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March 22, 2005

See only what you want to see

The Bush Administrations ability to blind itself to what it doesn't want to deal with is amazing - and not in a good way. The latest? The EPA recently issued a new rule regarding Mercury emissions. Apparently, it could have had stricter limits, but the EPA claims that doing so would cost the industry far more than the public health benefit would be worth overall. THe Washington Post reports, however, that this isn't necessarily the case.

What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion.

That analysis estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public documents, said a staff member who helped develop the rule. Acknowledging the Harvard study would have forced the agency to consider more stringent controls, said environmentalists and the study's author.

[...]

Asked about the Harvard analysis, Al McGartland, director of the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, said it was submitted too late to be factored into the agency's calculations. He added that crucial elements of the analysis were flawed.

Interviews and documents, however, show that the EPA received the study results by the Jan. 3 deadline, and that officials had been briefed about its methodology as early as last August. EPA officials referred to some aspects of the Harvard study in a briefing for The Washington Post on Feb. 2.

The Harvard study concluded that mercury controls similar to those the EPA proposed could save nearly $5 billion a year through reduced neurological and cardiac harm. Last Tuesday, however, officials said the health benefits were worth no more than $50 million a year while the cost to industry would be $750 million a year.

In other words, they're not so much disputing the results of the Harvard study, but they're saying that because Harvard didn't get the final copy of the report to them by a certain date, the results just didn't need to be considered, and, so, we get more mercury in our air than we might have otherwise.

Posted by thorswitch at March 22, 2005 08:01 PM

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