Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.businessweek.com
 In the past decade, the EPA did 13 studies of particulate matter and four studies on diesel exhaust at its North Carolina laboratory, Photographer: Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel/MCT via Getty Images The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency failed to disclose cancer risks to volunteers used in research studies on harmful pollutants, a government watchdog says. The EPA, which warns of dangers from diesel exhaust and tiny particles in its rules to cut pollution, recruited people for tests on those pollutants in 2010 and 2011. Consent forms they got didn’t mention cancer because the agency considered the risks minimal from short-term exposure, the agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a report yesterday. “When justifying a job-killing regulation, EPA argues exposure to particulate matter is deadly, but when they are conducting experiments, they say human exposure studies are not harmful,” Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter said in a statement, reacting to the report. The EPA’s test practices have been criticized by Republicans who say the agency contradicts itself in explaining its rules and testing safety, and called for the human testing to be shut down. The watchdog said the EPA followed “applicable regulations,” and proposed procedural changes, not a shuttering of the research. “The agency should inform study subjects of any potential cancer risks of a pollutant to which they are being exposed,” according... |
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