[HN Gopher] Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Saf...
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Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office
Author : voisin
Score : 106 points
Date : 2021-08-06 20:26 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| chrisked wrote:
| Ok
| tru3_power wrote:
| I don't understand what's in it for the people pushing for these
| approvals. Are they getting kickbacks?
| scrps wrote:
| Jobs, google "Regulatory capture"
| voisin wrote:
| There is intense pressure to please big corporate interests. I
| see it in my field often. I have no idea where it comes from. I
| think maybe fear of the power big corporates have? Fear that
| their higher ups won't protect them?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| At the highest level, the revolving door and cushy
| "retirement jobs" in industry.
|
| And once you have the bosses in your pocket, they exert
| pressure down the chain.
|
| Middle management isn't getting the real pressure, but their
| bosses are breathing fire down their necks, telling them
| expectations.
| mtreis86 wrote:
| Do they mention which chemicals were involved?
| sschueller wrote:
| It won't be a vaccine that makes you sterile. It will be one of
| the chemicals that end up everywhere because of corruption at the
| only agency that would protect us.
|
| This is also why those people for a unregulated free market are
| insane. Sure the company pedaling the dangerous chemical will
| eventual go out of business. But how many people will die and
| suffer and does anyone think that the people responsible will
| still around the decades later until the crime is found out?
|
| All new chemicals should be assumed dangerous and require
| rigorous safety studies and we need to make absolutely sure these
| studies are independent.
|
| Pumping millions of gallons of corexit into an oil spill should
| not be permitted if the ingredients are a trade secret. We need
| to know what goes where, same goes for chemicals used in
| fracking.
| voxic11 wrote:
| New chemicals save lives as well, they may be safer than
| existing alternatives or enable safer processes to be used or
| they may enable some new technology that saves lives (there is
| almost unlimited potential here, few areas of technological
| advancement are as wide impacting as improvements to
| materials).
|
| It sounds like you are advocating for the precautionary
| principle, but what do you think about the counterargument that
| by blocking technological improvements before actually
| investigating their risk you could be doing more harm than you
| prevent.
|
| > Strong formulations of the precautionary principle... when
| applied to the principle itself as a policy decision, beats its
| own purpose of reducing risk. The reason suggested is that
| preventing innovation from coming to market means that only
| current technology may be used, and current technology itself
| may cause harm or leave needs unmet; there is a risk of causing
| harm by blocking innovation. As Michael Crichton wrote in his
| novel State of Fear: "The 'precautionary principle', properly
| applied, forbids the precautionary principle."
|
| > For example, forbidding nuclear power plants based on
| concerns about low-probability high-impact risks means
| continuing to rely on power plants that burn fossil fuels,
| which continue to release greenhouse gases and thousands of
| certain deaths from air pollution.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Intern...
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| If you allow the sale & use of new chemicals before they are
| proven to be safe, you don't just run the risk of them
| eventually turning out to be unsafe. You also remove all
| incentives to actually investigate their safety.
|
| We've also found most of the low-hanging fruits of material
| science. Can you think of a single new chemical that came out
| in the last decade or two that is worth the risk of something
| like, say, Teflon seeing widespread use and then being shown
| to be carcinogenic?
|
| ...and Michael Crichton's State of Fear is his
| pseudoscientific turn to the dark side, a wild recounting of
| dozens of superficial arguments trying to proof that climate
| change isn't real, years after they had been disproven.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| I'd never heard of the precautionary principle before, but
| the way you explain it is just circular reasoning used to
| straw man it as nefarious. Arguing for validation is not
| arguing to ban innovation - we just need some actual
| accountability (and ideally transparency) included in the
| process. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, whereas the
| article points out we are straight-up falsifying documents in
| order to push sales for chemical corporations.
|
| What's the harm in actually knowing scientific data about the
| chemicals we're buying?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The harm that parent alludes to is that in toxicity studies
| you only _know_ it doesn 't cause cancer after 30 years of
| exposure... after 30 years.
|
| Those studies are incredibly expensive, and are the reason
| so many chemical companies merged.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| >by blocking technological improvements before actually
| investigating their risk
|
| How is not doing this not an obvious recipe for doom. The
| only ridiculous thing here is you have stated this as a
| binary instead of a continuum.
| kingsloi wrote:
| My little girl was born with really rare heart disease and a
| genetic condition, a boy a few streets behind us developed a
| really rare cancer.
|
| - https://kingsley.sh/posts/2021/staggering-cost-of-surviving-...
|
| - https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/ind...
