortality Study of Workers Employed at the Monsanto Company Plant in Nitro, West Virginia," in Richard E. Tucker and others, editors, Human and Environmental Risks of Chlorinated Dioxins and Related Compounds (NY: Plenum Press, 1983), p g s . 575-591, does not seem to indicate that you screened out employees who were involved in the 1949 accident. In what sense did you "not study" the health of those involved in the 1949 accident? Are you saying that Mr. Carr is not referring to anv of your work in his allegations? Or are you saying that he is not referring to this particular study? Or are you saying something else entirely, which I may be misunderstanding? 2) How do you reconcile the two following paragraphs, both of which contain quotations that I believe are from you and, to me, appear to be contradictory: "Zack and Gaffey never calculated any mortality ratios for any workers exposed to dioxin or not exposed to dioxin at the Monsanto plant where the accident took place." (Quote from your letter of April 23 to me.) And: "It is interesting to compare the results of this study of Nitro workers potentially exposed to TCDD...." (From p g . 590 of the book edited by Richard E. Tucker and others [mentioned above]). As I 2 read it, the phrase "this study" refers to the study, appearing under your name, in the Tucker book. Are ycu denying that you were involved in the study published in the volume edited by Tucker? Or are you saying that Mr. Carr is not referring to this study in his allegations? Or are you saying something else, which I may be misunderstanding? 3) In your letter to me, you say that, "The Carr brief was exposed in subsequent trial testimony." What do you mean the brief was "exposed?" Can you send me pages from the trial transcript that contain the exposure you refer to? If you do not have access to the trial transcript, can you refer me to page numbers from the transcript so I can request photocopies from the court? If you do not have page numbers, can you tell me how I can identify, for purposes of framing a request to the court, the sections of the transcript that contain the "exposure" that your referred to in your letter? I take it you believe the transcript contains a refutation of Mr. Carr's claims and I would like to get copies of the relevant pages of the transcript so that I can better understand the bases for the various claims involved in this matter. 4) If you are sure that Mr. Carr was not referring to any of your work in his allegations that I quoted, whose work (if anyone's) do you believe he is referring to? Is it your belief that he simply made up the whole thing about fraudulent studies and that his claims are entirely baseless? I am. sure you can appreciate that it is a journalist's responsibility to report such unpleasant facts as that one person has accused other persons of scientific misdeeds in a matter that has great impact on public health and safety. I can only hope you will help me understand better the nature of the dispute(s) in. this present matter. I assure you that, if I become convinced that Mr. Carr has misrepresented you or your work in the court documents I quoted in Rachel's Hazardous Waste News #171, I will tell my readers about it and set the record straight. Sincerely yours, Peter Montague