By John Dale Dunn MD JD (via email)
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson testified before Congress in September of 2011 that small-particle (2.5 microns or less) air pollution is lethal. “Particulate matter causes premature death. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.”
At the hearing, Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) asked, “How would you compare [the benefits of reducing airborne PM2.5] to the fight against cancer?” 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.
That same month, September 2011, Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), a journal sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, reported an experiment that exposed a 58-year-old lady to high levels of small particles in a chamber. After 49 minutes in the chamber, the lady, who was obese with hypertension and a family history of heart disease, who also had premature atrial heartbeats on her pre-experiment electrocardiogram, developed a rapid heart beat irregularity called atrial fibrillation/flutter, which can be life threatening. She was taken out of the chamber, and she recovered, but she was hospitalized for a day. Weeks later, an abnormal electrical heart circuit was fixed by cardiologists, as reported in EHP.
It is illegal, unethical, and immoral to expose experimental subjects to harmful or lethal toxins. The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, 3rd Ed. (2011), published by the Federal Judicial Center, on page 555 declares that exposing human subjects to toxic substances is “proscribed” by law and cites case law. The editor of EHP refused a request to withdraw the paper and conduct an investigation.
The EPA’s internal policy guidance on experimental protocols prohibits, under what is called the “Common Rule,” experiments that expose human subjects to lethal or toxic substances. Milloy referenced the “Common Rule” that governs EPA policy on research conduct in human experimentation in his letter to the inspector general of the EPA requesting an investigation of the matter.
A full report on the research study shows that 41 other people were exposed to what the EPA says are harmful or lethal levels of small particles, with some enduring up to 10 times the EPA’s declared safe level of 35 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The EPA human experiments described were conducted from January 2010 to June 2011, according to the information obtained by JunkScience.com on a Freedom of Information Act request, and ended three months before Ms. Jackson’s congressional testimony, but she still asserted dramatic claims of PM2.5’s lethality — thousands of deaths at stake and hundreds of billions in economic consequences from the deaths and disabilities caused by small particles.
According to the congressional testimony of Lisa Jackson, these experiments risked the lives of these 42 people. So what could have possessed these EPA researchers to do the experiments? The authors reveal the reason in their case report on the lady:
Although epidemiologic data strongly support a relationship between exposure to air pollutants and cardiovascular disease, this methodology does not permit a description of the clinical presentation in an individual case. To our knowledge, this is the first case report of cardiovascular disease after exposure to elevated concentrations of any air pollutant.
The people at the EPA claim that they must control air pollution to prevent the deaths of thousands. Then they expose human subjects to high levels of air pollution. Is it possible that they are lying, or unethical, or both?
In the experimental protocol, seven subjects were exposed to levels 10 times greater than the 24-hour safe limit for small particles, and all of the other 40 subjects were exposed to more than the 35 micrograms per cubic meter that the EPA says is the 24-hour safety limit. The researchers failed to report that none of the other subjects had any adverse effects, which is unscientific, since researchers are obligated to report results both for and against their hypothesis.
The only way out for the EPA in this episode is to acknowledge the reality that ambient levels or even higher levels of PM2.5 are not toxic or lethal, based on their own research, and to admit that their claims of thousands of lives lost from small particles is nonsense. Or they can stay with their assertions about small particle toxicity and face charges of criminal and civil neglect.
The individuals who were the subjects of this experiment certainly might be concerned if the EPA claim of small particle toxicity and lethality is true. There is good reason to believe that the EPA itself doesn’t believe the claims. However, based on congressional testimony by EPA officials, any death now or later of the subjects of this experiment from heart and lung disease or cancer would be under the cloud of concern about the EPA claims that small particles kill. What were the EPA officials and researchers thinking?
John Dale Dunn MD JD
Consultant Emergency Services/Peer Review
Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine Residency
Carl R. Darnall Army Med Center
Fort Hood, Texas
There was this interesting study here re ultra-fine particles:
http://sciencenordic.com/air-pollution-hospitalises-small-children
“The number of hospitalisations rises in line with the gases and medium-sized particles in the air – which typically come from industrial areas in countries south of Denmark – but hospitalisations do not rise when there are more ultra-fine particle in the air.”
So, if this is true, there must be proof that 25% of deaths in the US are caused by high particulate levels. If not, is this another lie?
David, UK says: June 4, 2012 at 8:11 am
@ur momisugly Steamboat Jack, June 4, 2012 at 7:58 am:
You miss the point, Jack. Syphilis is real.
*****************************
I am puzzled. I may well have missed something, but I still don’t see it.
