New York Times
White House Downplayed the Risks of Mercury in
Proposed Rules, Scientists Say
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
Published: April 7, 2004
ASHINGTON, April 5 — While working with Environmental
Protection Agency officials to write regulations for
coal-fired power plants over several recent months,
White House staff members played down the toxic
effects of mercury, hundreds of pages of documents and
e-mail messages show.
The staff members deleted or modified information on
mercury that employees of the environmental agency say
was drawn largely from a 2000 report by the National
Academy of Sciences that Congress had commissioned to
settle the scientific debate about the risks of
mercury.
In interviews, 6 of 10 members of the academy's panel
on mercury said the changes did not introduce
inaccuracies. They said that many of the revisions
sharpened the scientific points being made and that
justification could be made for or against other
changes. Most changes were made by the White House's
Office of Management and Budget, which employs
economists and scientists to review regulations.
But scientists on the academy panel and others outside
it as well as environmentalists and politicians
expressed concern in recent interviews that a host of
subtle changes by White House staff members resulted
in proposed rules that played down the health risks
associated with mercury from coal-fired power plants.
The proposal largely tracks suggestions from the
energy industry.
While the panel members said the changes did not
introduce outright errors, they said they were
concerned because the White House almost uniformly
minimized the health risks in instances where there
could be disagreement.
"What they are saying is not scientifically invalid on
its face," said Alan Stern, a New Jersey toxicologist
who served on the panel. "Partially they edited for
clarity and relevance from a scientific standpoint.
But there appears to be an emphasis on wordsmithing
that is not necessarily dictated by the science."
Last Thursday attorneys general from 10 states and 45
senators asked the E.P.A. to scrap the proposed rules,
saying they were not strict enough.
They also asked Michael O. Leavitt, the agency's
administrator, to extend the comment period for the
rules, which now ends April 30. Under a court-ordered
agreement, the rules are to be in final form by Dec.
15.
In some cases, White House staff members suggested
phrasing that minimized the links between power plants
and elevated levels of mercury in fish, the primary
source from which Americans accumulate mercury in
their bodies, in a form known as methylmercury.
The academy has found that exposure to elevated levels
of mercury can damage the brains of children and
fetuses.
In another instance, a draft passage originally read,
"Recent published studies have shown an association
between methylmercury exposure and an increased risk
of heart attacks and coronary disease in adult men."
It was changed to "it has been hypothesized that there
is an association between methylmercury exposure and
an increased risk of coronary disease; however this
warrants further study as the new studies currently
available present conflicting results."
The change understates known science, some academy
panel members said in interviews.
The proposed regulations are available on the E.P.A.
Web site (epa.gov/). The proposed rules would limit
mercury emissions by an estimated 70 percent over
decades and would also allow power plants to buy and
sell among themselves the rights to create mercury
pollution.
Mr. Leavitt is reconsidering elements of the rules.
Small amounts of mercury occur naturally in the
environment. In December 2000, however, the
environmental agency concluded that mercury from power
plants should be classified as a hazardous air
pollutant to be strictly regulated under the Clean Air
Act. In December 2003, the Bush administration
reversed that finding.
The proposed regulations for power plants — the
single-largest source of mercury emissions in the
United States — are the culmination of 14 years of
lawsuits, scientific review and government reports.
White House Downplayed the Risks of Mercury in
Proposed Rules, Scientists Say
Published: April 7, 2004
(Page 2 of 2)
Coal and utility groups lobbied intensively to help
shape the regulations, which will cost billions of
dollars. Paragraphs in the proposed rules are inserted
nearly verbatim from memorandums from the firm of
Latham & Watkins, where two top political officials in
the E.P.A.'s office overseeing air regulations, Bill
Wehrum and Jeffrey Holmstead, once worked.
White House officials and E.P.A. political appointees
say the changes in the draft rules reflect the typical
back and forth of developing regulations among
agencies, and environmental agency officials had the
option of rejecting the suggestions, which in some
cases they did.
"This is a standard collaborative process that
involved experts across the government to create a
solid product," said Dana Perino, the spokeswoman from
the Council on Environmental Quality, which
coordinates federal environmental efforts.
But some critics are not convinced. "This is a pattern
of undermining and disregarding science on political
considerations," said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Democrat of New York, citing a recent letter by the
Union of Concerned Scientists, signed by 60
scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, which
criticized the administration's handling of science
issues.
Others feel the White House's Office of Management and
Budget is overstepping its bounds. "O.M.B.'s role is
supposed to be to review the economics of rules —
which they did very poorly here — not to fly speck the
science and minimize health threats," said Lisa
Heinzerling, a professor at Georgetown University who
is a co-author of the book "Priceless," on
cost-benefit analysis.
Throughout an E.P.A. draft of the proposed regulations
circulated in November, a White House staff member
crossed out the word "confirmed" from the phrase
describing mercury as a "confirmed public health
risk." In some instances, sentences in the final
proposals were changed to mercury "warrants
regulation."
Mr. Wehrum, the chief counsel of E.P.A.'s air
regulation office, said that the handwritten changes
were prompted by his agency's desire to use more
precise legal language from the Clean Air Act.
Some members of the National Academy said that
sections of the regulations on health effects could
have been made more clear, but that the science was
strong enough not to delete them entirely.
An official with the Office of Management and Budget
who emphasized that neurologic risks to children were
the most important concern, said language on other
health effects was deleted or softened for a number of
reasons. In some cases the draft had overstated the
known science, while in others, like cerebral palsy,
the effects were not relevant to mercury exposure in
fish or power plants.
Even taking into account studies that have been
published since their report in 2000, some panel
members said the language was made too soft in several
cases.
"There is increasing evidence of an association
between mercury exposure and cardiovascular effects,"
said Thomas Burke, an epidemiologist from Johns
Hopkins University and a member of the panel. "I would
call it stronger than a hypothesis."
In another case, a toxicologist with the Office of
Management and Budget recommended changes to a
sentence saying children exposed to mercury in the
womb "are at increased risk of poor performance on
neurobehavioral tests." The final sentence that was
published said children "may be at increased risk."
That pattern was repeated a number of times throughout
regulations where "are" or "can" was changed to "may."
The official said that the softened language reflected
the fact that low levels of mercury exposure below the
safe dose were not known to be risky, even to
children.
Other scientists interpret the edit differently.
Joseph L. Jacobson, a professor of psychology at Wayne
State University, who served on the academy panel,
said, " `May be' suggests an effort to discount the
fact that we have consistent evidence across more than
one study."
While it is standard for the White House to review
federal agency testimony and reports, E.P.A. staff
members say the Bush administration also minimized the
amount of mercury that comes from power plants. Over
agency staff objections, the White House on several
occasions in the past year added the statement that
coal burning produces "roughly one percent of mercury
in the global pool."
According to the E.P.A. staff, the 1 percent figure
was added to an agency report on children's health;
Senate testimony by Christie Whitman, who was the
E.P.A. administrator; and Senate testimony of Mr.
Holmstead, who is the assistant agency administrator
for air.
While that figure is cited in the E.P.A.'s 1997 report
to Congress, agency staff members and independent
scientists say it is misleading because much of the
mercury that ends up in the nation's water and soil
comes from nearby sources.
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