EPA allows corporate tyranny

EPA drops ball on danger of chemicals to children … Agency oversight panel out of money and, critics say, beholden to industry…By SUSANNE RUST and MEG KISSINGER… Posted: March 29, 2008…EXERPTED…
Like many parents, New Berlin mom Becky Fisco figures that if the chemicals sprayed on crib mattresses could make her 5-month-old baby sick, government regulators would warn her about it. "I just assume that these things are safe or they wouldn't be allowed to be sold," said Fisco as baby Natalie cooed in her stroller and 3-year-old Grant tumbled around the Betty Brinn Children's Museum. The Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to evaluate compounds in products such as flame retardants in mattresses and car seats to see if they are especially harmful to children.
But it doesn't. The EPA's Voluntary Children's Chemical Evaluation Program, which relies on companies to provide information about the dangers of the chemicals they produce, is all but dead. Funding ran out last August. Committees haven't met in nearly a year. Key members of the program can't even say if it is still alive. The EPA's own advisory committee blasted the pilot program as severely flawed and has called for a total overhaul.
The Journal Sentinel reviewed all public correspondence of the little-known federal program, the backgrounds of program panel members and meeting attendance records. Among the findings: • Some panels deciding on the safety of chemicals were disproportionately staffed with scientists who had financial ties to chemical makers. • Industry scientists often downplayed the risks that their chemicals posed. In one case, scientists underestimated by nearly 40 times the amount of a certain chemical found in the blood of people tested for the compound - a substance suspected of interfering with behavior and brain development. • When pressed for more information about the chemicals they made, companies often refused or ignored requests by the EPA. • The EPA did not keep a budget for the program and couldn't say how much was spent over the past eight years. • The program's Web site describing the dangers of chemicals to children is so riddled with jargon that even pediatricians specializing in environmental health say they can't make sense of it.
Still, the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade group, praises the federal program as "scientifically rigorous, open, transparent, timely and useful." Just last week, however, the EPA reported that the consortium of U.S. companies that makes the chemical refused its request for more testing. EPA officials admit that they are powerless to elicit more information from the companies about the chemicals. "We can't make them do anything,"

Under our current American version of laissez-faire corporate capitalism, “we” – that’s you and me – openly permit the fox to guard the hen house and “we” even reward the fox for his effort…?

Is this a clear enough example of an “externality” for us…?

Is this a clear enough example of corporate tyranny for us…?

Are “we” forever to remain – deaf – dumb – blind …?