The thread is about the Federal Government conducting unethical and life threatening experiments on unwitting subjects. I gave an example to remind this readership that the Federal Government has been doing that for years. I am a Simple Red Neck who went to a trade school (Merchant Marine College) and worked Union all of my life. If I know of it, then I expect that 99% of the gentle readers here would also know of it. It was just a reminder.
My comment about making an omelet was a reference to the New York Times. Back in the 1930’s they excused mass murder by the Soviet Union. The Soviets were in the process of murdering more people than Hitler ever did. The New York Times justified it as an unfortunate result of a Grand Socialist Experiment. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs”. To put it another way, Madeline Albright has been quoted as saying something like “Yes, Stalin DID kill some 40 Million people, but he industrialized the Soviet Union, so overall he was good for the country”. 40 Million murdered as part of an experiment that has proven to be a total failure. My comment was a reminder of the total absence of humanity in people who would do that or excuse that kind of behavior. Then and now.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
About 20 years ago I attended an Infectious Disease conference in San Antonio. The keynote speaker was the late, great Dr. Jay P. Sanford. He told several stories about biological weapons research conducted by the US military. The common nebulizer was originally developed as a delivery system for biologic weapons. They had a Navy sub surface just off shore of San Fran and spray a non-pathogenic specific species of Serratia (non-pathogenic for most, anyway). They then went all over San Fran and obtained samples to see how far and to what extent it spread. At the break I went for a cup of coffee and noticed Sanford was surrounded by military brass. I overheard him assuring them that the experiment was completely declassified even though most of the public was unaware of it. An Admiral remained skeptical. Only recently have we learned about the the military and the CIA human experiments with LSD.
I would be so bold to suggest that MOST of the “research” conducted by the EPA (and about a dozen other agencies like the USFW and NOAA) is nearly all BS. Their research would never pass muster with the rigors of the FDA. What’s even more galling is this nonsense, non-science cranked out by the EPA counts as “publicly funded medical research – much like a lot of crap pumped out by the CDC. Toxicity in humans and animals is not a linear dose-response curve. We are exposed to toxins or potential toxins every day, They EPA does not necessarily determine “safe levels”, they back extrapolate and come up with completely bogus numbers (like mercury from coal power plants or PM2.5 particulates). These unelected bureaucrats have long ago outlived the usefulness. We have hit the wall of the law of diminishing returns.
What most people don’t know is minus 2.5 micron “particulates” are mostly particles produced from condensable gases emitted into the atmosphere – as opposed to fine solids emitted directly. So, I’d be curious what chemicals the EPA used to produce the 2.5 particulate. The EPA has stonewalled studying the impact of condensable particulates produced from utilities; even though there is considerable evidence showing that SO2 derived condensables are not harmful. Setting aside the ethical issues, the EPA’s statements are meaningless without knowing precisely what chemicals were used to produce the condensate.
Kforestcat
Next week; the EPA willl be conducting similar tests. In these tests citizens will be exposed (ingest) 10 ties the daily limit of salt. The following week, the EPA will conduct an identical test only requiring clueless patients to drink ten times the recommended intake of purified water. The fllowing weeks, EPA will conduct identical tests only using natural rock salt and turgid nuclear tower cooling water. /sarc
Sooner or later the EPA will learn what a LD50 level is; that is, the dosage level at which fifty percent of the populatio exposed or receiving the dose, die. Almost everything, no matter how pure has an LD50 level.
For the final tests, EPA will pump into passing citizens, 10 times the regular daily amount of air. Patients that fail to hold ten times the regular daily dose of air will be forced to pass wind in the Penn State area. /sarc Really! I mean it, well I mean it just as much as Mannure man likes WUWT.
This “experiment”, in addition to being unethical is just plain dumb. It is already known that some 2 billion people worldwide are exposed daily to high levels of indoor pollution from the use of “biofuels” in firepits and unvented, inefficient stoves, particularly women and children. Studies have shown that it raises blood pressures, leading to increased incidence of heart disease and stroke.
Ian W says: “…Is there any conclusion other than Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson lied in her testimony to Congress?”
She suffers from oral fibulation.
Gah. They’re not even good enough scientists to come up with a plausible fake study to justify their pre-cooked agenda. I don’t know how long before Jackson got there the EPA was going rotten, but it must have been some time. Not even a maleficent fool like her could achieve the depths of dedicated incompetence and immorality it now displays routinely.
The EPA looks more and more like an off-shoot of the remnants of Nazi eugenic studies. Millions died in WWII protecting us against the likes of Josef Mengele and his co-workers and successors. Now the EPA has picked up the threads and is continuing with the same sadistic, pseudo-scientific experiments on humans.
