EPA, American Chemistry Council Conspire to Remove Toxicologist From Panel on Flame Retardant Safety

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(NaturalNews) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dismissed an award-winning neurotoxin specialist from a toxicology review panel in August, in compliance with a request from the industry lobby group the American Chemical Council.

Deborah Rice, currently an employee of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, was among five scientists to win an award from the EPA in 2004 for "exceptionally high-quality research" into lead exposure's ability to cause premature puberty in girls. In her former position as a senior toxicologist for the EPA National Center for Environmental Research, Rice was one of the scientists involved in setting the agency's guidelines for fish consumption as a way of limiting mercury exposure.

A specialist in neurotoxins, Rice has also extensively studied the low-dose neurological effects of the polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) known as deca. That's why when the EPA set up a five-member panel to review the safety of deca in early 2007 it selected Rice as panel chair.

PBDEs are flame-retarding chemicals widely used in the plastic housings of electronic items such as television sets. They are also used in automobiles, building materials and furniture textiles. Two PBDEs, known as penta and octa, were banned in 2004 after studies showed that they disrupted the nervous and hormonal systems and were accumulating in the tissue of humans and wildlife.

Prior to being banned, penta and octa concentrations in breast milk were doubling every four to six years, a rate of chemical accumulation not seen since the 1950s. After the ban, concentrations began to decrease.

While the purpose of the EPA panel on deca was only to review and comment on the scientific research surrounding the chemical, the panel's report would be used by the EPA to set new maximums for safe exposure.

The EPA has not yet released these new exposure levels, but if they are set low enough, it could mean an end to the chemical's use in consumer products. This would be a major blow to the global chemical industry, which manufactures 56,000 tons of the substance each year; the majority of it for use in the United States and Asia.

In May, a vice president of the American Chemistry Council, Sharon Kneiss, wrote a letter to an EPA assistant administrator objecting to Rice's presence on the deca panel. Kneiss called Rice "a fervent advocate of banning" deca, who "has no place in an independent, objective peer review." Having Rice on the panel, Kneiss said, "calls into question the overall integrity" of the deca review.

As evidence of Rice's alleged bias, the American Chemistry Council pointed to comments she had made saying that deca should be banned due to its toxic and bioaccumulating nature.

"We don't need to wait another five years or even another two years and let it increase in the environment, while we nail down every possible question we have," Rice said to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in March 2007. Rice also testified before the Maine state legislature in favor of a ban on the substance.

One month after receiving the American Chemistry Council's letter, top EPA officials met with representatives of the group and promised to act on their concerns. In August, the EPA dismissed Rice from the panel and removed all of her comments, as well as any mention of her, from the panel's final report.

Yet a review of EPA documents reveals that all of Rice's comments concerned only technical questions about the toxicity of deca. Rice suggested, for example, that the EPA consider the long-term cumulative effects of chemicals that exhibit similar toxic effects to deca.

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