UPDATE: A new website chronicles the issue here http://epahumantesting.com/
Exclusive to WUWT by David W. Schnare
Statement of ATI’s Lead Counsel
on
American Tradition Institute v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(US District Court, Easter District of Virginia No. 1:12-cv-1066)
There are few occasions in life that emerge directly from the core of an individual and almost never are those memorialized in a law suit. On Friday, September 21, 2012, I took five copies of a complaint to the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, filing one of them with the court and having each of the rest stamped and then sent to four senior government officials, Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and EPA General Counsel Scott Fulton. I sent them summons to appear and defend themselves in part because of my first name.
I was named after David Steiner, a man who died of starvation in Buchenwald concentration camp on May 3, 1945. Tattooed on his body was the number 59059. He was witness to horrors that, today, we have a hard time even contemplating, something that I thought would never exist on this planet again – the abhorrent practice of giving human subjects poisons in order to determine what subsequently happens to them.
I have always been deeply affected by the circumstances of my great-uncle’s death. It is a heavy burden to carry the name of such a victim. As I matured, I committed my life to giving to our civilization that which David Steiner was never able to give himself. I have given 37 years of service to the United States, most of that in an effort to protect human health and the environment as a professional at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
I was able to secure a position of responsibility and trust at EPA in large part because the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offered me the opportunity to obtain graduate degrees and prepare myself for a career in public service. Until a few weeks ago, I had been a strong supporter of each. Then Steven Milloy asked me to represent him and other members of the American Tradition Institute who have stories much like mine, or otherwise cannot countenance such human experimentation.
Steve’s story is worse than death. His uncle, Zoran Galkanovic, was incarcerated at the Mauthausen concentration camp. Upon threat of death, Mr. Galkanovic was forced to rise each morning and identify those individuals at the concentration camp too ill to work, knowing they would subsequently be executed that very day. Because of the inhumanity forced on Mr. Galkanovic, Mr. Milloy has accepted as a family responsibility the fight against any government who subjects its citizens to inhumane treatment. Who knew it would be our government? Who knew it would be the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency? Who knew that human experimentation would be done on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill? Who knew it would be an official body of that University that approved this research?
On first blush, I simply could not believe Mr. Milloy. Then I looked carefully at the facts and at the law. This case involves the intentional exposure of human subjects to “fine particulate” matter, also known as PM2.5. EPA obtained their PM2.5 from a diesel truck. It is difficult to overstate the atrocity of this research. EPA parked a truck’s exhaust pipe directly beneath an intake pipe on the side of a building. The exhaust was sucked into the pipe, mixed with some additional air and then piped directly into the lungs of the human subjects. EPA actually has pictures of this gas chamber, a clear plastic pipe stuck into the mouth of a subject, his lips sealing it to his face, diesel fumes inhaled straight into his lungs.
Unbelievable as that may seem, consider the additional fact that EPA has officially concluded that this gas is a genotoxic carcinogen and that there is no exposure level below which it can be considered safe. In fact, EPA Administrator Jackson testified to Congress that of all deaths occurring in the United States, 1 in 4 “is attributable to PM2.5.” She told them “Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.”
Under the law, under EPA regulations and under EPA policy, this human experimentation is strictly prohibited. To conduct human experimentation, the human subjects must be properly informed of the risks they face and these risks must be less than the potential benefit of the experiment. My family knows how that works too.
Few today know the ravages of Polio, but some of us are old enough to remember it too well. Susan Paidar was a childhood neighbor, the same age as one of my brothers. She died in an iron lung. And, she was one of the last victims of this terrible disease, in small part because of the courage of one of my brothers. In 1952, at age 6, my brother Rick was selected to be in the first human test group for the Salk vaccine. He was offered the possibility of never having to worry about polio again. He was a human subject and there was a real benefit from that human experimentation.
In the section describing the mandatory benefit that must be offered to the human subjects, EPA’s PM2.5 “informed consent” baldly states “there is no benefit.” Worse, the form never informs the subjects that they will be inhaling diesel fumes, never tells them the gas is a carcinogen, never tells them about all the other toxic substances in diesel exhaust pouring into their lungs, never tells them that because PM2.5 is genotoxic, it might cause disease in children they might wish to have.
Medical ethicist, Professor John D. Dunn, MD, JD, called EPA’s human experimentation “scandalously unethical and immoral” and said “There can be no further tolerance of this misconduct.” This is not the EPA I knew. This is not the University of North Carolina I knew. This is not the American Tradition of our nation. But, this is why I traveled to the U.S. Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia – to put a stop to it.
David W. Schnare, Esq., MSPH, PhD.
Director
Environmental Law Center
American Tradition Institute.
=============================================================
Steve Milloy will have a related major announcement tomorrow at junkscience.com
Reblogged this on biting tea and commented:
If this is true, it is huge.
Have the EPA socialist democrats gone completely mad?
Or just decided to follow in the footsteps of the infamous socialist democrats of 1938?:
Go get them, Dr. Schnare!!!
Is there a site set up for financial support?
MtK
Our government is truly becoming Orwellian.
Reblogged this on JustMEinT's General Blog and commented:
If this can be shown to be factual this IS HUGE
Go get ’em. Thank you!
That is a Pulmonary function test machine. People with cf use those to determine lung function. It has nothing to do with diesel or human experiments. I thought I was reading the onion.
REPLY: That’s the picture supplied by the EPA for the experiment, you must be an editor for the Onion – Anthony
We tend to forget how the EPA has already impacted us in the last few years without Congressional approval, may I add……
How do you think this impacted our economy?
Just look around you……… Vote, if you don’t, you did!
One should listen, closely, from the past 🙂
Loose cannon on the gun deck. And they call ‘climate change deniers’ sick or mentally deficient. This is galling, painful and disgusting. C’mon, all you Gleicks & McKibbens & Grists & Romms, get up on your high horse and bleat about THIS garbage for a change.
Evil is as evil does.
Well, let’s hope our judicial system isn’t as corrupt as our agencies. .
http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/environmental-issues/charbroiled-grill-pollutes-more-than-diesel-941232/ you SHOULD find that article scary.
Back in the mid 0’s in the greater Atlanta area we had lots of people suffering heart attacks from the “heat”… but they were all otherwise healthy and in the area normally downwind of the main city. I suffered my first asthma attack and was slowly succumbing to asthma in Clarkston (east on Ponce de Leon). When an online friend of ours moved us out it wasn’t more than 20 minutes after we left the south side of i285 that I started breathing normally. A rapidity I now associate with taking a full dose of Albuterol. (My asthma worsened due to a lung infection and a sudden change of humidity nearly three years ago. Sadly once the bronchia get muscular they get more frisky about irritants). Simply leaving the cloud of these pollutants negated the symptoms.
Turns out that the mammalian lung is one of the most efficient filters on earth. Those people who dropped from heart attacks that summer died because they were filtering too much particulate from the air into their slowly dehydrating blood streams.
I work with pesticides every day and not even the ones that make me gag have set my asthma off, yet spending a half mile behind a low exhaust diesel vehicle – even with windows closed and internal air cycle on the aircon – requires a dose of Albuterol. Molecular “atomization” of particulates is a danger in modern society. Even more dangerous is “nano tech” which attempts to find commercial and consumer use for intentionally molecularized aerosols, metals and other compounds.
Our bodies just aren’t designed for these materials to be in our environment… mesothelioma, miner’s lung, asthma. Anybody can name those three but there are hundreds more ailments that come from fine particulates.
A large portion of the organic particulates that become lodged in your lungs when you breathe must be removed from your lungs through your bloodstream. Lungs make HEPA look like a sham.
I do remember some out-cry about the OP’s article subject a couple years ago. The air intake source “just happened to be poorly placed” by a truck loading dock where the trucks were left running while empty for hours on end. It was all very specious to begin with.
Flim-flam it however you may, it still comes down to the simple fact that the building codes for such air equipment prohibit the intake of road-side air.
In fact, EPA Administrator Jackson testified to Congress that of all deaths occurring in the United States, 1 in 4 “is attributable to PM2.5.”
This statement does not pass the sniff test. Are we sure Ms Jackson has been accurately quoted?
If the claims in the article are accurate, this is huge.
I hope we can get some verification of the particulars.
If they are accurate there are some lifetime sentences lining up for Obama admin officials that administered the program. Of course under the corruption of this administration I have no expectation of rule of law being administered. So we are left with yet another reason Obama should be impeached.
I suppose we shall sit back and await the arrival of the evidence and the results of this.
I can believe that they would use a PF test to quantify lung function before and after the test, which is probably what we are seeing in the picture. I doubt they introduced the PM2.5 with such a machine, so this also raises questions in my mind as to other claims in the letter. Did they really use diesel exhaust to produce the PM2.5? Who would think that was a valid test since there are other combustion byproducts in it that could skew the results (putting aside the morality of exposing people to something the EPA considers a deadly substance)? I will reserve judgement on those issues until I can determine the exact protocol used by the EPA. But regardless, the human experiments did happen and that alone should concern everybody.
On the concept that PM2.5 is “genotoxic”……….even if we accept uncritically that this is the case, the idea that breathing it in will cause “disease in children they might wish to have” is not really credible. ALL (or almost all) cancers have a genetic componment, but very few are actually inherited (ie. the cells that develop mutations and then go on to become tumours) are rarely the cells that you pass on to your kids (namely sperm and eggs). Yes, I accept that perhaps breathing the stuff might lead to cancer in the individual, but the extension to children that you might have in the future is needlessly emotive and actually undermines the cold, hard, neutral tone that is probably required.
What, after forcing the closing of coal-fired electric plants by using debunked linear no-threshold exposure models to whip up fake harm numbers, now the EPA seeks empirical confirmation? By deliberately poisoning Americans with that which they have already affirmed as poisonous?
What’s next, they’ll research the effects of mercury vapor on Americans by forcing the exposure of many tens of millions of Americans to elevated levels, virtually the entire country, across all socio-economic ranges, including small children which are already proven to be harmed by it?
Whoops, gotta go, broken CFL to clean up…
My immediately reaction to this is that your delivery is so far over the top you risk making a public spectacle of yourself. Six paragraphs of personal family tragedy and Nazi atrocity before we managed to get a single fact about the actual problem out of you! Calm down! I came within an inch of clicking away and had tentatively formed the conclusion that I was reading the work of a deranged nut before you finally got around to telling us what the problem was.
From what you describe however it does sound like there may have been ethical issues with this experiment. I doubt a proposal along these lines would have made past the ethics committee where I work. So good luck with the court case. However you might want to consider scaling back on the personal family history of Nazi atrocities and heartbreaking polio anecdotes and getting to the point a bit quicker in future.
I hope this was this properly vetted. Seems a bit incredulous.