KForestcat makes a point about condensed particles I will expand upon.
There are PM2.5 particles and PM2.5 particles… PM 2.5 is not a size, it is an upper limit. Anything smaller than 2.5 microns is included in that fraction. What the particles are made of is quite important. Condensed volatiles likes tars and fomaldehyde are nasty things, that’s for sure.
Current research on Black Carbon (BC) as opposed to Organic Carbon (OC) show far more negative response to particles that are a) BC and b) smaller than PM 0.1 (everything smaller than PM 0.1, not PM 2.5). See the work done at Clarkson U, esp the investigations using the measurement instruments from their Dr Philip Kopke.
But my main point is this: “A full report on the research study shows that 41 other people were exposed to what the EPA says are harmful or lethal levels of small particles, with some enduring up to 10 times the EPA’s declared safe level of 35 micrograms per cubic meter of air.”
What the heck?? 350 microgrammes? The WHO limit is 50. The Mongolian National Standard is 25. Both are arbitrary. There are places within the City of Ulaanbaatar with an annual average of over 600 microgrammes per cubic metre. The record PM2.5 level recorded in UB City is over 4300 per cubic metre. In winter the concentration is routinely over 1500. I have measured >600 inside the lab!
But 35? Using a HEPA filter and a pump an LNBL (Berkeley) researcher was unable to get the air below 20 using a HEPA filter. In whose interest is this ‘safe’ 35 microgrammes? Filter vendors? Further, what does ‘declared safe’ mean? It matters entirely what the material is, not so much what the floating mass is. If that figure was entirely PM 0.01 BC nanoparticles I assure you it is a completely different risk profile than the same mass of 2.4 micron particles of OC. No comparison at all. And if you look up the sizes of viruses and fungi spores you will see we are exposed to all manner of small particles all the time.
Remember how European diesel emissions were ‘cleaned up’ by great advances in combustion technology? Huge drop in PM 2.5, that is until better instruments were created that could measure PM0.01. It turns out that the old PM 2.5 is now a vast cloud of far smaller particles that were too small to be detected before. They go right through the lung walls, into the red corpuscles and cruise through the blood-brain barrier. What BC particles do there is anyone’s guess. And they have been there all along.
Ultra-fine BC particles have always been in the air because biomass burning is a prolific source of them (almost all biomass particles are <PM1.0). The health science of this is FAR from being settled. The chances of that woman's health being at risk from the equivalent of someone smoking a cigarette in the same room is about zero. Cigarettes produce massive numbers of small particles, many smaller than the visible white smoke (<PM0.1 are invisible as it is the light scattering lower limit). Even a tiny thin wisp of cigarette smoke will be way more than 150 milligrammes (not microgrammes). A whole cigarette would be killing everyone in minutes if the risk was so high. No one would be allowed to cook bacon in the house, or eat near a BBQ, or make toast.
The experiment put no one at risk and the Nazi research comparison is silly. Lisa J’s emphasis on PM pollution of indoor air is directly related to the EPA’s current initiatives to improve the lives of women who breathe smoke all day cooking over an open fire. The relevant programmes are the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Hillary’s initiative). Both emphasize the need for improving air quality by the introduction of improved cookers. There is a strong relationship between high PM inhalation and upper respiratory disease in women and the small children near them. It is a worthy cause, but it does not need scare tactics and inflated risks. Reality is scary enough. “…harmful or lethal…” More smoke and mirrors in litigious America.
geography lady says:
June 4, 2012 at 11:10 am
….I have over 35 years working on asbestos issues and exposures. EPA-Washington DC. is junk science. They use in their literature that “as little as one fiber will cause cancer and death”…..
_______________________________
Well if that was the case for asbestos, I and the rest of my family would be long dead. Dad sold asbestos insulation and I used to play with it as a kid (much nicer than fiberglass) I even have some asbestos in my rock collection and a nice slab of it for cooking “Baked Alaska” so that gives me over 50 years of “exposure” without any cancer.
I wonder just how many people died because they took asbestos off the market. It was used in Fire proof brake pads and also for chemical hoods to prevent lab fires among other things. Useful stuff.
John F. Hultquist says:
June 4, 2012 at 7:22 am
eyesonu says:
June 4, 2012 at 6:27 am
“Lying to Congress or misleading Congress should be a crime.”
Unless you are a member thereof.
Obviously. National elections every month or two to ensure a quorum would get expensive fast.
The EPA needs to be abolished and we need to start over. The agency is way, way out of control and is doing far more harm than good. Abolish it and replace it entirely with something sane.
