The battle lines have been drawn over the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed new clean-air rules.
Industry groups and their paid scientists are duking it out with independent health and environmental groups over whether the new rules are needed.
That, at least, is the way it's being depicted. But the truth is far more complicated.
Many of the scientists attacking the proposed rules take research money from industry. But what is not commonly known — since the media almost never report it — is that almost every group and researcher pushing the costly new air pollution rules gets money from the EPA.
The American Lung Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council — two of the most outspoken groups favoring the tougher new air standards — have received millions in EPA grants in recent years. Several of the scientists pushing new standards have also gotten sizable EPA grants.
Backers of the new rules argue that these financial ties are meaningless. The science is solid that smog and soot — the subject of the new rules — pose serious health threats at current levels. Also, the EPA doesn't know what the research findings will be, and can't, unlike industry, hide unflattering results.
This federal money is just cover for the EPA, say critics, as it pushes new mandates that will cost industry and consumers billions of dollars a year. It's a way, they say, for the EPA to get apparently independent groups to lobby on their behalf.
"The EPA is funding advocates on one side of the issue," said Thomas Delawareans, an economist at Loyola College in Baltimore who has written widely on the issue. "They're skewing the debate in favor of the EPA's position, and using tax dollars to do it."
In November, the EPA said it wanted to tighten the current air pollution standard for urban smog. And, it proposed to add a new pollutant to its list so-called fine particles that spew from smokestacks, auto exhaust pipes, barbecues and so on.
Almost immediately, industry charged that the new rules would impose huge costs on the economy but would produce little gain.
For their part, health and environmental groups said the new standards, if anything, don't go far enough. That's been the way the story has been told by the media so far.
A New York Times report described an EPA meeting in Salt Lake City two weeks ago. It quoted a letter signed by George Thurston, professor of environmental medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, saying that "tens of thousands of hospital visits and premature deaths could be prevented each year by more stringent air quality standards."
Although scientists linked to industry are identified as such in the story, no mention was made of the three-year EPA grant worth 5383,000 that Thurston got last year to study the health effects of "acidic particulate matter."
- A recent Wall Street Journal article attacked a meeting of scientists in Annapolis, Md., because it was sponsored by a group funded by the National Association of Manufacturers. The scientists were set to discuss the merits of the science behind the new air rules.
The article quotes Joel Schwartz, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, decrying the meeting.
The fact that Schwartz got a three- year $196,000 grant from the EPA last year to study the health effects of pollution on children was not mentioned in the piece.
Nor did the article note that the Harvard School of Public Health, where many of the findings on the health effects of air pollution originate, got nearly $3 million in EPA grants last year alone, according to grant data from the EPA.
If industry-paid scientists skew results to favor their benefactors, one might suggest, the same may be true for government-funded researchers.
"The EPA is not going to give you money if you say that air pollution isn't a health threat," said Steven Milloy, president of the Environmental Policy Analysis Network in Washington, which gets industry funding.
If nothing else, Milloy and others argue, these financial ties to the EPA should be made explicit in news accounts, just as ties to industry typically are.
Thurston disagrees.
"Whether I get funding from the government has nothing to do with what I say," he said. EPA funding is an open, peer-reviewed, public process, he argues.
"A peer-review panel, external to the EPA, reviews the grants," he said, adding that industry grants don't operate that way. And, while industry can lock up research it doesn't like in a file drawer, "there's no file drawer with government research."
Comparing industry scientists with those getting government money is misleading, he said. "It's not an equal thing."
The American Lung Association is often cited as an independent source of information on the health effects of air pollution and the need for tougher EPA standards.
But the ALA has had a long — and lucrative — relationship with the Environmental Protection Agency.
Between 1990 and 1994, the EPA gave the lung association's national office and its various state chapters more than $4 million. In 1995, the EPA gave the group close to 51 million more, according to the Federal Assistance Awards Data System, which tracks government grants.
In turn, the ALA sued the EPA almost every year, claiming the agency wasn't complying with the nation's clean air laws. In fact, many people cite the lung association suit as the reason for the new air pollution rules.
A case of biting the hand that feeds you? Not so, say some analysts.
If you think the EPA is upset with the ALA suing them, think again," said Scott Segal, an attorney at Bracewell & Patterson and a professor of environmental management at the University of Maryland. "Truth be known, the EPA wants to be sued, because every time they are sued it expands the reach of the Clean Air Act."
Grants aren't the only source of EPA money for the ALA.
The agency often asks lung association officials to testify before EPA hearings, and reimburses them for the cost of doing so. The association got $8,500 in travel costs paid by the EPA in 1995, according to government records.
And, suing the EPA isn't the only thing the ALA has been doing to push federal clean-air rules.
- The ALA helped deliver scores of witnesses to the EPA's Salt Lake City hearings two weeks ago. It also ran radio ads in several markets touting the benefits of cleaner air.
- Two years ago, the charity ran a series of radio ads attacking Republicans in Virginia, Connecticut and New York who had voted for the regulatory reform part of tho House "Contract With America." The ALA's complaint: The Contract "fundamentally threatens our entire agenda to battle against lung disease."
- The National Mining Association attacked the charity in early 1995, charging that the ALA tried to silence witnesses who wanted to testify against the EPA's tougher standard for sulfur dioxide.
Two scientists affiliated with the ALA were told not to speak against the rule by the charity. The ALA said the scientists held positions with the organization that required them to be objective. And speaking out on this issue would violate that.
The lung association did not respion that required them to be objective. And speaking out on this issue would violate that.
The lung association did not respond to telephone inquiries for comment.
The EPA has also been a generous donor to the Natural Resources Defense Council. In 1995 alone, the council got more than $1 million from the EPA.
It, too, has returned the favor by repeatedly suing the agency. The suits always charge that the EPA isn't doing enough to protect public health.
In a final twist, the EPA turned around and paid the NRDC's legal bills. Between 1993 and 1996, the agency forked over more than $150,000 for the NRDC's legal costs.
Several air pollution studies were funded in part by grants from the EPA.
One of the key studies on fine particles — the subject of the new EPA rules — found that this kind of air pollution boosts the risk of dying by 17%. That translates into thousands of lives lost each year, the study asserts.
That study ran in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The journal's publisher? The American Lung Association.
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