From JunkScience.com
Below is my testimony at today’s public meeting of EPA’s CASAC PM subpanel concerning EPA’s updated assessment of PM2.5 science. Not surprisingly, the EPA air pollution mafia declined my challenge to point out where I was wrong… because I’m not. Please support JunkScience.com!
Good afternoon. I am Steve Milloy. I publish JunkScience.com.
EPA’s assessment of the PM2.5 science is a case study in science fraud.
First, the PM epidemiology is not science — it’s just statistics and dishonest statistics at that.
Statistical associations by themselves are not science.
EPA admitted in federal court with me that the PM epidemiology alone is inadequate for determining causality.
That should be no surprise.
It’s basic epidemiology – not that the PM epidemiology is worth anything to start with.
In fact, the data used in the PM epidemiology are mostly garbage.
The exposure data are poorly guesstimated and often overwhelmed by other PM exposures, especially smoking, occupational exposures and indoor air.
PM health endpoints like mortality are common and multifactorial, and so are not plausibly studied via epidemiology.
It’s no wonder that EPA allows agency grantees to hide their data from public scrutiny.
Even so, all the PM epidemiology essentially reports zero correlations.
Honest epidemiologists know that epidemiology is only useful for studying high rates of rare disease – not low rates of common health endpoints like death.
And let’s not forget that EPA staff continues to essentially ignore all the PM epidemiology that expressly reports no association between PM and death like the 2017 study by Young, Smith and Lopiano that considered every death, two million of them, that occurred in California between 2000-2012 and reported no association between PM and deaths.
Let’s consider at PM toxicology which should be able to shed light on whether there is any biological plausibility to the notion that PM kills.
There is no lab animal experiment that has produced deaths in animals – despite intense PM exposures.
There is no human clinical experiment that has produced health effects – let alone deaths – despite exposing elderly and sick people to intense PM.
None of this is surprising since there are no real-world examples where PM has killed anyone ever.
Yet EPA staff dishonestly assesses this body of literature as supporting its false assertion that PM causes death.
Please EPA, show us the body of someone who has been killed by PM. Just one, please. Aren’t you even curious yourselves? There are supposed to be 8 million deaths worldwide caused by PM2,5. And you can’t find a single body?
Studies show that smokers who quit by age 40 will have inhaled thousands of times more PM than nonsmokers – yet both groups have the same life expectancy.
PM levels in Chinese and Indian cities can be 100 or more times greater than US outdoor air – but there are no reports of actual deaths from inhaling Chinese or Indian air.
Historic incidents of deadly air pollution during the 20th century were caused by acidic gases concentrated in the air by weather phenomena.
They weren’t caused by PM2.5.
Coal miners and diesel workers have relatively large exposures to PM – but they have greater life expectancy than workers not occupationally exposed to PM.
And guess what, when PM levels are reduced, deaths don’t go down.
Yet, EPA staff ignores this real-world data, doubles down on the fraudulent and secret science and raves that PM2.5 is more dangerous than ever.
It’s a shameless con. And it’s getting worse.
EPA staff now claims that the cleaner air is, the more dangerous it is.
EPA staff claims that when it comes to cardiovascular mortality, the dose-response curve goes supralinear at low doses.
Of course that would mean that tightening the PM2.5 NAAQS would actually kill people.
There is not a single toxic substance known to science that operates on the principle that a little exposure is worse than a lot. Not a single one.
All the foregoing is indisputable. At least I have no seen anyone dispute it.
So how did all this fraud take hold in the first place?
Since 1996 – the first time CASAC told EPA that there is no evidence PM2.5 kills – EPA staff has funneled at least $600 million to university researchers willing to commit scientific fraud in order to invent and maintain the lie that PM kills.
After the 1996 CASAC debacle, EPA staff saw to it that future CASAC review boards were staffed and controlled by the same researchers funded to commit the PM science fraud.
And that’s what happened until CASAC was reformed in the last administration.
Now we are back to the good old days of EPA’s CASAC cronies doing the bidding of EPA staff and rubber-stamping their fraudulent interpretation of the PM2.5 literature and reality.
If I am wrong about any of what I have just said. I’d love to hear about it.
But I know you won’t dare.
You will just hide behind conclusory statements in thousand-page long unreadable summary documents, byzantine process, paid-off academia and a media that is as dumb as EPA is dishonest.
Thank you for your attention.
It would be useful to know what PM, PM2.5, CASAC, NAAQS etc. mean.
PM – particulate matter. PM2.5 – particulate matter 2.5 micron. National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
We were held in limbo over coal flue gas for years over the EPA’s dithering on these standards.
Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
Thanks, much appreciated. Those of us on the other side of The Pond from you sometimes struggle with your acronyms just as you probably do with ours, not to mention those of the DownUnder ones.
You are not alone.
It is poor writing to use any acronym without first defining it. It is a pet peeve of mine.
I’m still waiting for a definition of NAAQS.
Mason gave that definition.
Best acronym in the world?
YAAC – your acronym aint communicating!
Or NAFA, Not Another F’n Acronym
I-ANAL is better
I Am Not A Lawyer
in fairness this a transcript of testimony given to an audience familiar with the acronyms so definitions would be redundant.