Independent;
Abolishing the EPA isn’t enough. All of its regulations and standards need to be retroactively nullified and abolished. That would cause some problems here and there, which could/should be dealt with individually, sensibly. And ALL replacement “environmental” regulations etc. must be sunsetted: expiry in 5 yrs is automatic unless a full review of cost-benefit justifies renewing them — also sunsetted. That gives at least minimal defense against the Law of Unintended Consequences. Not to mention ill-conceived Intended Consequences.
Crispin, you are missing the point. Milloy is attempting to catch the EPA in a catch-22. Either
A: They performed experiements on people that they knew to be deadly
or
B: They lied to America and under oath Congress.
That’s why there is so much tongue-in-cheeck accusation going on. The real risk is immaterial in this case. If the EPA thought it was deadly, they shouldn’t have done it. If the EPA knew it was safe, then they have repeatedly committed perjury to preserve their own power. Either way, they are criminals.
Brian, interesting thought. However, permits are issued for ten years. Your proposal would create an increasingly insane and unpredictable regulatory environment where the laws would change effectively overnight. It was bad enough keeping up with Obama. I’d hate to think of what would happen if it happened constantly.
Ben, sunsetting forces much more attention to viability and cost-benefits of laws and regulations. Simplicity and clarity are heightened. And nonsense rules just drop out by being allowed to lapse.
Obama’s “Rule by Executive cat-skinning” is another problem and issue entirely.
The reason your hearing “So Much” from the EPA is “The people that WERE pushing global warming” has found NEW Jobs inside the Government.
Human experiments? Why does this Eastern European Jew keep thinking of…
Related to the EPA’s particulate matter experiments.
The Obama administration’s EPA is about to kill 180,000 to 215,000 jobs by 2015 with GDP losses totaling as much as $112 billion and with additional total household disposable income losses of as much as $71 billion to implement an EPA regulation that is already regulated by other parts of the Clean Air Act.
The EPA named the regulation “Mercury and Toxics Standards” but the regulation has nothing to do with reductions in mercury emissions. EPA admits the benefits of the rule are 99.996 percent related to particulate matter which is already regulated by other parts of the Clean Air Act.
How many ways can we spell stupid.
Talking Points from IECA
http://www.ieca-us.com/wp-content/uploads/Talking-Points_Inhofe-Resolution.pdf
Very well written article by Dr. Dunn! The distorted human guinea pig experiments involving elevated levels of PM2.5 and CO have long been a strong mainstay of antismoking research. See p. 10 of my “Lies Behind The Smoking Bans” at :
http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/PASAN/StilettoGenv5h.pdf
and read about the classic Otsuka study. It’s just another example of doublethink: on the one hand the advocacy researchers declare “There is no safe level.” while on the other hand even their most extremist elements send volunteers with monitors into smoky bars and bar/restaurants while assuring that there was “no risk” from sitting around forever in such places to get the measurements. “No risk is expected to volunteers in collecting the data” ( “AIR QUALITY IN MARQUETTE RESTAURANTS Before and After … ” by James L. Repace, Apr. 22nd 2011 for the Michigan Department of Community Health Tobacco Section. http://www.co.marquette.mi.us/departments/health_department/docs/Marquette_Air_Report_Repace_2011.pdf )
One of the tricks advocates use in these things is to pretend that the EPA “Healthy” standards for 24 hours or 365 days have substantial meaning in terms of exposures of a few minutes or a few hours. The methods and distortions used in GW and pollution research in general are simply going down the accepted path for what’s been done years in secondhand smoke research without anyone blinking an eye.
– MJM
Another trick, as pointed out by a previous poster, is ignoring differences in chemical composition of PM2.5 exposures: I’ve sometimes compared it to taking a teaspoon of sugar crystals, placing it next to a teaspoon of arsenic crystals, and declaring them both equally safe or deadlysince the crystals are the same size.
– MJM
It seemed the government’s official position in the ’90s was that if it weren’t for automatic weapons, hand guns, lack of air bags, and second hand smoke, nobody would ever die. With those villians mostly gone, they need new villians, because after all, people continue to die.
Here in California, I see, we are all just a broken light bulb, spilled oil, trashed toy or battery, or other previously inconsequential trash deposit; from becoming destitute felons. This 394 page linked pdf presents some of the new law that went into effect in 2011 to ensure this possibility: http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/LawsRegsPolicies/upload/2011-HEALTH-AND-SAFETY-CODE-Excerpts.pdf.
So no matter how small or real the threat, your government can and may take your money and punish you, if you deposit a prohibited item in the trash. And, who knows, with the budget and the promise for green shirts jobs, they just might.
Why didn’t I see this earlier? Could it be because I’ve been distracted by nonsense like global warming and PM 2.5?