Document gdzrdwZKdKJOakYQbYKzBNLe

( RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #171 Providing news and resources to the Movement tor Environmental Justice -- March 7, 1990 D io x in -P a rt 1 D IO X IN S AND C A N C E R : FR A U D U LE N T STUDIES For years, industry scientists have been calming there's no evidence that dioxirts cause career in hum ans. Now there is mounting evidence that such d a m s rely heavily on studies that are fraudulent Two com panies recency accused of producing fraudulent dioxin-and-deaith data are Monsanto and 8A SF. M onsanto A scientist with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA ) says Monsanto falsified data in im portant studies that Monsanto used to support its daim that dioxin does not cause cancer in fum ans. Dr. C ate Jenkins, a chemist in EPA's O ffice of Solid W aste and Em ergency Response, says EPA self re lied upon M onsanto's fraudulent data in setting health standards for dioxin, and Jenkins has asked the EPA's Science Advisory Board to reopen the m atter cf EPA's dioxin standards, to take a fresh look at available d ata.1 Two im portant sources of dioxirts in the environ m ent are old chem ical dumps and the iocmeration of m unicipal solid w astes,2 which is why EPA is con cerned about allow able levels of hum an exposures to dioxin. BASF The British technical journal. N ew Scientist says, "A new analysis by a W est G erm an epidemiologist m ay have established the first d earcu t evidence of a direct link betw een exposure to dioxins and cancer in hum ans. Friedem ann Rohleder, an independent s p e cialist has produced a report detailing an unexpec tedly high incidence of cancer among workers exposed to dioxins during an industrial aed den t a t a chemicals plant in 1 9 5 3 .1 "The p la n t operated by the W est German com pany B A SF, m ade trichlorophenol. Rohledar daim s the com pany presented the data in a way that dis guised the cancers," says New S cien tist Background Each of these daim s of fraud relates to an in dustrial accident in which workers w ere exposed to dioxins; follow -up medical studies funded by the responsible com panies have oeen published in m ain stream scientific journals, daim ing to show that no excess cancers have occurred in the dioxn-exposed w orkers. In fa c t excess cancers have occurred, but it appears that the data have been manipulated to hide the facts. The M onsanto Case In 1949, an explosion occurred at a Monsanto chem ical factory in Nitro, W est Virginia; as a result m any w orkers in the plant were exposed to the herbidde 2 ,4 ,5 -T , which was contaminated with dioxin. (This herbicide was later the principal component of A gent O range, the chemical defoliant used by the U.S. In V iet N am .) In subsequent years, two Monsanto scientists, J A . Zack and R. W . Gaffey, studied the exposed w orkers, comparing their health against the health of a similar group of workers who were not exposed to dioxin or 2,4,5-T .4 According to court documents attached to the EPA m em o,"Zack and Gaffey deliberately and knowingly om itted 5 deaths from the exposed group and took four w orkers who had been exposed and put these workers in the unexposed group, serving, of course, to decrease the death rate in the exposed group and increase the death rate in the unexposed group." O ther studies of this sam e accident were also frau d u len t according to the sam e court documents, including a study by R .R . Suskind published in the Journal o f the American M edical Association? "This published study of the workers exposed in the 1949 accident reported only 14 cancers in the exposed group and 6 in the unexposed group (a smaller cohort). H ow ever, the medical records produced [by M onsanto] to the Plaintiffs conclusively prove gross m iscalculations and omissionsTM there were 28 can cers in the group that had been exposed to dioxins in 1949 as opposed to only 2 cancers in the unexposed group." M r. Suskind published two other reports1"7 on the sam e accid en t using his sam e data, to reach the conclusion that dioxin does not cause cancer. The BASF Case O n the night of Novem ber 17, 1953, a runaway chem ical reaction spewed dioxin-contaminated chemi cals over workers and community residents of two sm all Germ an cities, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen. Subsequently, an epidemiological study was used to deny workers any compensation for ailments they claim ed they suffered as a result of exposure. In keeping with German law, the workers retained their own expert to review the data. Their expert Friede m ann Rohleder, received the data from the German governm ent but found, to his surprise, that all the d a s