So EPA needed additional studies, to back up its expansive, bogus epidemiological assertions. The new studies, JunkScience.com director Steve Milloy discovered, involved human test subjects. They raised numerous new legal, ethical and scientific problems.
Not only do US laws, the Nuremberg Code, the Helsinki Accords and EPA
Rule 1000.17 make it unethical or illegal to conduct toxicity
experiments on humans. When California, Washington, Rutgers and other
University researchers explained the experiments to their volunteers,
they generally failed to advise them that EPA says the pollution they
were going to breathe was toxic, carcinogenic and deadly.
Instead, volunteers were told they would face only “minimal risks,” the kind they would ordinarily encounter in daily life, in performing routine physical activities. Others were told they might experience claustrophobia in the small study chambers, or some minor degree of airway irritation, shortness of breath, coughing or wheezing. There is no way such advisories can lead to “informed consent.”
Moreover, the people who EPA claims are most at risk, most susceptible to getting horribly sick and even dying, from exposure to these particulates were precisely the same people recruited by EPA and its EPA-funded research teams: the elderly, asthmatics, diabetics, people with heart disease, children. And to top it off, the test subjects were exposed to eight, thirty or even sixty times more particulates per volume – for up to two hours – than they would breathe outdoors, and what EPA claims are dangerous or lethal.
How can it be that PM2.5 particulates are dangerous or lethal for Americans in general, every time they step outside – but harmless to human guinea pigs who were intentionally administered pollution dozens of times worse than what they would encounter outdoors? How can it be, as EPA-funded researchers now assert, that “acute, transient responses seen in clinical studies cannot necessarily be used to predict health effects of chronic or repeated exposure” – when that is precisely what EPA claims they can and do show?
If PM2.5 is lethal and there is no safe threshold, shouldn’t EPA officials, its researchers and their institutions be prosecuted for deliberately misleading volunteers and conning them into breathing the poisons? Shouldn’t they be prosecuted for experimenting on children, in direct violation of EPA’s own rules banning such experiments – and for deleting evidence describing those tests?
Thankfully, none of the test subjects died, or the charges would be much more serious.
But if no one died, doesn’t that mean EPA is lying when it says there is no safe level, that all PM2.5 particulates are toxic, that its regulations are saving countless lives, and that the direct and ancillary benefits vastly outweigh their multi-billion-dollar annual costs? And if that is the case, shouldn’t EPA officials be prosecuted for lying to Congress and public, and imposing all those costs for no real benefits?
Instead, volunteers were told they would face only “minimal risks,” the kind they would ordinarily encounter in daily life, in performing routine physical activities. Others were told they might experience claustrophobia in the small study chambers, or some minor degree of airway irritation, shortness of breath, coughing or wheezing. There is no way such advisories can lead to “informed consent.”
Moreover, the people who EPA claims are most at risk, most susceptible to getting horribly sick and even dying, from exposure to these particulates were precisely the same people recruited by EPA and its EPA-funded research teams: the elderly, asthmatics, diabetics, people with heart disease, children. And to top it off, the test subjects were exposed to eight, thirty or even sixty times more particulates per volume – for up to two hours – than they would breathe outdoors, and what EPA claims are dangerous or lethal.
How can it be that PM2.5 particulates are dangerous or lethal for Americans in general, every time they step outside – but harmless to human guinea pigs who were intentionally administered pollution dozens of times worse than what they would encounter outdoors? How can it be, as EPA-funded researchers now assert, that “acute, transient responses seen in clinical studies cannot necessarily be used to predict health effects of chronic or repeated exposure” – when that is precisely what EPA claims they can and do show?
If PM2.5 is lethal and there is no safe threshold, shouldn’t EPA officials, its researchers and their institutions be prosecuted for deliberately misleading volunteers and conning them into breathing the poisons? Shouldn’t they be prosecuted for experimenting on children, in direct violation of EPA’s own rules banning such experiments – and for deleting evidence describing those tests?
Thankfully, none of the test subjects died, or the charges would be much more serious.
But if no one died, doesn’t that mean EPA is lying when it says there is no safe level, that all PM2.5 particulates are toxic, that its regulations are saving countless lives, and that the direct and ancillary benefits vastly outweigh their multi-billion-dollar annual costs? And if that is the case, shouldn’t EPA officials be prosecuted for lying to Congress and public, and imposing all those costs for no real benefits?
And now, during the past few months, EPA has been trying to use the prestigious National Academy of Sciences to cover-up and whitewash the agency’s illegal experiments on humans. In secret, and with no public notice or opportunity to comment, the agencies held meetings and issued a draft report.
Milloy got wind of what was going on. He and four other experts sought
and received an unprecedented opportunity to testify before the NAS on
August 24. Their presentations and other information used in this
article can be found here, here and here. Will their efforts bring change?
Up to now, EPA has said and done whatever it deems necessary or
convenient to advance its regulatory agenda. The health, environmental
and societal costs are unjustified and can no longer be tolerated.
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