great lakes health issues

Great Lakes health issues

The Center for Public Integrity has released details of a report from

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that has been blocked

from publication for more than seven months. The report, titled Public

Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S.

Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was supposed to be released in July

2007.

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns

that more than nine million people who live in the more than two

dozen "areas of concern"--including such major metropolitan areas

as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee--may face elevated

health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead,

mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.

In many of the geographic areas studied, researchers found low

birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature

births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer,

and lung cancer.

...

Last July, several days before the study was to be released, ATSDR

suddenly withdrew it, saying that it needed further review. In a

letter to Christopher De Rosa, then the director of the agency's

division of toxicology and environmental medicine, Dr. Howard

Frumkin, ATSDR's chief, wrote that the quality of the study was

"well below expectations." When the Center contacted Frumkin's

office, a spokesman said that he was not available for comment and

that the study was "still under review."

De Rosa, who oversaw the study and has pressed for its release,

referred the Center's requests for an interview to ATSDR's public

affairs office, which, over a period of two weeks, has declined to

make him available for comment. In an e-mail obtained by the

Center, De Rosa wrote to Frumkin that the delay in publishing the

study has had "the appearance of censorship of science and

distribution of factual information regarding the health status of

vulnerable communities."

Some members of Congress seem to agree. In a February 6, 2008,

letter to CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding, who's also

administrator of ATSDR, a trio of powerful congressional

Democrats--including Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, chairman of the

Committee on Science and Technology--complained about the delay in

releasing the report. The Center for Public Integrity obtained a

copy of the letter to Gerberding, which notes that the full

committee is reviewing "disturbing allegations about interference

with the work of government scientists" at ATSDR. "You and Dr.

Frumkin were made aware of the Committee's concerns on this matter

last December," the letter adds, "but we have still not heard any

explanation for the decision to cancel the release of the report."

You can find the Center for Public Integrity's summary and excerpts

from the report here.