Don’t over-dramatise the diesel exhaust inhalation part of story. The key to its understanding is here: “The exhaust was sucked into the pipe, mixed with some additional air…”
I would expect them to mix in enough clean air to make the concentration of diesel exhaust similar to what you normally inhale if you live in a big city. That is the only kind of experiment that would make sense if they wanted to obtain the proof of anything. Remember, their goal was to prove that “normal” concentrations of diesel exhaust were hazardous. There is nothing atrocious in making a human subject inhale normal city air.
The really dramatic part of the story is that they have been telling us for umpteen years that an experiment like this would kill a person, and now Steve has caught them lying. Either it is an atrocious Nazi-style experiment (we know it’s not, but it is according to EPA) or EPA has been lying about the hazards of PM2.5 to uphold a regulation that is tantamount to extortion.
It’s checkmate, EPA.
I have just applied a huge multiplier to the respect I have long held for Steve Milloy.
So what if it’s a lung function machine? I know that too, but what’s to stop it bring rigged up to an external air source? All the better to fool people into thinking it is legitimate.
I have to say that I’d like to have more information. I’m not saying that some people might not do something this apparently appalling given the chance, but I find it difficult to believe that something that seems so blatantly wrong would be given the go ahead in an institution in a developed democracy. Surely there must be at least a fig leaf of a semi-plausible explanation.
I’m just saying let’s not get too carried away before some more facts are available.
Pulmonary Function Test http://www.kamelharpulmonary.com/medical-services/pulmonary-function-laboratory/
Does this mean you scooped Steve Milloy and “Junk Science”….
Reporters…. All alike 😉
If in fact these tests did occur as described, and Lisa Jackson did in fact say there is no safe level of exposure to this substance, then doesn’t that imply that each and every participant in this experiment is now dead or has cancer? If this experiment did occur as described, and all (or the vast majority) of participants are in fact healthy, then that implies that this substance isn’t all that dangerous.
You see I am very familiar with that machine. the round white thing on the mouth piece is a filter. You blow on it, not suck. The clip on your nose is so you can fully expand your lungs to blow on the device to measure how your lungs perform. If your claim was true, then having a filter on something blowing into your lungs would not be very effective if that was your desire.
REPLY: And how do you know it wasn’t modified for the purpose? Usually such things have removable, not permanent filter packs. I’ll take the word of an attorney who has to prove such things over the word of an activist. – Anthony
Yeah, not sure why I am wasting my time here, but I was mildly curious. Ive said my part. Take it or remain psyop’ed. But the facts are out there and the truth has no agenda.
Once again, it’s the evil party versus the stupid party. Why give the evil party and their media minions 2-1/2 days notice to formulate spin? IMHO this should have been filed on a Monday. But then again, they’ve known the PM 2.5 issue has been out there for awhile now.
Like dozens of other issues involving the Chicago machine and their enablers, a rational mind would think this would be the end of them, but humans have a remarkable capacity for ignorance.
Relative to what is known and the information freely available to us, we are now the most ignorant species this planet has ever known.
It’s amazing that with all the present diesel regulations in place that EPA would bother with this. It also looks as if, from what I see in comments, that diesel cleanup is actually a good thing.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/deer_2004/session11/2004_deer_johnson2.pdf
http://refrigeratedtrans.com/fleet/trucks/2010_engine_emissions_compliance_1008/
http://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/hd.php
MILLOY: Did Obama’s EPA relaunch Tuskegee experiments … 4/18/12
UNC to investigate ghastly EPA human experiments
North Carolina Medical Board to investigate EPA physicians over …
EPA Reverses Controversial ‘Human Guinea Pig’ Rule 2010 (guess they ignored their own rule…
It was not clear to me when this study was conducted. But ever since the publication of the London Transport Workers Study in 1981, the EPA has been concerned that diesel exhaust could be carcinogenic.
In 2002 the EPA published a study of health effects of diesel exhaust. ( citation:U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (2002) Health assessment document for diesel engine exhaust. Prepared by the National Center for Environmental Assessment, Washington, DC, for the Office of Transportation and Air Quality; EPA/600/8-90/057F. Available from: National Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA; PB2002-107661)
That study says: “Available evidence indicates that there are human health hazards associated with exposure to DE [diesel exhaust]. The hazards include acute exposure-related symptoms, chronic exposure related noncancer respiratory effects, and lung cancer. “ (from the Executive Summary)
If the study referred to in the post was conducted after 2002 , there was no excuse on the EPA’s part for intentionally exposing human subjects to even diluted diesel exhaust. (Note that the dilution is not specified. It could have even been at an urban street concentration.) Since the model the EPA uses for cancer is a “one-hit, no threshold” model. In other words one exposure to any level will cause some cancer.
Given the statement in the post that “EPA Administrator Jackson testified to Congress that of all deaths occurring in the United States, 1 in 4 “is attributable to PM2.5.” She told them “Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.”” It will be interesting to see how the EPA defends their actions in court.
For those interested in the EPA’s assessment of health effects of diesel exhaust see:
http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/dieselfinal.pdf
Why couldn’t it have been being used for before and after lung capacity tests? Which IS it would appear what its made for, and WOULD be exactly the kind of thing they would want to measure after exposure to what they claim are deadly chemicals.?
“EPA Administrator Jackson testified to Congress that of all deaths occurring in the United States, 1 in 4 “is attributable to PM2.5.” She told them “Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.”
That is interesting. There are no symptoms from inhaling this particuate matter, just sudden death of one in four people. Science says. And for the public good, transportation and shipping must be removed. Science says. What a slinking unelected female pirate lusting for the plunder of what belongs to others, chanting scientese. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, that’s all I’m hearing.
Let’s listen to a real scientist. Dr. John Christy: ‘Oil & other carbon-based energies are simply the affordable means by which we satisfy our true addictions – long life, good health, plentiful food…’‘…internet services, freedom of mobility, comfortable homes with heating, cooling, lighting and even colossal entertainment systems, and so on. Carbon energy has made these possible’
Matt in Houston
September 23, 2012 at 7:57 pm
Don’t forget that in terms of shear dollar value, we are in the biggest financial meltdown in human history and yet not one person has been convicted for financial malfeasance.
If MF Global, Fast and Furious or the ‘community organizers’ / lawyers that blackmailed banks into making home loans they did not want make in the first place did not stir the Administrations DOJ into independent investigation what makes you think this will?
Gene Selkov says:
September 23, 2012 at 8:10 pm
“The really dramatic part of the story is that they have been telling us for umpteen years that an experiment like this would kill a person, and now Steve has caught them lying. Either it is an atrocious Nazi-style experiment (we know it’s not, but it is according to EPA) or EPA has been lying about the hazards of PM2.5 to uphold a regulation that is tantamount to extortion.
It’s checkmate, EPA.”
=============================================================================
Agree completely.
What a load of nonsense. I cycle 50K in the City most days and should be dead by now by that token. Everything is leathal in the right DOSE.
Who are the lab rats…….homeless folk, making an extra couple a bucks?
Gene Selkov says:
September 23, 2012 at 8:10 pm
“The really dramatic part of the story is that they have been telling us for umpteen years that an experiment like this would kill a person, and now Steve has caught them lying. Either it is an atrocious Nazi-style experiment (we know it’s not, but it is according to EPA) or EPA has been lying about the hazards of PM2.5 to uphold a regulation that is tantamount to extortion.
It’s checkmate, EPA.”
==========================================================================
Agree completely.
This is very, very weird. If breathing diesel exhaust is so dangerous, why are trucks allowed on the roads? Breathing diesel exhaust may well be dangerous, but may of us do it voluntarily every day.
Surely there is something more behind this legal action. Perhaps it is part of a campaign against the EPA, because measures proposed by the EPA to improve public health might cost some people money?
http://www.smithmag.net/planet/story.php?did=341949
This story has been simmering for a long while now. I’m glad someone is actually doing something about it.
David, couldn’t you have waited a few hours and let Steve run with this historic announcement on JunkScience.com first? He’s been working this story for a VERY LONG time. Though I’m glad the story will benefit from Anthony’s reach.
I read somewhere along the line that folks in our military submarines are exposed to very large amounts (waaaaay above 390ppm) for up to 6 months at a time. I wonder what this means if co2 is a pollutant?
September 23, 2012 at 7:55 pm | Juan Slayton says:
In fact, EPA Administrator Jackson testified to Congress that of all deaths occurring in the United States, 1 in 4 “is attributable to PM2.5.”
This statement does not pass the sniff test. Are we sure Ms Jackson has been accurately quoted?
——————————-
You can review the documents at JunkScience.com … the documented evidence has been posted there for some time already courtesy of Mr Milloy.
September 23, 2012 at 8:49 pm | John Brookes says:
Surely there is something more behind this legal action. Perhaps it is part of a campaign against the EPA, because measures proposed by the EPA to improve public health might cost some people money?
———————————-
Surely not another evil “denier” conspiracy Brooksie ? … review the documents before you sprout forth. The conduct of the EPA is appalling in the extreme.
EPA Human testing … http://epahumantesting.com/
May we be allowed to see a copy of the ATI v EPA complaint, as filed in the Virginia court, to see what actual allegations were made?
Caution, Anthony.
It may be the health of WUWT? which is in danger here.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm
Isn’t the EPA effectively doing a vast human subject experiment (though without a control group. . . not a problem for their type of ‘science’) by hypothesizing that the benefits of regulating and cutting CO2 will outweigh the human suffering caused by increases in the price of power and the economic strain put on our manufacturing and economy. Honestly, if I had to chose between the two ‘experiments’, I would have to get the details on their PM2.5 . . . it might be preferable the madness of the sacrifices at the altar of CAGW.
neill says:
September 23, 2012 at 8:47 pm
Who are the lab rats…….homeless folk, making an extra couple a bucks?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
in my experience. . . grad students of the humanities and social sciences, so you’re more or less right
Zeke says:
September 23, 2012 at 8:38 pm
“EPA Administrator Jackson testified to Congress that of all deaths occurring in the United States, 1 in 4 “is attributable to PM2.5.” She told them “Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.”
That is interesting. There are no symptoms from inhaling this particuate matter, just sudden death of one in four people. Science says. And for the public good, transportation and shipping must be removed. Science says. What a slinking unelected female pirate lusting for the plunder of what belongs to others, chanting scientese. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, that’s all I’m hearing…
Zeke,
Yes, your easy answer could be correct, but the problem is not just with fossil hydrocarbons. PM2.5 is not the threshold of “asthma sufferers”. It goes down to PM6 for pollen, but what about mold? Has the EPA whipped that issue? Is there no longer a threat of the modernization of homes using drywall and the mold increase? I ask this because asthma baffles a lot of the medical community in why “cleaner communities” seem to have the highest occurrence of asthma related illness.
Your EPA sponsored direction will help NO asthmatics. In fact, the FDA adherence to the Montreal Protocol will have caused more asthma related deaths than PM2.5 could ever.
You think you know, but you don’t.
