Six years in the making, a study on hazardous materials around the Great Lakes has been buried by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a division of Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Despite extensive review by the EPA, International Joint Commission, state agencies from New York and Minnesota, independent academics and the ATSDR itself, the director of ATDSR has claimed the study “well below expectations.”
The study contains warning that more than nine million people may face elevated risk from dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury or other pollutants. It found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer.
According to Dr. Peter Orris, one of the reviewers of the report, it “…is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report, internally and externally, that I have heard of.” Christopher De Rosa [former] director of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine complained in a letter to the CDC director and the director of ATSDR that not publishing the study had “the appearance of censorship of science and distribution of factual information regarding the health status of vulnerable communities.” Mr. De Rosa has since been relieved of his job.
For a more complete story see The Center For Public Integrity
