EPA caught red-handed on passive smoking

Human Events, Jun 4, 1999

Asserting that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "was caught red-handed in a conspiracy of public disinformation and in an attempt to deceive the court." a new book just released by the Fraser Institute of Canada, Passive Smoking: EPA's Betrayal of Science and Policy, examines a decision by a federal judge nullifying the EPA's 1993 assessment that second-hand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), causes cancer.

Authors Gio B. Gori and John C. Luik expand on a recent decision by Judge William Osteen of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Osteen said the EPA started from the preconceived claim that ETS is a risk for lung cancer and then went out to prove that claim by whatever means imaginable.

The court determined that the EPA had knowingly, willfully, and aggressively disseminated false information, with farreaching regulatory implications in the United States and worldwide.

"Here we have not a private commercial interest but the EPA, a public agency chartered and funded to provide truthful information and factually based norms, [that] cherry-picked suitable reports, haughtily disregarded obvious explanations for opposite conclusion. fiddled with statistical procedure to feign nonexisting precision and abused its public trust by spinning deceptive public messages with ominous regulatory, social and cultural consequences," say Gori and Luik.

The authors say that. behind Judge Osteen's carefully measured words. behind even the specific controversy that the judgment addresses are issues of enormous significance to every citizen of a democratic society who relies on his government to tell him the truth.

While the points discussed in the book happen to be favorable to the tobacco industry the authors say that "the Osteen decision at its core is about truth: It is about how the government uses science to determine whether something constitutes a risk to our health; it is about how the scientific processes for disseminating truth can be corrupted; and it is about public policy consequences of institutionalizing such corrupt science.

A copy of Passive Smoking: EPA 's Betrayal of Science and Policy can be ordered by calling 202-9554377 or 1-80-6653558. The Fraser Institute's web site is located at www.fraserinstitute.ca. Dr. Luik can be reached at gl)5-468-0569 and Dr. Gori can be contacted at 301-229-4277.