Careful. Smacks a bit of “the moon landing was faked”. What would they have to gain from this? Were these people under contract to be monitored for long term effects? Did they plan to monitor them surreptitiously? Surely they didn’t expect them to keel over immediately. How would they have planned to use the results?. Trancendental rant, opposite sign?
“If you bought it, a truck brought it.”
I’d say the drivers who delivered everything you used today do more for the “public good” than unelected, illigitimate female sirens who sign treaties with the UN and foreign governments to undermine US domestic energy policy.
Another Tuskegee Experiment carried out by another government agency, this one to aid and abet those who would vilify carbon energy.
EPA promotes their vision of what the environment should be over human life. They will only be happy when industry comes to a halt, and people return to a pastoral existence with no borders and no private ownership (except for the inner Party).
“…then sent to four senior government officials, Attorney General Eric Holder…”
—————————————————————
If this ever makes it to court (doubtful), Holder will be found to have had no knowledge of it.
Anthony and Julie – That picture shows a full-blown plethysmograph unit, where the patient does indeed breath in and out. The unit used where the patient only exhales is a Spirometer, usually a small desktop unit. I am a patient that has used both for my asthma and COPD. Check out Wikipedia, it’s pretty factual.
Of course, the often touted ideal of transitioning exclusively natural ‘green’ energy means that the planet will be unable to support most of its current human population as these energy sources, even with massive government subsidization, have never been able to provide any more a small fraction of our current energy needs. I suspect some of the violence we have seen recently in the third world is a result of people not being able to feed their children due to increasing food costs driven by rising energy costs. That is another form of human experimentation.
PM 2.5 includes everything smaller than 2.5 microns. Cleaner diesel emissions mandated in Europe were a lowering of the PM 2.5 level. The technology now exists to measure PM 0.02 (aethalometers) and it turns out the PM 2.5 drop was matched by a dramatic rise in nanoparticles.
So when saying there is a drop in PM2.5 you have to ask how it was measured. If it was a light scattering instrument it can’t detect anything below PM 0.1 and usually only from PM 0.25 for example a Grimm 180.
Nanoparticles are so small they get into the blood cells and can cross the blood-brain barrier. But pass diseases on to our children? Maybe, but it sounds like Lamarkism. There is a consensus against Lamark you know…
The lawsuit is obviously designed to get the EPA to say diesel exhaust is not poisonous, undercutting their own emissions standards.
Diesel exhaust and coal station exhaust are very different in the PM profiles. “Dirty” diesel engines produce large particles – large enough to see. Visibly clean modern engines produce invisible nanoparticles too small to see even in large numbers because they don’t scatter light.
Researchers are now trying to find out the comparative risks for each, but recall they all qualify as “anything smaller than” PM 2.5 which is a cutoff point not a “size”.
the steiner story is a bit odd
“I was named after David Steiner, a man who died of starvation in Buchenwald concentration camp on May 3, 1945. Tattooed on his body was the number 59059.”
Auschwitz was the only camp that systematically tatooed. maybe he came from that camp??
there were transfers..
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/tattoos1.html
and Buchenwald was turned over to the Soviets in April of 1945.. april 8th. The soviets used it to hold Nazi’s.. so maybe the may 3 date is off
I dunno. spidey senses are tingling.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/16/another-skeptical-university-professor-fired-related-to-carbs-pm2-5-air-pollution-regulation-scandal/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/04/the-epas-unethical-pm2-5-air-pollution-experiments/
well we will see what happens. weird
I thought the EPA only killed jobs:
http://www.kxlh.com/news/ppl-montana-will-close-billings-power-plant-in-2015/
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
READ MORE
http://epahumantesting.com/
No it wasn’t turned over to the Soviets on April 8th. The main Buchenwald camp wasn’t liberated until April 11th 1945 by the US Army. Even after that people still died because of the lack of food, Edward R. Murrow watched a man die on April 12th from starvation.
http://www.otr.com/murrow_buchenwald.shtml
Here is a recording of his report:
http://www.otr.com/ra/450415%20CBS%20Edward%20Murrow%20On%20Buchenwald.mp3
As you can hear in it the inmates of Buchenwald were numbered tattooed.
“Ms. Jackson replied, “Yeah, I was briefed not long ago. If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels, it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our country.” Cancer kills a half-million Americans a year — 25 percent of all deaths in the U.S. annually.”
Trucks and our powerful and quick delivery system give us food, clothing, medicine, fuel and wine from around the world, which are not subject to the vagaries and depredations of local conditions, supplies, and prices. Individuals from around the world now sell on ebay and because of this new worldwide market based on SHIPPING, small economies have grown by as much as 25% (ref, can’t find it just now) Equating the destruction of shipping and delivery with curing cancer is the most immoral, infernal claim I have ever heard from a…oh wait, she wasn’t elected, was she.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=search&term=diesel+particulates
It is easy and free to search Medline, but you might need some background knowledge. If you can remember the word ‘pubmed’, the first google hit will have a link to the search page.
It is common to find substantial disagreements in medical literature, and I just read an abstract that describes the allergic aspect as unclear. But, if memory serves, Diesel particulates are an adjuvant for the induction of immediate hypersensitivity (Type I). That means mixing particulates with an antigen and producing a larger immunoglobulin E response in an animal. (IgE mediates the Type I response.)
As for the genotoxic aspect, one would suspect anything with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). As for the Lamark remark, one might enter the keyword ‘epigenetic’ into Medline…and study some of the twenty-five thousand hits. Trans-generational epigenetics exists, but the connection to any form of pollution is probably unclear.
This article does not pass the smell test. References to WWII death camp experiments suggest wild exageration. Though lawsuits may have been filed that does nothing to verify what is in the lawsuits. Lots of ridiculous lawsuits are filed everyday.
What is needed is a full description of the experiment. What does the grant application say? Have the experimenters been contacted? And so on. And so on. Need a lot more information if such charges are to be taken seriously.
This post is about “inhalation” from a truck tailpipe? I can only wonder from what “pipe” the author has been “inhaling”.
After all the years of manufactured hysteria about global warming i think most WUWT readers are pretty immune to hype. Yet, saying that, this article does play into what are basic human ways of processing infomation.
All people are ready to believe bad about people and instituions they already believe are bad.
All people are less ready to believe bad about people and institutions they believe are good.
On WUWT the EPA is considered bad and so people here are more inclined to give credence to bad things said about it. (Call it “wishful thinking.) But that does not override the fact that most people here are “fact checkers” first and foremost.
Of course, some of us (usually me) like to go for the joke no matter what and leave the serious lifting to others. Some people here are going to have great fun with this article unseriously accepting the zany premise and trying to see how many jokes they can get out of it. And since conspiracy theories have been big here lately with “Lew’s sewer science” a continued feature there has been some humor “pump priming”. )
And any credibility this post has comes about because Anthony put it up. If this appeared on the front page of the National Inquirer what person who comes to this site would read it? People here sometimes forget that Anthony likes to put up the occasional “offbeat” post. A little variety is the spice of a successful web site.
Admittedly the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment done on poor black men (1932-1972) was real. When begun there was no effective cure for syphilis and so no effective treatment was withheld. The study was intended to help find a cure for the disease by studying its progress. The subjects were simply not told that they had the disease. That was NOT hamrless. Lacking knowledge about their condition these men unwittingly spread the diease to others resulting in unnecessary deaths. In the 1940’s when penicillin was found to be a cure for syphilis and that treatment was withheld from these known sufferers the experimenters became the true equivalent of death camp “doctors”.
But I don’t think the post under discussion is exposing anything of a Tuskegee nature.
Eugene WR Gallun
Michael Kelly says
Sept 23 10:05pm
I thought the EPA only killed jobs.
I hate people who are funnier than me.
Eugene WR Gallun
The more I think about this the stranger it seems. It isn’t just your over the top rhetoric that is odd. There is also a considerable lack of facts in the article about what it is you are doing.
What specific relief you are asking the court for? Is this a class action? I presume you are representing a participant as you won’t get far without a real party of interest. You’ll have a very hard time proving damages here. While it might be embarrassing for the EPA to have to argue that there were no negative effects in light of their previous public statements, the burden of proof in demonstrating damages falls on you. The experiment is finished. The participants are (as far as anyone can tell) unharmed, or at least no more harmed than anyone who works for one day in a truck loading bay. So good luck with that.
Instillation of Six Different Ultrafine Carbon Particles Indicates a Surface Area Threshold Dose for Acute Lung Inflammation in Mice
Tobias Stoeger, Claudia Reinhard, Shinji Takenaka, Andreas Schroeppel, Erwin Karg, Baerbel Ritter, Joachim Heyder, and Holger Schulz
VOLUME 114 | NUMBER 3 | March 2006 • Environmental Health Perspectives
Could it be that someone decided to actually verify the extrapolation to man from mouse as suggested in this paper?
However, different types of carbon particles have significantly different effects. This study compared six different kinds of carbon particles: PrintexG and Printex90 (presumably toner), SootH and SootL (areosols generated from propane flames), ultrafine carbon particles (ufCP) generated by spark discharge and standard SRM1650a diesel exhaust particles (DEP).
So DEP was the least harmful and ufCP the most harmful. Some quotes:
In short, one wonders whether the study in this post distinguished between the different types of carbon particles or whether DEP is being blamed for everything.
@Logan in AZ
From the paper I mentioned above:
Re: Julie Dinkins-Borkowski contra Anthony
And that was all the response required. If Ms Dinkins-Borkowski has a problem with that piece of equipment being used in that experiment, she should take it up with the EPA. To argue about what it does, or might do, is pointless until the EPA has been asked. I may or may not be “psyop’ed,” but my reading comprehension is just fine, thank you very much. Ms Dinkins-Borkowski may want to have hers checked. I am surprised and a little disappointed that Anthony let her go off-point to his response so easily.
This is one of most potentially explosive things I’ve seen in a long time. If I were Anthony, I would tread very, very carefully.
For those wondering if the story is true: Washington Times mention the study (http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/apr/22/picket-epa-conducts-human-testing-air-pollution-re/)
It looks like the paper is this one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279446/
Hmmm!
I can smell something odd about this article
For those doubting there is a good basis for legal action, wouldn’t it be smarter to actually read the evidence Milloy has gathered before looking entirely vacant?
I was hoping to read this was in reference to the deaths, from starvation and drought, of people in the third world, due to the growing of biofuels and displacement from their land. Deliberately depriving humans of food in order to grow fuel is heinous! Even in the developed world the continual raising of green taxes is affecting the poor and elderly as they are having to choose between eating and heating during the Winter.
The touting of green energy as the saviour of mankind is a sick joke to those who know anything about the realities of the world nowadays. I cannot understand why this has not been done already.
Anyone who thinks this is a hoax should go to junkscience.com and have a look. Milloy has been working on this issue for some time, and he has plenty of credibility. He’s been around for over a decade debunking the junk and is far from being an alarmist or fantasist.
