US chemical group denies unfair EPA influence

29 February 2008 20:52  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--The American Chemistry Council (ACC) denied on Friday that it unfairly lobbied for the removal of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) advisor, saying the scientist’s dismissal was part of the agency’s review process.

 

Council spokeswoman Tiffany Harrington said the agency’s removal of an advisory panel chairperson, Deborah Rice, was “part of the normal process of an independent peer review panel and shouldn’t be shocking in any way”.

 

Harrington was responding to charges raised earlier on Friday by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that the council had used its influence to force Rice off the agency’s external peer review panel for polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs).

 

The panel was assessing health implications for a particular PBDE, decabromodiphenyl ether, commonly referred to as deca-BDE or simply deca.  Deca is widely used as a fire retardant in plastic housings for televisions and other consumer electronics and in mattresses and upholstered furniture.

 

The EWG charged that the agency’s dismissal of Rice and the elimination of her comments from the panel’s final report issued last year represent a “dangerous signal” that EPA will not tolerate panel members who express their views about chemical toxicity.

 

Harrington said the council wrote to the agency in May last year to raise several “serious concerns” about the review panel headed by Rice, including Rice’s independence and objectivity.

 

In its letter to EPA, the council noted that according to the agency’s own criteria, those selected for external review panels should be free of “any conflict of interest or appearance of a lack of impartiality”.

 

However, the ACC said, Rice, who serves full time as a scientist at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before the Maine state legislature in early 2007 “specifically advocating that the state mandate a phase out of deca-BDE”.

 

The council cited press reports quoting Rice as saying that “deca should be eliminated because it is a persistent toxin that accumulates in the food chain”.  Those statements and articles written by Rice indicated that she “has been a fervent advocate of banning deca-BDE - the very sort of policy predisposition that has no place in an independent, objective peer review”, the council letter said.

 

The Environmental Working Group said that Rice’s firing also raised a double standard at EPA, saying that other agency panel experts who have expressed views favouring chemicals under study have not been dismissed for bias.

 

The environmental group called on EPA to reinstate Rice and her comments and, more broadly, to detail financial or other ties of prospective panel members.

 

Rice said she did not want to comment on the matter.

 

The EPA was not immediately available for comment.

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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