Lobby to Hide Cancer Dangers Has Government's Helping Hand

[babylonsister]

Lobby to Hide Cancer Dangers Has Government's Helping Hand

By Michelle Chen, In These Times. Posted November 19, 2007.


Industry special interests are burying information on cancer-causing chemicals and, according to watchdog groups, the government is helping them do it -- in the name of "data quality."

In a study of the National Institutes of Health's National Toxicology Program, OMB Watch, a DC-based policy-research group, reports that industry is frustrating the work of government researchers with petitions that are light on science but heavy with accusations of anti-business "bias."

Public interest advocates warn that corporations are co-opting the federal Data Quality Act to paralyze scientists with frivolous allegations of inaccuracy, driving a stealth assault on public-health research.

In 2000, Congress passed the Data Quality Act under the guidance of lobbyist Jim Tozzi, a former administrator with the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan who now heads the industry-backed Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE). The two-paragraph statute broadly mandates that agencies uphold "the quality, objectivity, utility and integrity of information" they disseminate.

That's a laudable principle, critics say, but the corporate-friendly Bush administration is promoting exploitation of the law.

"It's provided a mechanism for industry associations to take another bite of the apple," says OMB Watch analyst Clay Northouse, "to raise another challenge against a regulation coming into effect and affecting their business practices."

more...

http://alternet.org/healthwellness/67364/