Streetcred: You can review the documents at JunkScience.com … the documented evidence has been posted there for some time already courtesy of Mr Milloy.
I dunno, I spent more time looking for that quote at JunkScience than is justified, but I haven’t found it. Would be interested if someone knows exactly where.
Just because the EPA provided the picture of someone attached to a lung function tester does not necessarily mean that is a picture of the experiment or even the equipment used in the experiment.
However it would be completely unethical to purposefully expose a subject to diesel fumes for the sole purpose of an experiment (there are many harmful components to diesel fumes). Even if particulate levels were similar to a truck loading dock it is the action of intention to expose the subject to potential harm that is unethical. If the EPA investigated the effects of exposure to diesel fumes of a subject while working on a truck loading dock then that may ethical.
The EPA aren’t THAT stupid are they?
Yeah Velcro, something very odd indeed. Good to see my first instincts were correct, and that this is nothing other than junk. Of course, the appearance of the Nazis very early on should have triggered Godwin’s law – which makes me feel like an idiot for reading on…
Really doubt this is true, and the lead in of concentration is way over the top.
BTW, any animal or human research at US universities is approved by a group at each university that includes ethicists, members of the general public, and college professors.
These are papers from NC on the topic, cannot tell if it is the same group but this is certainly not concentration camp stuff:
http://journals.lww.com/co-pulmonarymedicine/Abstract/2012/03000/Diesel_exhaust_particles_and_airway_inflammation.10.aspx
http://oem.bmj.com/content/69/3/170.short
AND THIS ON DIESEL: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/225088115_Controlled_human_exposures_to_diesel_exhaust
ON DIESEL: http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/content/185/2/179.short
Pretty normal stuff folks!
Here is a review article on Diesel: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/221737638_Diesel_exhaust_particles_and_airway_inflammation
I consider a lot of the PM2.5 stuff to be anti fossil fuel wedge issues used by the eco activists.
The real facts are that the healthiest people live in the cities….. undisputed fact. If particulate matter from combustion engines were deadly…. Cities would be the unhealthiest places with the lowest life expectancy….. But statistically the complete opposite is true.
Something that has always bugged me about the EPA’s position on Diesel… Aren’t diesel engines used(or at least used to be used) in mines and submarines because they were “safer”? So, while running down every miner in the country might be a rather large task, shouldn’t it be rather easy to find at least what happened with most of the US sailors that served aboard a diesel sub? And how many died from cancer above the average for the rest of the US?
And now, after they have declared diesel “evil”, they want to run tests to see if they were right?
Brad says:
September 24, 2012 at 1:37 am
Really doubt this is true, and the lead in of concentration is way over the top.
BTW, any animal or human research at US universities is approved by a group at each university that includes ethicists, members of the general public, and college professors.
==========================================
Brad, did you bother reading Milloy’s information? http://epahumantesting.com/
Umm, Brad, I think you are missing the point. The EPA is the one saying diesel/particles from diesel are “always” fatal…so therefore they shouldn’t be exposing their test subjects to what they “know” will kill them, now should they? So which is it? diesel isn’t as bad as they say, or they are exposing these folks to certain lung cancer?
See this article here, especially the last two paragraphs http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/04/the-epas-unethical-pm2-5-air-pollution-experiments/
James-
Yes, I did go to your website…and for background I have both a Ph.D. and a J.D. I find the site to be scientifically poor and the arguments based on bombast with little fact, I also find the site legally insufficient as it shows no damage or harm that is real, it is only speculation based on little proof. I may look at the legal complaint tomorrow if I have time, but I expect this will get dismissed on summary judgment and never reach the merits.
Kinda looks like an election year stunt to me, but as I said I have not reviewed everything.
Flicka47-
While I believe diesel is very safe and our air some of the best in the world (been to Beijing? WOW!) I do not believe diesel was placed on subs as its particulate exhaust was safer but the fuel itself was less combustible and thus safer.
Also, some seem to think this the Obama administration is somehow after diesel, the EPA has been after particulates for decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations and much of what they have done is good work. Do you remember when acid rain was killing forests on the East Coast (and that was actually true and not just politically based “science”).
The question for the EPA is when have they gone far enough? I think we are much safer than we were and I would like to see them focus on rivers and get off the air binge, but….only my opinion.
There’s a load of information just a click away over at Steve Milloy’s. Steve’s done loads of work putting this together.
http://epahumantesting.com/2012/09/24/epa-sued-in-federal-court-over-illegal-human-testing/
The posted article seems to have cribbed the EPA’s own trademarked hyperbolic style. Something of a shame really as I’ve found Milloy to be credible in the past and there is, as always, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment and other sundry black marks of our own in US history.
That said, the legal defense should prove entertaining. Assuming minimal correctness of the facts: The only manner in which to defeat the ethical issues, given prior knowledge, is to state that the conclusions are hyperbolic bunkum. And thus calling into question the EPA in toto. But if this is not done then the EPA, as a matter of legal record, has jumped right into Mengele’s boots. And thus calling into question the EPA in toto. No matter which way it falls there is a significant PR issue at stake for science and the US government generally.
Dunno how this will work out but it should shine some light on Jacksons claim of 25% of US sudden death being through particulate inhalation.
If true then this is a scandal that needs shouted from the rooftops way before CAGW!
If false then this is also truly scandalous and should lead to severe criminal prosecutions.
Let the truth speak out.
TimC @ September 23, 2012 at 9:05 pm
“May we be allowed to see a copy of the ATI v EPA complaint,…”
This is a great point. Especially for those that don’t live in N. Va. and have the time to go to the Clerk’s office to either read or copy the complaint. I.E., complaints are public documents and anyone can access them. Of course, if you made copies, they charge a per page copy fee. The complaint must cite the laws/rights violated. It would be interesting if a Civil Rights ACT and/or US Treaties, etc., are cited.
Given ATI’s background, this is certainly legit, especially if WUWT posts it without a cautionary note. One presumes service of process would be either Monday, September 24 or sometime this week. That begins the 21 day countdown for the defendants to respond to the complaint. However, Fed practice (rules of procedure) allow a party to aks for an extension. Given the upcoming election, any bets on the defendents answering before Nov 6? Oh, and I’m sure you’ll see it on the evening news, right after Fast and Furious.
Do we know when these events took place, and are they still current?
Clearly, not only is our government, but those who view themselves as being on the side of government (the “governing class”) think laws are for everyone else. This is yet one more danger signal that government is far too large.
The complaint claims that exposure to fine particulates is dangerous and potentially lethal. The complaint then asks the court on this basis to order the EPA to stop enforcing regulations aimed at controlling them. Eh? Only an attorney could think such twisted logic was reasonable. No wonder the article was so short of detail and full of Nazis and dying kids. He’s an attorney and he’s pounding the table .
The complaint claims that exposure to fine particulates is dangerous and potentially lethal. The complaint then asks the court on this basis to order the EPA to stop enforcing regulations aimed at controlling them. Eh? Only an attorney could think such twisted logic was reasonable. No wonder the article was so short of detail and full of Nazis and dying kids. He’s an attorney and he’s pounding the table .
Junkscience headline today:
EPA Human Testing
EPA sued in federal court over illegal human testing
Posted on September 24, 2012 | Leave a comment
But the comments are closed…
I have to say I’m with Julie D-B here. The issue isn’t the machine and focusing on it is to miss what the lawsuit is about. The lawsuit isn’t even about diesel, its about disclosure protocol, or more correctly, the lack of it. Most of the story is ambulance-chasing hyperbole.from Schnare’s(?) side in order to emotionalize the legal process. It would be hghly unusual for a university to stick its neck out as far as it is claimed to have in regard to human trials. Doesn’t mean they didn’t, but there has to be a lot more to the story then this.
April 1?
No.
Someone’s been had.
The list of issues identified provided at this page developed by Steve Milloy seems most “interesting”:
http://epahumantesting.com/the-shocking-revelations-of-the-epa-documents/
There do seem to be a lot of potential problems with the EPA’s harmful human testing, informed consent, research ethics, public claims about the research, etc.
The lawsuit may force the EPA to either (1) renounce the claim that any and all exposure to PM2.5 fine particulates is harmful, or else (2) denounce and repudiate their own research proceedings which did indeed appear to expose subjects to harms, and without informed consent or adequate consideration of human well being. [of course one can get into debates about hazardous vs. harmful, but since the EPA has staked out a clear-cut position they don’t seem to have room to maneuver]
Also, EPA admin Lisa Jackson’s various claims, such as that tightly regulating PM2.5 would be equal to “a cure for cancer” will come under more intense scrutiny, we may hope.
This lawsuit does seem to be an ingenious way to put the EPA on the spot to answer whether or not their experimentation was harmful to human test subjects. They will try hard to obfuscat, both to the court and to “the court of public opinion.” The EPA and it’s allies MUST be compelled to give as yes-or-no answer to a simple binary question:
Was this experimentation on human subjects hazardous to the subjects? YES or NO?
If it weren’t for my respect for A.W., I’d dismiss this out of hand. Hope you haven’t made a grievous mistake Anthony. My first thought was “wow.” My second thought, perhaps 10 seconds later, was this is just a major load of b.s.
J.Hansford says:
September 24, 2012 at 2:03 am
“The real facts are that the healthiest people live in the cities….. undisputed fact.”
Bunkum. The healthiest people live in suburbs and it’s due to lifestyles and income. Rural residents are the poorest and the farthest removed from hospitals and emergency care. Rural residents are also more likely to be smokers, drinkers, and overweight compounding the problems. Suburb dwellers are the wealthiest, are well served by nearby hospitals and emergency care, eat better, have lower stress levels, less violence, fewer accidents, and the air is cleaner.
It sounds like WUWT has been victimized by a con artist or someone who is mentally ill.
Rather casual way to get certification of no risk to subjects:
http://epahumantesting.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/other3p657.gif
What they were getting approval for (from one pulmonologist who did not review all of the study details) was exposure up to 600 mcg/meter 3 for max. of 6 min.
They compare that to exposure over 24 hours in an urban center on a smoggy day. BUT getting all of the exposure in 6 min. (compared to 24 hrs) seems like a drastic difference. Especially for particulates which the EPA repeatedly claims have no lower bound on hazard. Is it really enough to get one such casual “consult” from a pulmonologist to certify the safety of such an experiment?
In fact, Milloy finds that exposure in some cases went up to 750 mcg/meter 3
In any case, did the researchers take adequate account of possible effects when receiving all of one’s “24 hour” exposure in only 6 min. or less?
Anthony, I don’t agree with some of the over-the-top criticisms here about this article (that it should never have been posted or worse… etc.). However, I do think it is important to get a follow-up article posted asap from someone who can give a dispassionate overview of the scientific, ethical, and legal issues without personal references. It’s not that the Nazi comparison on human experimentation may not prove relevant in the end, but that the reader new to the matter (as I was) can have no basis for judging the discussion of Nazi research, ethics of research etc. in relation to the EPA case until the latter has been presented in detail. Thus, the touching personal testimony of David W. Schnare is asking the reader to be deeply moved by the history recounted without (yet) knowing how it compares with the current case to be discussed later. I think that is what some readers are finding emotionally manipulative and inflammatory.
