Document suggests public health risks near Great Lakes

Was report suggesting public health risks near Great Lakes suppressed?

Last update: February 18, 2008 - 7:23 PM

The lead author and peer reviewers of a government report raising the possibility of public health threats from industrial contamination throughout the Great Lakes region are charging that the report is being suppressed because of the questions it raises. The author also alleges that he was demoted because of the report.

THE ALLEGATION

Chris De Rosa, former director of the division of toxicology and environmental medicine at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), charges that the report he wrote was a key factor in his reassignment to a non-supervisory "special assistant" position last year. The House Committee on Science and Technology is investigating De Rosa's reassignment from the post he held since 1992, in light of allegations that it was related to the Great Lakes report and his push to publicize the possibility of a cancer risk from formaldehyde fumes in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers housing victims of Hurricane Katrina.

REPORT: 230,000 PEOPLE ARE 'VULNERABLE'

The report does not allege cause-and-effect relationships between discharges and disease. But it uses material from government databases to describe toxic contaminants and releases in the Great Lakes region and looks at health indicators, including cancer incidence and infant mortality, in the surrounding counties compared with those in "peer counties" with similar socioeconomic indicators.

It estimates that 230,000 "vulnerable" people -- defined as children younger than 6, the elderly and reproductive-age women -- live within one mile of contaminated sites in the Great Lakes region, mostly around Lake Michigan. Breast, lung and colon cancer, as well as infant mortality, were found to be above expected levels near many of the sites, which had such toxic contaminants as DDT, PCBs, mercury, lead, cyanide and dioxins. Other sites highlighted include the Fox River in Wisconsin, which continues to be a major source of contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls, though the release of PCBs stopped in 1970; the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, and Presque Isle Bay of Lake Erie.

CDC RESPONSE: CONCERNS DELAYED REPORT

Glen Nowak, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which houses the ATSDR, said he could not discuss personnel issues. However, Nowak said there was no set date for publication, and that the release was delayed to address concerns raised by the Environmental Protection Agency and others. Among those concerns was the use of county health data covering a much wider area than locations adjacent to contaminated sites. "Those concerns had been raised previously but did not appear to have been addressed by De Rosa," he said.

POLITICAL MOTIVES ALLEGED

Michael Gilbertson, an Ontario biologist who peer-reviewed the report, said political motives are behind the delay. "This information, which really should have been distributed more than a year ago, is inconvenient to the administration," he said. "All science has limitations, but to stress the limitations at the expense of getting this kind of information out to the research community is not in the public interest."

FIND IT ONLINE

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative group, has obtained a copy of the draft report and posted portions on its website. Read it at www.startribune.com/a4029.

WASHINGTON POST