|
| This comes a year or so after a ArcelorMittal spilled ammonia and
| cyanide into Lake Michigan, and didn't sound the alarm for a few
| days. My wife and I were swimming in it during those days, and
| not to mention we live down wind from many other steel processing
| plants, oil refineries, mills of other descriptions, etc.
| https://elpc.org/projects/suing-lake-michigan-polluter-arcel...
|
| I think during the early pandemic, EPA reporting restrictions
| were lowered? Given the shoddy response from the 2019 spill, I
| lost hope that any future spill would be reported, unless many
| fish/wildlife were also killed and spotted.
| https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation...
|
| I run an air quality sensor: https://millerbeach.community and
| hoping to upgrade the sensor to track more pollutants. I'd love
| to test water quality of Lake Michigan, too. It's stuff like this
| that make me realise I'm doing a community service running my
| sensor.
| voisin wrote:
| I am sorry to hear about the personal impact to your family.
|
| I think things like the air quality sensor you run are the
| actual solution here. In the absence of government officials
| doing their job properly, it is up to individuals to do it for
| themselves.
|
| I wonder if there would be an open source solution for water
| quality testing and air quality testing, and if enough could be
| built by citizen hackers to create a distributed screen and
| alert system for pollutants.
| kingsloi wrote:
| Thank you, I appreciate it. I can only bring awareness to it,
| one man vs mega polluters is an impossible fight.
|
| I live a stone's throw from the Lake Michigan shoreline, and
| would happily go out there daily to get a water sample,
| before my normal 9-5. If anyone is interested in hacking
| something together.
|
| The air sensor I run is open source, for anyone interested.
| [deleted]
| briefcomment wrote:
| I like PurpleAir's crowdsourced air quality map[1]. Their
| sensors are one of the few that get down to the .3 micrometer
| level.
|
| [1]https://www.purpleair.com/map
| kingsloi wrote:
| I agree! I love their open API, too!
|
| I'm in the process of creating a 501c, and as part of my
| mission to raise awareness, I'm going to purchase 5-10
| PurpleAir II and have them across Lake Michigan's entire
| shoreline. Or, that's part of my plan.
|
| Ideally I'd run a more extensive sensor that tracks more
| than just PM, but I have a feeling pollution varies a lot
| in a small distance, we get lake effect weather, but what
| about people 5-10 miles south of me, do they have it
| better/worse, etc. I'd love to know those questions, and
| PurpleAir makes it semi affordable
| cogman10 wrote:
| This is, frankly, the legacy of the Trump administration. This
| story of blatant corruption to favor businesses was common
| throughout the federal government.
|
| The Trump admin went out of it's way to both install the worst of
| the worst and to push out as many competent federal employees as
| possible.
|
| Prime examples of Trump swamp creatures include such hits as Ajit
| Pai, Scott Pruitt (Who likely started the policies of the
| article), and Louis DeJoy.
| topspin wrote:
| Why are the various 'manager' names carefully avoided in this
| sort of reporting? Many other names, including the
| whistleblowers, are prominently offered. What rule is the
| Intercept complying with that has them bleep out (thus we known
| these names are known) the name of a manager in the audio and
| assiduously omit any manager names in the writing?
|
| Names would reveal relationships. Doubtless these managers are
| former or prospective Dow employees, or related or have some
| other pedigree of corruption. That's how all of this works.
| Failure to name names contributes to the problem.
| jacquesm wrote:
| But if you steal a tin of catfood your name will be in the
| newspapers for the whole world to read and google three decades
| later.
| kingsloi wrote:
| Same thing applies for dumping ammonia and cyanide in say
| Lake Michigan, you or I would get charged with water supply
| terrorism
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_terrorism, but do
| it as part of the steel process and it's a magical loop hole
| gumby wrote:
| Typically only once you've been arrested.
| voisin wrote:
| Probably trying to avoid libel since nothing has been proven in
| court.
| wbl wrote:
| Truth is an absolute defense to libel in the US. Furthermore
| because this is the sort of reporting on a matter of public
| concern that society benefits from the standard gets tighter:
| it's not enough to show something was false, you have to show
| the publication should have known or acted maliciously in
| publishing. Incredibly high bar.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Truth or (as you point out) ignorance. Which is different
| from the UK and a lot of other countries.
|
| But the practical question is: can The Intercept afford a
| legal fight against Dow?
| gumby wrote:
| > Why are the various 'manager' names carefully avoided in this
| sort of reporting? Many other names, including the
| whistleblowers, are prominently offered.
|
| I assume that the whistleblowers quoted spoke directly with the
| reporter while the managers did not.
|
| Usually a paper will say "we asked the manager for comment but
| they did not respond". Who knows if the Intercept even did
| that?
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(page generated 2021-08-06 23:00 UTC)