For my own view, I think it is crucial to understand the history of human experimentation and development of standards of research ethics, but one needs to establish all the facts of what has actually been done under the aegis of the EPA before one can know how or whether such historic (Nazi) comparisons could be relevant.
This is a pretty interesting thread in light of the Dr. L. kerfuffle. It would seem an ideal situation to test whether CAGW skeptics always accept any potential conspiracy which fits their self-interest. Bashing the EPA would surely be high on the lists of subjects that should attract skeptics. But here most of the skeptics are acting like… skeptics. I have to admit that I was/am doubtful like many of the others here. Don’t know that I’ll have time to more than observe from the sidelines, but this seems to be a definitive proof that skeptics are equal opportunity doubters.
http://hero.epa.gov/index.cfm?action=reference.details&reference_id=4638
Not sure if this applies, but it is an interesting article on studying pm2.5 from canada in 2000
one more if I may, I had not seen the summary page on Steve Milloy’s special site on EPA Human Testing, but it gives the kind of overview of the matter that I think a lot of us are seeking:
http://epahumantesting.com/summary/
Whatever is being done through a university, it needs IRB approval. There is no one in the research triangle who is going to take IRB approval lightly, after Duke got its federally sponsored resch totally shut down due to a problem with one federally funded study, in 1999.
Procedures in the IRB have to match actual procedures, or the investigators are in trouble.
Either procedures at Chapel Hill are following protocol as on file with IRB, or not.
If they are, you simply look at the research protocol to see what is happening. No issue or mystery.
If procedures as on file with IRB are unethical – risks outweighing benefit, or potential harms not being disclosed, or enticements excessively influencing the decision to participate, then this will be obvious, and things will be halted quickly. It is unlikely an unethical study ever made it past IRB, however.
If procedures are not following what is ‘on file’ with the IRB, simply bringing this to the attn of the University should bring the issue to be investigated very quickly.
The IRB people know how to audit a study. They can be on the case within a day if there is enough fear and panic behind an allegation.
This adds up to: highly unlikely that participants are being connected to a deisel exhaust pipe just to see what happens.
I sifted through Milloy’s FOIA results and his analyis last week. My reaction was similar to Skiphil 4 posts above. Their objective is to make the EPA play by it’s own rules. They use EPA words, pictures and information to demonstrate that they didn’t conduct themselves as required according to their own statements. The EPA and UNC apparently did not believe what the EPA had stated publicly as fact. The EPA rules they seek to hold the EPA to are hyperbolic and hypocryphal.
Looking at the documents, I concluded that the EPA was already on record with its highly exaggerated assertions as fact and: (1) targeted at risk volunteers to get some big results to back up their big assertions, and (2) the disclosure consent forms obtained in the FOIA requests did not describe the EPAs stated position and conclusions at that time to the targets while misleadingly describing possible minor and temporary side effects. It’s surprising they didn’t get more strong adverse and life threatening results than the few they did get. My wfe is overweight, has trouble breathing, and regularly needed an inhaler to deal with diesel fumes in Union Station. She fit the advertisement for subjects and easily could have been hospitalized if not worse.
The public release by the attorney is just that – to get attention for the project. I’m hoping they dont over do it, but the EPA and all of media have ignored Milloy and what is in the FOIA responses by the EPA so far. Hoping it will go away, but now it isn’t. I’d say ATI called their bluff and this isn’t their first poker game.
This smacks to me of sounding like the sort of conspiracy theory Lewandowsky would endorse.
This is one of the few articles I have read on WUWT over the last few years whose veracity I have doubted.
From Ian H on September 23, 2012 at 11:16 pm:
Who are you talking to? You’re on the Watts Up With That? web site, not the ATI site, nor are there ATI people here to address.
Gee, let’s look at an example with equivalent potential harm. EPA recruits volunteers to test the effects of contaminated water, for which the batch the samples are drawn from was (accidentally?) contaminated with HIV-containing bodily fluids. Afterwards the participants were unharmed, or at least no more harmed than if they had deep-tongue kissed an AIDS patient. So no harm, no foul, anyone complaining can go pound sand.
For right or wrong, an HIV-infected person who knowingly exposes someone else can be charged and convicted with felonious assault, assault with a deadly weapon, even bio-terrorism. The possibility of death is there, even if remote, thus it is an attack with something that can cause death.
The EPA exposed these people to that which they said can kill. Even if the chance of (eventual, long drawn-out) death is remote, it was still there.
Thus the EPA has committed felonious assault, assault with a deadly weapon, etc. And you say ATI has no case without demonstrating damages? If someone threatened you with a gun or knife, if you weren’t harmed would you blow it off and say nothing actionable happened? What if it were “just a scratch”?
===
Joe Guillim said on September 24, 2012 at 5:39 am:
Maybe, but the regulars know to ignore them.
😉
Brad says:
September 24, 2012 at 2:34 am
James-
Yes, I did go to your website…and for background I have both a Ph.D. and a J.D. I find the site to be scientifically poor and the arguments based on bombast with little fact, I also find the site legally insufficient ……….
===============================================
Fair enough Brad. I’m not sure you’re entirely familiar with Milloy’s history. Given his history, I think being dismissive is naive. He’s been on the EPA for over 20 years. He’s fought with them and won in the past. While I agree, the presentation to the public could be refined, Milloy has been at it for so long, he knows when he’s got something huge.
Isn’t the largest source of PM2.5 road dust?
And they invented PM2.5 as super-dangerous because their previous evil particulate matter PM10 turned out to be 90% road dust?
http://www.epa.gov/cgi-bin/broker?_service=data&_debug=0&_program=dataprog.national_1.sas&polchoice=PM
PMx is just fabricated excuses to kill off coal mines.
Experimentation on human beings is absolutely illegal if not done with proper ethics reviews.
The NIH hold the historical basis for this principle. It is called the Nuremberg Code and was the result of the Trails at Nuremberg following WWII and the Nazi experiments that were conducted on prisoners.
http://history.nih.gov/research/downloads/nuremberg.pdf
A state, any state including the United States, may not subject a person to potential injury if alternative methods exist to render the information even if the subject agrees. And if the subject has not been informed, then the experimenter should be jailed.
From what I have read on this, it is right up there with Josef Mengele in principle.
Zeke & Intrepid_wanders:
“Yes, your easy answer could be correct, but the problem is not just with fossil hydrocarbons. PM2.5 is not the threshold of “asthma sufferers”. It goes down to PM6 for pollen, but what about mold? Has the EPA whipped that issue? Is there no longer a threat of the modernization of homes using drywall and the mold increase? I ask this because asthma baffles a lot of the medical community in why “cleaner communities” seem to have the highest occurrence of asthma related illness.”
Wonder if the asthma increase may be related to house air “tightness” or low air exchange rate. I have a 14 year old house and my CO2 meter routinely registers over 1000ppm and that with only 2 people. The newer ones are probably a lot tighter. Good for energy savings but the other stuff, like mold, Particulate Matter, carpet organics etc. doesn’t get moved out very fast. Would be interesting to see asthma studies done relative to historical indoor living conditions as houses say 50 years ago typically had much higher air exchange rates.
This is also one side of the CO2 increase never mentioned, as increases in the outside CO2 level will drive up indoor levels by an approximate like amount, e.g. my indoor levels would be about 1200ppm for 600 ppm outside.
Apparently EPA has been caught at this before back in 2005:
http://epahumantesting.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/human-pesticide-experiments-june-2005.pdf
Hmmmm … was this/is this part of the EPA’s move to ban the more efficient internal combustion engine, the diesel power plant?
“The banning our slowspeed engines” (Such as the Lister and Listeroid derivatives capable of running on diesel as well as veggie oil)
http://www.utterpower.com/the-banning-our-slowspeed-engines/
It should be noted that the importation of any given engine or powerplant requires testing by the EPA, no matter the quantity be it “1” or 1 zillion (this means submission of the subject engine[s} plus mail-in the required 5-figure dollar amount for testing + yearly fees) … the price-impact effect on the lower quantities should be apparent …
EPA IN REGULATORY PRETZEL WITH A BUSINESS PARTNER
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1599&title=EPA%20IN%20REGULATORY%20PRETZEL%20WITH%20A%20BUSINESS%20PARTNER&subtitle=Navistar%20Licensing%20EPA%20Diesel%20Emissions%20Technology%20That%20Does%20Not%20Work
Actions in the EU:
Peugeot Opposes Proposal to Ban Diesel in Cities, Parisien Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-17/peugeot-opposes-proposal-to-ban-diesel-in-cities-parisien-says.html
Ban Diesel
http://bandiesel.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/gdi-technology-reproduces-diesel.html
Norway May Ban Diesel Cars
http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/3129-norway-may-ban-diesel-cars
Ban Diesel?
http://www.autocar.co.uk/forum/whats-new/ban-diesel
.
Not sure from where the “1 in 4 is attributable to PM2.5” comes. Milloy’s own site indicates that it was alledgedly 1 in 20:
http://junksciencecom.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/dunn-nc-med-board.pdf
Is the above (in bold) anywhere close to being an “appeal to authority” (argumentum ad verecundiam)?
“Trust us, we’re from the faculty and we have approved this research.”
BTW, where does one go to be first trained then certified as an ‘ethicist’?
I might add, this is what John Dale Dunn (MD JD, Consultant Emergency Services/Peer Review, Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine Residency, Carl R. Darnall Army Med Center, Fort Hood, Texas) in part, had to say about this:
.
For once, I agree with Mosher. Weird.
****
Brad says:
September 24, 2012 at 2:40 am
Do you remember when acid rain was killing forests on the East Coast (and that was actually true and not just politically based “science”).
****
I was generous of what you’d previously said (PhD & all), until the above statement gave it away. Are you aware of what the final analyses the EPA itself came up with, was presented to Congress, & subsequently ignored?
Seems odd that this would be announced on WUWT before its announced on the American Tradition Institute blog. Anyone know if this is a class action suit?
http://www.atinstitute.org/blog/
Con or not? That is the question.
Once again, the comments section of WUWT turns out to be as informing, or more even more informing, than the original posting.
The introduction was indeed over the top, but this is the social networking age. And in the social networking age it takes “over the top” to get something circulated broadly. Why does Drudge succeed? Partly because he has a knack for writing over the top headlines that pull readers to pages that they would never read if the headline he used was from the linked article itself.
So, I started with 90% “con” (because of the over the top presentation, the lack of details, and the general unbelievability of the matter), and with 10% “not con” (because it’s here on WUWT and articles here tend to be reasonably well vetted.)
