The EPA’s Unconscionable Silence

[IndianaGreen]

The EPA’s Unconscionable Silence

Saturday December 09

By Andrew Robbins
CSMS Magazine Staff Writer

The outcome of inhaling mineral particulate is a vast array of predictable diseases. For example, asthma, blood clot, many types of cancer, erectile dysfunction (impotence), congestive heart failure, and heart attack begin forming when inhaled earthen minerals (dust) enter through the lungs into the patient’s blood and lymph fluids.

For decades, federal and state health officials have known that breathing inorganic matter results in these illnesses and many other preventable diseases. Yet, “Who in government is responsible for sounding the alarm and awakening a sleeping public?”

At a meeting sponsored by the Indiana Chapter of the American Lung Association (ALA), that question came from the audience. The answer may surprise you. At a time when clean air is in short supply and the number of people seeking medical treatment is rising, “government agencies are purposely mute.” Their silence speaks volumes, for they are staffed with experts who know that morbidity begins with the inhalation of a single mineral fiber.

The financial influence corporate contributors exert over our Nation’s political parties has impeded the circulation of scientific studies and thereby resulted in massive numbers of preventable illnesses. Governments and employers place great emphasis on creating a business friendly atmosphere. Often these partnerships terminate when corporations deplete their tax incentives and then abandon their environmental disasters. They leave behind industrial health issues that, for generations, continue to plague local communities.

The leadership in Washington has repeatedly asked Congress to confirm, to our Nation’s health care agencies, political appointees who are loyal to the business community. Moreover, Congress has failed to adequately fund many of the Nation’s health enforcement agencies. As a result, federal and state governments are now clamoring to transfer the projected gargantuan Baby Boomer medical treatment outlays from governments to individuals. Washington’s current thought process is to disavow the government-corporate partnership and transfer the cost of these preventable illnesses to the patient and the patient’s family.

http://www.csmsmagazine.org/news.php?pg=20061209I363

[Redneck Socialist]

1. What EPA?

EPA SCRUBBING LIBRARY WEBSITE TO MAKE REPORTS UNAVAILABLE — Agency Sells $40,000 Worth of Furniture and Equipment for $350

Washington, DC — In defiance of Congressional requests to immediately halt closures of library collections, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is purging records from its library websites, making them unavailable to both agency scientists and outside researchers, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of its shuttered libraries, including the hurried auctioning off of expensive bookcases, cabinets, microfiche readers and other equipment for less than a penny on the dollar.

In a letter dated November 30, 2006, four incoming House Democratic committee chairs demanded that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson assure them “that the destruction or disposition of all library holdings immediately ceased upon the Agency's receipt of this letter and that all records of library holdings and dispersed materials are being maintained.” On the very next day, December 1st, EPA de-linked thousands of documents from the website for the Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library, in EPA’s Washington D.C. Headquarters.

Last month without notice to its scientists or the public, EPA abruptly closed the OPPTS Library, the agency’s only specialized research repository on health effects and properties of toxic chemicals and pesticides. The web purge follows reports that library staffers were ordered to destroy its holdings by throwing collections into recycling bins.

More at: http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=791

[redqueen]

2. Whoever did that should be held liable.

Unbelievable...