EPA Concedes: We Can’t Produce All the Data Justifying Clean Air Rules

By Barbara Hollingsworth April 11, 2014

Seven months after being subpoenaed by Congress, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy conceded that her agency does not have - and cannot produce - all of the scientific data used for decades to justify numerous rules and regulations under the Clean Air Act.

In a March 7th letter to House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), McCarthy admitted that EPA cannot produce all of the original data from the 1993 Harvard Six Cities Study (HSC) and the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) 1995 Cancer Prevention Study II, which is currently housed at New York University.

Both studies concluded that fine airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrograms or less (PM2.5) – 1/30th the diameter of a human hair – are killing thousands of Americans every year.  These epidemiological studies are cited by EPA as the scientific foundation for clean air regulations that restrict particulate emissions from vehicles, power plants and factories....... However, despite “multiple interactions with the third party owners of the research data in an effort to obtain that data,” McCarthy wrote, some of the data subpoenaed by the committee “are not (and were not) in the possession, custody or control of the EPA, nor are they within the authority to obtain data that the agency identified.”

My Take - Guessing is science when it starts out as an hypothesis.  After that the guessing is supposed to stop because use of the scientific method should be supplying sufficient data to either dismiss the hypothesis (guesswork) or substantiate it justifying more investigation.

Yet, the backbone of much of what EPA does is based on ‘guessing’.  Actually, it isn’t even 'guessing'.  EPA performs under the delusion they already have the answer and merely need some data to support their conclusions.

In 2005 the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) petitioned the EPA to “Stop declaring chemicals carcinogens based on rodent tests alone”.  ACSH noted that the law permits EPA “to adopt policies that err on the side of caution when faced with genuinely equivocal evidence regarding a substance's carcinogenicity, but the IQA does not permit EPA to distort the scientific evidence in furtherance of such policies.”

The petition argues that EPA ”distorts scientific evidence through its Guidelines' use of "default options," its purported right -- based not on scientific evidence but its regulatory mission to protect human health -- to assume that tumors in lab rodents indicate that much smaller doses can cause cancer in humans. Erring on the "safe side" in regulatory decisions does not, argues the petition, permit EPA to falsely claim that such regulated substances truly are "likely to be carcinogenic to humans." “To do so, argues ACSH, is a distortion of both science and law.”

Finally after months of delays the EPA formally responded saying “that their Risk Assessment Guidelines are not statements of scientific fact -- and thus not covered by the IQA (Information Quality Act) -- but merely statements of EPA policy.” My question was then and is now. If EPA policies aren’t based on scientific fact, what are they based on?

Is this really any different?  We need to get this.  The EPA isn’t a scientific agency, irrespective of who works there and what their mandate is.  The EPA is a political animal;  it was created to be a political animal by Richard Nixon based on a piece of science fiction by Rachel Carson called Silent Spring to ban DDT; it has been filled with political administrators and all of its positions, rules and regulations are designed to advance a political position. 

Although almost anyone can find instances where the EPA actually did good work, that doesn’t give them an excuse for the frauds they have perpetrated on humanity.  This is just one more example of EPA “guessing” – conclusions in search of data - by the misanthropic green activists working at EPA disguised as government employees. 

And it’s high time the EPA was abolished.