But, after reading many of the comments, and especially those from people who know the participants in the matter, I’m now at 95% “not con”, reserving 5% “con” because I really don’t want to believe even the EPA would do something as ridiculous as the actions described in the posting, and because I haven’t followed the provided links myself.
The overall quality of commenting at WUWT is excellent and highly informative, a classic example of applying the strategy “Build it and they will come.” Thanks, Anthony (again.)
Mosher is playing the ‘long bet’ … you know how those can work out (often ‘played’ with little money riding and w/o doing series study so as to ascertain realistic odds) …
.
Taphonomic: Not sure from where the “1 in 4 is attributable to PM2.5″ comes. Milloy’s own site indicates that it was alledgedly 1 in 20:
http://junksciencecom.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/dunn-nc-med-board.pdf
Thanks for the link. It appears to me that the quote attributing 1 in 4 to Ms. Lubchenko is in error. That number appears to be an inference by John Dunn (see the bottom of p. 10 of the above linked statement) based on Lubchenko’s comparison of particulate mortality with cancer.
Warmist politicians say enough outrageous things on their own initiatives, we really don’t need to be putting words in their mouths.
Mr. Schnare,
A search for the case number on United States District Court Eastern District of Virginia’s website doesn’t return a result. Can you post a link to American Tradition Institute v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency so we can read the filing?
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/virginia/vaedce/1:2012cv01066/286173/
Note: Justia does report the case but PACER is required to view the filing.
I think Skiphil nails this issue best. At its most useful, it’s forcing EPA to declare its hand – YES or NO – because either way, it looks as if EPA has to show itself guilty. That would be good.
I’d like to add to that:
(1) Steve Milloy has done sterling work at least in the past, in bringing the “junk science” of CAGW to the notice of the world. He was certainly one of my important info sources in early days. Therefore Milloy has at least earned the respect implied in putting this on view for folks to look at here.
(2) I see people like Brookes jumping to conclusions mighty fast, in a way I do not like or trust. We can still practice (a) the sniff test so long as (b) we go check carefully.
(3) there is OTT emotional hyperbole, I agree. But I put myself in Steve Milloy’s shoes and think about his perspective on life, given his family links to the gas chambers of horror. And we grieved with Anthony when Bob Phelan passed away so suddenly. But while emotions can and probably need to be our drivers, yet for the sake of science, we need to transcend them in our public statements, and mostly keep quiet about them.
A couple of random thoughts from the skeptical “fooled me before” point of view:
1. What if this is a suit that the current EPA wants to lose? What harm can befall the current administrators. What additional power and authority might they be granted after a finding of PM2.5 caused harm to people in the experiment?
2. Is regulating the current diesel engine out of existence the next environmental cause?
3. Is the clean-diesel then next mandated technology? Think of all the money to be made (by some!) by forcing a technology change by mandate and not by economics.
4. A very interesting point made by previous posters: reducing PM2.5 concentrations only to increase PM1.0, PM0.5, and PM0.25 concentrations might harm public health in the long run while making the regulators look good in the short run.
I don’t have answers. I don’t have conclusions, yet. I’m just trying to identify the degrees of freedom. (Hmmm. “degrees of freedom” could be an ironic term here.)
Re: Diesels on Submarines
Simple answer. Diesel engines are more efficient than Otto-cycle (gasoline) engines, and therefore the submarine would obtain more cruising range from a given load of fuel. (Mostly, the crew is still below decks when the submarine is cruising on the surface.) This has all been superseded by nuclear power, thanks to Admiral Rickover.
Juan Slayton, I believe the correct quote was that reducing PM10 Emissions would save more people than curing cancer. This was in testimony to Congress, and the representative heading the comittee asked her to repeat the claim, which she did. As cancer kills a quarter of Americans, that’s a pretty darn bold claim to make.
I agree with others that the hype in the beginning of the article is offputting. However, it appears there may be something to this scandal.
From Steve Milloy’s website at http://epahumantesting.com/summary/:
“Was anyone actually harmed by these experiments?
In October 2010, a 58-year obese woman with personal and family histories of heart problems (e.g., her father died from heart disease when he was age 57), had her experiment terminated early and was taken by EMTs to the hospital when she experienced cardiac arrthymias in the test chamber. In a September 2011 report of the incident published in the U.S. Government journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the EPA concluded that the subject’s arrhythmia was caused by her exposure to PM2.5.
Although this incident and the reporting of it are another separate controversy (involving the scientific misconduct of “falsification”), its instant relevance is that, even accepting EPA’s conclusion, the agency failed to amend the consent forms so as to disclose this risk of harm to future study subjects — and there have been at least 17 study subjects since that so-called “adverse event.”
End quote
Adverse events are very important and must be reported even if the connection of the adverse event to the exposure is tenuous. If this information is accurate, this is a major ethical and scientific lapse. I can almost understand the hype at the beginning of the article now.
I have believed the EPA should have its wings clipped since they forced catalytic converters upon us in our automobiles in the 1970s. I do not believe any unelected bureaucrats should have the power to mandate “laws.” The original mission of the EPA was to be an advisory body, but as Barry Goldwater noted, they quickly morphed into the “agency from hell” staffed with dogooders trying to save the world. Unless they intentionally lose this lawsuit, as noted by others above, the end result could be a little daylight shined upon them, forcing them to admit some of their hypocrisies. Under a different administration, come November, perhaps some “clipping” can thus be accomplished. Hey, I can wish, can’t I?
Several people have suspected that this is a hoax. Everyone, wild as this seems, CRAZY AS IT SOUNDS. We have witnessed this since the beginning, with that one report on the one person who had a heart fribulation after being exposed to PM10. Back then, we lambasted the sophomore nature of the write-up. They did not say how they had generated the PM10 or what it contained. There was no mention of other patients or their reactions. Nor was their information about either her consent or her prior information. Furthermore, the desired outcome of the experiment was unclear with possible violation of Nuremburg code. I personally stated that I would not accept such an experiment at an elementary school science fair.
How those gaps have been filled.
1: There were other patients, dozens of them, with no negative reactions whatsoever. None of this was reported.
2: There was documentation of how they generated the PM10. They hooked diesel exhaust to an inhaler, a SUICIDE method which would have had very bad results should their air blower have failed.
3: There was “informed” consent. However, the method of generation was not specified, nor was there any statement of the risks, and in it, the researches admit that there was no expected benefit, in clear violation of ethics guidelines.
To coin a phrase, “It was worse than we thought”. In fact, worse than I dared imagine.
This is a question rather than an acusation.
Didn’t Jackson make that testimony regarding coal plant emissions? And wasn’t it around the time that the CO2 regulation was still in the courts?
It IS worse than we thought.
The EPA’s paper can be found on the Swiss Medical Weekly site. Controlled human exposures to diesel exhaust .
From the summary:
Table 1 of the paper notes the strengths and weakness of human exposure studies.
Strengths include: Inclusion of potentially susceptible populations (e.g., elderly, diabetics, and individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and cardiovascular disease).
Weakness include: Small subject numbers and Generally short term effects only.
Apparently they are happy to poison sick people, but regret that they can’t poison more or observe long term effects.
September 24, 2012 at 9:57 am | Lucy Skywalker says:
[ … ] (2) I see people like Brookes jumping to conclusions mighty fast, in a way I do not like or trust. We can still practice (a) the sniff test so long as (b) we go check carefully.
[ … ]
———————-
Never mind Brooks, Lucy, he’s just another luvvie from UWA’s raa-raa crowd.
The complaint as filed may be viewed here:
http://www.atinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2012-09-21-Complaint-as-Filed.pdf
The main driver for using diesel rather than gasoline engines on submarines is safety. Diesel is much less flammable than gasoline. Although the US, UK, and France operate only nuclear powered subs, most other navies have mixed fleets (e.g., China and the Russian Federation) or only operate conventionally powered subs. Diesel electric is still the most common submarine propulsion method. Also, most (possibly all?) nuclear subs also have emergency diesel generators for backup power. Neither propulsion or emergency generator diesels exhaust to the “people tank” so this is really not relevant for the PM2.5 discussion.
It is worth noting that diesel (and gasoline) engines are rarely used in indoor applications except where there is a dedicated system to remove exhaust. I don’t know much about mines, but fork lifts and handling equipment in warehouse operations are normally powered by propane or compressed natural gas. If the EPA and other regulators will just leave well enough alone, the fracking boom and falling natural gas prices will probably drive a shift from diesel to gas power for heavy trucks and buses and reduce urban particulates due to market action.
I don’t usually get seasick, but sometimes, with a following sea, the smell of diesel fumes just makes me want to hurl…
At the end of the tape she states
“If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels it would have the same impact as finding the cure for cancer in our country,” explained Jackson. “The difference is we know how to do that.”
@Steve R
Unless it’s bio diesel and then the fumes smell like french fries. 🙂
My gut feeling is that this will go nowhere.
” I’ll take the word of an attorney who has to prove such things over the word of an activist. – Anthony”
Or, you could actually go look at the paper (linked to conveniently from the lawsuit as reference number 1: http://www.smw.ch/content/smw-2012-13597/) which states, “DE is introduced into the exposure chamber (1.83 m x 1.83 m x 2.44 m) after a 1:30 dilution with clean and humidified air to yield a feedback-regulated concentration of 100 to 300 μg/m3 (fig. 1B).” Figure 1B is not the Figure shown in this post with a man sucking a plastic pipe – it is unclear where that figure came from as the provenance is not listed in this post, nor is it obvious from the main junkscience post or the lawsuit itself. That is a pity, since it seems to be the key evidence for the statement “EPA actually has pictures of this gas chamber, a clear plastic pipe stuck into the mouth of a subject, his lips sealing it to his face, diesel fumes inhaled straight into his lungs.” If this image is not in fact associated with the actual experiment, then it (and the associated paragraph) should be retracted (and the credibility of the attorney maybe should be brought into question). It seems more likely to me that, as previously suggested, this pipe is hooked up to a lung-capacity testing instrument.
-alkylation
ps. I’ll also note that 2 hours at 100-300 micrograms is less than 24 hours at 35 micrograms, which is the legal 24 hour standard for PM2.5.
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=epa+human+testing
Alkylation says:
September 24, 2012 at 5:32 pm
” I’ll take the word of an attorney who has to prove such things over the word of an activist. – Anthony”
Or, you could actually go look at the paper (linked to conveniently from the lawsuit as reference number 1: http://www.smw.ch/content/smw-2012-13597/) which states, “DE is introduced into the exposure chamber (1.83 m x 1.83 m x 2.44 m) after a 1:30 dilution with clean and humidified air to yield a feedback-regulated concentration of 100 to 300 μg/m3 (fig. 1B).” Figure 1B is not the Figure shown in this post with a man sucking a plastic pipe – it is unclear where that figure came from as the provenance is not listed in this post, nor is it obvious from the main junkscience post or the lawsuit itself. That is a pity, since it seems to be the key evidence for the statement “EPA actually has pictures of this gas chamber, a clear plastic pipe stuck into the mouth of a subject, his lips sealing it to his face, diesel fumes inhaled straight into his lungs.” If this image is not in fact associated with the actual experiment, then it (and the associated paragraph) should be retracted (and the credibility of the attorney maybe should be brought into question). It seems more likely to me that, as previously suggested, this pipe is hooked up to a lung-capacity testing instrument.
===========================================================
I see. So, since it appears the alleged EPA human experiments involved the use of a lung-capacity machine and everyone knows that if it was really a human experiment the EPA would have gone down to Wal-Mart and bought an actual ACME Human-Exposure-To-Particulate-Matter-Machine then the thought that the EPA would have performed human experiments must be false. So the whole thing should just be just be ignored or dismissed out of hand. I see.
It would be interesting to know how they got people to volunteer for this.
Honestly though, it is hard to believe that this is what actually happened. Surely someone somewhere realised that not only was this unethical, but is unlikely to be conclusive given the vast range of pollutants present in Diesel many of which are knwon to be or are suspected of being carcinogenic.
Even from a lung function perspective, particulate matter is not the only pollutant present in diesel, known to affect pulmonary activity: Think Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, sulphur dioxide and a range of aldehydes (acrolein, acetaldehyde, formaldehyde etc). Even the Victorians knew that particulate matter and sulphur dioxide acted synergistically, but very little is known about the synergistic effects of all of these pollutants together.
So why would the EPA conduct such an uncontrolled experiment in such an unethical way….it can’t be for real.
Goldie says:
September 24, 2012 at 7:49 pm
It would be interesting to know how they got people to volunteer for this.
…. So why would the EPA conduct such an uncontrolled experiment in such an unethical way….it can’t be for real.
=============================================================
A couple of thoughts. How did they get them to volunteer? They didn’t tell them the risk? They knew the claimed risk weren’t real? They were hoping to get data to support their regulations after the fact?
They hoped no one in the media (which now includes blogs) would notice?
Since when does a totalitarian-type bureaucracy need to be ethical? After all, “There’s no controlling legal authority.”
(For those outside the US. The job of the Executive Branch is to enforce the laws passed by Congress. The EPA is part of the Executive Branch. Who’s going to arrest them if the President supports them?)
First off, I detest the EPA on almost very level, especially with regard to CO2 issues.
However, most of the particulates issues are a load of BS. I grew up on a livestock farm and had every imaginable respiratory insult, including the dust and fumes from pigs, cattle, chickens, moldy hay, corn and other feedstocks, ammonia and silo gas, exhausts from diesel and gas engines where even the muffler was an afterthought, crop pollen, ground corn cob dust, dried manure dust, and a whole laundry list of pesticides and herbicides that were marketed first and tested later. My 61 year old lungs are just fine and most of my contemporaries are doing fine as well. I believe much of the demand for lower emissions and particulates on diesel engines is based on junk science and has both raised the complexity and lowered the efficiency of these engines, which have literally lifted us all from the depths of poverty.
Mike, this is mostly a gross violation of test protocol and a deliberate Catch-22 set up by Milloy. We know the effects of pollutants are hogwash, but the EPA has claimed ludicrous harm by miniscule amounts of pollutants. Then, they performed this study. Either they attempted to kill their test subjects for no good reason, in violation of all requirements and sense, or they lied openly, brazenly, and repeatedly in recorded and sworn testimony and official reports.
Either way, if there is any justice, Lisa Jackson will see the inside of a prison cell.
Mike Wryley
Been there, son; and add orchard spray to my CV, plus nicotine, and a great delight in the scent of diesel fumes and kero, and if you are only 61 can call you a kid.
I’m with you all the way in what you wrote above.
This sort of thing has happened often enough before. Look at the UN ruling that Ireland’s energy policies were non-compliant with the Aarhus Convention. The world is full of governments and bureaucrats enforcing laws and codes of practice on us, then telling us what to do and finding that their demands breach the earlier laws that they produced.
What generally happens is that everything is brushed under the carpet, and an implicit finding is made that compliance with the law is only for little people, not important bureaucrats…
ps. I’ll also note that 2 hours at 100-300 micrograms is less than 24 hours at 35 micrograms, which is the legal 24 hour standard for PM2.5.
—————————————————-
Right. So, drinking a bottle of tequila in 2 hours is the same as drinking it over 24 hours?
The dose makes the poison, remember?
Those who scoffed at this story seriously underestimate Steve Milloy. He is not a nutcase, and is very far from stupid. As others have noted, he has the EPA in a pincer movement. Either what they say about these particulates is crap, or they have knowingly subjected study participants to potentially lethal harm. Either way, they are guilty of major malfeasance.
I’m rather confused about the purpose of the EPA investigations.
1) I expect that it is possible to measure changes in pulmonary function after exposure to exhaust.
2) I am not certain how any of the these experiments relate to the risk of cancer.
3) I am somewhat puzzled by the assertion that 1/4 of premature deaths are preventable.
The test of the latter two assertions would be extremely difficult.
_Jim says:
September 24, 2012 at 8:19 am: Brad says September 24, 2012 at 1:37 am
Really doubt this is true, and the lead in of concentration is way over the top.
BTW, any animal or human research at US universities is approved by a group at each university that includes ethicists, members of the general public, and college professors.
Is the above in bold) anywhere close to being an “appeal to authority” (argumentum ad verecundiam)?
“Trust us, we’re from the faculty and we have approved this research.”
BTW, where does one go to be first trained then certified as an ‘ethicist’?
? An IRB board is devalued because it is an appeal to authority?
The board or his answer -please note I was “asking” and you have chosen ‘board’ whereas I was addressing his answer; the question would seem to still be standing BTW … doesn’t this strike you as being anything like climate science (note, this is a question)? Where was the ‘debate’ (pro and con) expressed prior to the execution of this research? A good question was raised by posters earlier too, how was consent obtained from those upon whom the tests were performed and were they fully aware of what was being conducted? This is not meant to overshadow the other issue upon which the lawsuit is being based either (EPA claims that are in stark contrast and diametrical to actions performed or committed by that same EPA) …
My original post: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/23/major-landmark-lawsuit-filed-against-the-epa-for-immoral-human-experimentation/#comment-1087318
.
A search for “John D. Dunn” “medical ethicist” gets nothing but this article.
Lisa Jackson’s 9/22/2011 testimony available online does not include any of the quotes given in this article. Is there a full transcript of that particular testimony available online? (IOW: where’s the complete data?)
Does anyone truly believe that subjects stood for 2-3 hours mouth-breathing through that tube? A pulmonary function test machine was probably used to test lung function before and after the inhalation test.
Exhaust from a diesel truck parked outside…hmm, can someone point me to the source for that detail?
This story may be exaggerated to the point of ineffectiveness.
This is going to be interesting.
Is it the EPA that determined that there are no safe levels of particulates? How so?
In the UK in a report prepared for the policy makers on the environment and using the same international data set used in all these studies, it is in fact claimed that there is a safe threshold for particulates in the environment. This threshold is presumably the level at which a decrease in life time exposure produces no statistically significant change in life expectancy.
In point of fact in the UK it is said in the report that there are only a very few places in the UK where the particulates in the atmosphere (in that part of the atmosphere where we live and can breathe them in) ever exceed the safe threshold and only briefly during rush hour.
The report states that one can only isolate the effects of particulates on morbidity (life expectancy) from a change in the levels over a significant period of time. This is because it is the lifetime dose that is important and because it impacts on a range of cardio vascular diseases and because there are other contributory causes. For example, the relocation of major industry from the town centres to the industrial estates around the peripheries was a major factor as has been the Clean Air act which saw a shift to smokeless fuels but primarily when the country transitioned from coal fired heating to gas and electric central heating.
But particulates exist in the air from a range of sources including both natural and anthropogenic.
I am no expert but I am presuming that the threshold levels relate, as I suggest above, to a lack of any significant statistical data on changes in morbidity when the level of particulates drops below the threshold level.
This leads me to suspect that the EPA has been egging the pudding with its declared
“EPA has officially concluded that this gas is a genotoxic carcinogen and that there is no exposure level below which it can be considered safe. In fact, EPA Administrator Jackson testified to Congress that of all deaths occurring in the United States, 1 in 4 “is attributable to PM2.5.”
This statement, at face value, suggests that a single exposure to a single particle at PM2.5 (and why PM2.5, much of the work uses PM10 as the marker particle size so far as I can recall, so this may be a significant factor) will cause some measurable loss of life expectancy.
This is interesting since the UK report emphasises that it is life time exposure that is important.
SO, will the EPA response be to stand by its original declaration as being scientifically robust and free of all politico-environmental cant, scaremongering and propaganda and plead guilty?
OR will they decide to dump the junk science and attempt to show that there were no real risks (or scientific meaning or benefit) from a series of experiments involving only a brief exposure (along with some sort of claims that the guinea pigs were fully aware of any purported risks)?
If their original declaration is true, what was the point of the experiment?
If not and it is life time doses at above the threshold levels that are significant, what was the point of the experiment? To what levels were the subjects exposed and for what duration for this to be a meaningful experiment however immoral under the terms of their own declared position on particulates?
PS the UK report also called for further studies to establish the impact of changing lifestyles on the data. It seems that much of the data relates to societies in which exposure to the outdoor environment was the norm but modern day living means that a substantial proportion of the population now lives in “clean air” office and factory environments and in air conditioned homes and travels in air conditioned cars with climate controls and pollen filters etc. suggesting that the traditional measurements of particulates in the atmosphere may no longer relate directly the true levels of exposure.
Yes, this is going to be interesting.
Perhaps then we can move on to question the EPAs other “scientific pronouncements” such as on CO2 etc. and of course Sox and NOX from shipping, now that the North American ECA is in place. This imposes low sulphur limits on vessels operating out to 200miles from land. Currently, and at the present permitted fuel sulphur levels, the premium for low sulphur fuel is at around $280 a ton on the west coast against $650 a ton base cost for fuel suitable to use in a global sea area. Permitted levels will reduce and further aggravate the problem. SInce the evidence from the UK report (moving factories from town centres to the peripheries) suggests that SOX has only a limited presence even a short distance from its source and since OSX per regulation from shipping was only 3% of anthropogenic burden, that this is an unnecessarily over bearing piece of legislation which will not cost 50cents on a pair of jeans or a couple of dollars on a TV set but considerably more. Fuel is between 60 and 80% of operating costs for shipping. Fuel prices have been rising steadily and dramatically even without this legislation so a near 50% premium isn’t going to be any 50cents surcharge. Oh, and at these prices it isn’t far off the $1030 a ton Houston price for Diesel. The short supply means many vessels will have to switch to diesel which will add between 2 and 11% to the CO2 emissions……
False premise, strawman erection or ???? (includes insufficient or too-restrictive a search criteria)
Not fully getting the inferred non-connection here …. but this does continue to raise the issue of what/how an ‘ethicist’ receives his/her training … now, possessing an MD might just be one step in the right direction though.
Let’s Google again and change what we use as search terms … shall we?
From this site (Doctors at Ft hood) I do find his name listed:
http://tx-fort-hood.doctors.at/dr/john-dunn-drjohndaledunnmd
and here:
http://www.docspot.com/d/TX/fort-hood/legal-medicine.html
Also, Googling ‘John Dale Dunn MD Ft Hood ethics teaching’ returns the following from this source:
Also from ACSH (American Council on Science and Health) Elects New Trustees and Scientific Advisors in the category of “Newly Elected ACSH Scientific and Policy Advisors” I find his name listed.
Might this raise the possibility that Dunn possesses perhaps at least some minimum necessary qualifications to serve as an ‘ethicist’?
.
@ _Jim on September 25, 2012 at 10:35 am:
Now Google for just “john dunn ft hood”, and find…
http://heartland.org/dr-john-dale-dunn-md-jd
Etc, long list of accomplishments and credentials. So both a doctor and a lawyer, well versed in medical issues and their legal implications and complications, even extending to military concerns.
Yeah, I’d say that qualifies him to be a “medical ethicist”.
You take all the fun out of my trying to ‘lead a witness’ (e.g nutso fasst), spoil sport ;).
(The good poker player/questioning attorney doesn’t show all his cards all the time …)
.
Gene Selkov says:
September 23, 2012 at 8:10 pm
“The really dramatic part of the story is that they have been telling us for umpteen years that an experiment like this would kill a person, and now Steve has caught them lying. Either it is an atrocious Nazi-style experiment (we know it’s not, but it is according to EPA) or EPA has been lying about the hazards of PM2.5 to uphold a regulation that is tantamount to extortion.
It’s checkmate, EPA.”
Exactly, the EPA is being put in the position of being found to either being guilty of intentionally exposing people to a hazardous substance or that they exaggerated the hazard. Of course, they exaggerated the hazard and this just happens to be a lesser evil than the evil they’re being accused of perpetrating. They’ll need to confess to exaggerating the hazard in order to clear themselves of perpetrating Nazi-like human experimentation. Your lungs have cilia for a reason, to remove PM. This is nonsense and the EPA knows it. Hopefully, they’ll have to admit it in court.
So let me get this straight. The EPA either needs to stick by its statement that PMx is ‘dangerous’ and acknowledge that it did human experimentation on a known dangerous substance or retract its statement that PMx is dangerous.
Ouch. Checkmate.
Alkylation says:
September 24, 2012 at 5:32 pm
” I’ll take the word of an attorney who has to prove such things over the word of an activist. – Anthony”
Or, you could actually go look at the paper (linked to conveniently from the lawsuit as reference number 1: http://www.smw.ch/content/smw-2012-13597/) which states, “DE is introduced into the exposure chamber (1.83 m x 1.83 m x 2.44 m) after a 1:30 dilution with clean and humidified air to yield a feedback-regulated concentration of 100 to 300 μg/m3 (fig. 1B).”
++++++++++++++
Holly crap. When I first read this article I assumed that the EPA ACCIDENTALLY pumped diesel exhaust into a chamber, by having an air intake too close to the loading bay.
However, it is nothing of the sort. The experiment PURPOSELY pumped in diesel exhaust. Knowing full well that it could cause death – as per the EPA sworn testimony to congress. Instead they told the test subjects that it would only cause temporary discomfort that would pass in a couple of hours.
Imagine if you or I rigged up something like this. We would be in jail for attempted murder. Pumping exhaust fumes into a room for people to breathe. One law for those in power. Another for the rest of us.
Isn’t this the sort of issue the candidate Obama should address?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning
Carbon monoxide poisoning is the most common type of fatal poisoning in many countries.[3] Historically, it was also commonly used as a method to commit suicide, usually by deliberately inhaling the exhaust fumes of a running car engine. Modern automobiles, even with electronically-controlled combustion and catalytic converters, can still produce levels of carbon monoxide which will kill if enclosed within a garage or if the tailpipe is obstructed (for example, by snow) and exhaust gas cannot escape normally. Carbon monoxide poisoning has also been implicated as the cause of apparent haunted houses; symptoms such as delirium and hallucinations have led people suffering poisoning to think they have seen ghosts or to believe their house is haunted.[4]
johanna says:
September 25, 2012 at 5:37 am
ps. I’ll also note that 2 hours at 100-300 micrograms is less than 24 hours at 35 micrograms, which is the legal 24 hour standard for PM2.5.
—————————————————-
Right. So, drinking a bottle of tequila in 2 hours is the same as drinking it over 24 hours?
+++++++++++
drink enough water in a short enough time and this is a lethal dose. the same amount over a longer period of time is beneficial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
Water, just like any other substance, can be considered a poison when over-consumed in a specific period of time.
ferdberple said on September 25, 2012 at 6:34 pm
But Ferd, think of the children.
Thanks for the bio on Dunn, kadaka. Not sure why Jim wants to “lead a witness” or what I’m a witness to, but it sure helps the search if you already know the middle name and place of employment, eh? Note that “professor” didn’t help with my searches, nor is that title found in the links. And whether Dunn can be accurately described as “medical ethicist” doesn’t change my point about the article.
Still no help with confirmation of Lisa Jackson’s testimony, mouth-breathing fumes through a plastic tube for hours, or exhaust from an idling diesel truck.
There is another point.
It isn’t simply that they must either admit that their declaration (and the dependent legislation etc.) is fundamentally wrong, or accept that they conducted inhuman experiments but that they must admit that the declaration was known to be wrong for some considerable time. Enough time to know that the experiment was perfectly safe. That wouldn’t be the day before but some time before.
So the question then is: why have they allowed this declaration and its dependent legislation to stand for so long and to still be standing?
This now becomes a game of scapegoats.
IT depends on how militant their support for junk science is.
It depends on who knew what and when.
It means that if they can if they can find a suitable scapegoat for the experiment and wash their hands of all knowledge that they can keep their junk science.
WE might have thought that CRU and Prof Jones would necessarily have to be taken out at dawn and shot along with similar actions in the US.
But it didn’t happen.
ON the other hand, this is a lawsuit.
What we may hope is that it will send out a signal that there is a limit. We may even hope that the US government will decide to act and to purge its organisations of the militant eco-activists who are perverting the science for their own anti-democratic ends.
And pigs might fly.
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
Too much vested interest in denying falsehoods. My guess is a scapegoat for the experiments who will be cast into the outer darkness in order to protect the junk science. Sad.
Friends:
I am surprised at the doubts about this case when previous WUWT articles aroused no such questions. For example on 30 April 2012 there was a WUWT article titled ‘The EPA and undisclosed human experimentation’ which reported the experiments cited in the ATI court case. That article can be read at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/30/the-epa-and-undisclosed-human-experimentation/
In that thread I wrote the following comment which supports the hyperbole used in the above article. The point I then made – and quote below in this post – is valid; i.e.
the US can expect a retort about hypocrisy whenever it comments on the human rights in another country unless those responsible for the experiments are prosecuted.
Hence, I am pleased to see the above report that the ATI has instituted the reported court case against the EPA.
My comment (which I quote below) induced several commentators in that thread to assert that atrocities are acceptable when conducted by certain nations, notably the US and Israel. The ATI clearly understands that immoral acts are not excusable on the basis of WHO commits them.
Richard
***************
richardscourtney says:
April 30, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Friends:
I am commenting on this item because it has international significance. I am not commenting on US politics (I find right-wing politics distasteful and all US politics is right-wing).
The US often berates other nations for inadequate provision of human rights. In this case, the experiments provide a prima facie case of an agency of the US government acting contrary to international law by depriving US citizens of their human rights. Therefore, the US can expect a retort about hypocrisy whenever it comments on the human rights in another country unless those responsible for the experiments are prosecuted.
I explain the apparent breach of international law as follows.
Contrary to some above comments in this thread, the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the CIOMS code are ethical norms and are not enshrined in International Law.
However, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) conducted a study of international humanitarian customary law which provides a report that identifies 161 rules of such law. It says:
“Customary international law, on the other hand, derives from “a general practice accepted as law.” Such practice can be found in official accounts of military operations but is also reflected in a variety of other official documents, including military manuals, national legislation and case law. The requirement that this practice be “accepted as law” is often referred to as “opinion juris.” This characteristic sets practices required by law apart from practices followed as a matter of policy, for example.”
A characteristic of Customary International Law (CIL) is that norms can be identified at the stage at which they are emergent. According to the study by the Red Cross, the status of CIL has been attained by rules that prohibit the following acts:
* Genocide;
* Slavery or slave trade;
* The murder or causing the disappearance of individuals;
* Torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
* Prolonged arbitrary detention;
* Systematic racial discrimination; and
* A consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.
Inflicting an experiment upon a person when it is suspected the experiment will cause physical harm to that person is clearly “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”. Hence, the experiments reported in the above article provide a prima facie case of a crime according to international law.
Richard
Roger Sowell says:
September 24, 2012 at 3:46 pm
The complaint as filed may be viewed here:
http://www.atinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2012-09-21-Complaint-as-Filed.pdf
=======
Thanks!
Witness for the defense …
.
I will lay you odds that within two years (or one) even (as this case begins to loom closer to a ‘trial date’) that the EPA ‘recants all’ on this given what seems to be an inevitable ‘turn of administrations’ this fall (leading to a new EPA head et al) … a new admin contrary to what the polls displayed by some organizations seem to indicate ATTM and in accord with what happened to Jimmy Carter (recall the Misery Index?; highest under Carter and presently the #2 record is held by the present administration); having lived though the Carter era, I can see this happening.
I would also like to take this opportunity to express my thanks for your taking the time to post on this issue and making a worthwhile contribution. Kudos.
.
Jim says:
If requesting substantiation for the claims is all it takes to be a witness for the defense, this case is in trouble.
Ha ha .. one anonymous man’s opinion; BTW, I think ‘democracy will be safe’ so long as not-so-fast doesn’t make it to deliberations as one of the 12 jurors or the six alternates …
.
hat tip jim quinn for reading this item on his radio program which airs on WPGB http://www.warroom.com if true are we about to repeat history?
For anyone who wonders just how robust the EPA’s 2.5M particle declaration is, it apparently comes from a CARB study.
Anyone interested in just how dubious it is will find this you tube presentation of statistical fallacies not simply enlightening but amusing too:
The only trouble is that while one might suppose that when faced with a choice of being found guilty of subjecting humans to inhumane research and susceptibility to junk science they may prefer to be seen as inhumane rather than idiots.
On the plus side, this wasn’t an EPA study but a CARB study and CARB fits the bill of a “scapegoat” and especially so since this type of study seems to be California’s stock in trade and everyone knows Californians really do need to spend more time in therapy.