Agreed, good writers define their special terms.
Wikipedia defines NAAQS as National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
“The U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS, pronounced /ˈnæks/ naks) are limits on atmospheric concentration of six pollutants that cause smog, acid rain, and other health hazards.[”
The six pollutants are sulfur dioxide, particulant-matter, carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and lead.
Ironic that EPA et al. claim CO2 is the ‘worst’ pollutant, but it is not in their NAAQS list.
The use of PM, PM2.5 and PM10 is the same in the UK.
“Particulate Matter”; Specifically in the 2.5micron size
Or smaller
National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
These standards are required to be reviewed every 5years. Every 5 years EPA attempts to lower the standards for both PM (particulate matter) 2.5 and PM10 (essentially, geologic dust).
When I was an engineer at a power plant, at times when the adjacent river was muddy, the EPA requirements for turbidity of discharge water (like for simple cooling) was cleaner than what we took from the river. So essentially we were being required to “clean up” the river water. So eventually they’ll be requiring anything that uses air to “clean up” the ambient atmosphere.
The regulations are well into the absurd range.
In my experience, many of these acronyms are beloved tools for non-technical people to enable them to sound “technical” & “competent” to comment on something so as to campaign against this or that which they “feel” should be controlled, it’s the power-obsessed gene they possess, “I can create hoops to make others jump through because I can”!!!
I took a short course in orbital mechanics and trajectory optimization a great many years ago, under the auspices of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The teacher, whose name I forget, was particularly sour on the use of acronyms, opining that we would already have landed humans on Mars were it not for acronyms.
His one memorable anecdote was of relating to a college class his travels through Great Britain after World War II. Britain is famous for its use of acronyms and abbreviations, though the one that baffled him was a road-side sign he encountered frequently which read: “UXB.” He had no idea what it meant, until he asked a British policeman. The definition, the policeman replied, was “Unexploded Bomb.” (There were a lot of these German imports after WW-II, just sayin)
After telling this story, a girl in his class pointed out that use of the abbreviation “UXB” not only concealed vital safety information, it did so at the saving of one (1) letter, while stating a tautology! An unexploded bomb (UXB) is just a BOMB, she pointed out, adding that there is no such thing as an “exploded bomb” – it’s just shrapnel and gas. I think I might have married that girl…literally.
While not wanting to spoil a good story, is it fair to suggest that there’s a bit of a difference between a bomb with a fuse in it and one without?
The Germans dropped an awful lot of bombs on Britain, and not all of them went off. It didn’t mean they weren’t fuzed, just that the fuze failed for one reason or another. They are, after all, some type of mechanical or electro-mechanical system. I worked for a time on restarting production of the FMU-139, the most commonly used American bomb fuze (Motorola had built 1 million of them, but got out of the business). We couldn’t get 30 pre-production qualification units through environmental testing and have all of them function. I left that company without knowing whether they ever solved all of the problems. The UXBs were live ordnance, and a very great danger until disarmed or set off in place.
A brilliant diatribe about the difference between correlation and causation.
Actually, that is too strong. What Mr Milloy does is just say there is nothing to see at all…This is a belief I have long held and repeated to various friends and others – but most people will go along with the EU and the EPA and dismiss my ramblings.
Years ago, I bought Gary Fuller’s book “The Invisible Killer”. He talks about the 6 cities study that started in 1974 and apparently demonstrated that PMs kill. I did not find that convincing and wondered why one had to go back 45 years for a small single study to show this widespread material is actually killing thousands of us.
Mr Milloy is much more convincing. I hope all readers will be encouraged to pass on the message.
The EPA 2.5 micron standard is at least 30 years old, grossly out of date.
Fabric filter systems typically catch 99% of particles greater than 0.5 micron.
Precipitators, with multiple fields in series, will catch about 50% of particles greater than 1 micron.
Fabric filter systems are light-years better than precipitators, regarding small particles.
Particles of 1 micron and smaller are most dangerous to health, because they, after inhaling, will spread throughout your body, and to an unborn baby, by means of circulating blood.
These are extremely toxic particles. They are emitted by coal power plants, and tree burning power plants, and other biomass power plants.
Natural gas is light-years better then coal, trees, other biomass, regarding small particles.
Milloy says they are not harmful and I believe him. They are certainly not chemically toxic.
I think that is a key point.
Obviously, it is feasible to have toxic pm2.5s if that is what you want. Just take a piece of arsenic, say, and grind it to a powder.
I strongly suggest that waiting around until you measure such a sample would be like waiting for a monkey to bash out a Shakespearian sonnet on an old typewriter.
I have some experience in this particular GangGreen fraud. When we used to have a coal industry, it became a commonplace to have planning permission conditions imposed necessitating regular monitoring of air samples all around opencast coal mines and deepmine spoil heaps, coal stock piles, lorry routes and so forth. There is no question that initially this made some sense. No case can be made for great clouds of dust drifting over people’s homes or across roads.
But when GangGreen got involved, it didn’t take long for requirements to measure dust partical sizes to be introduced.
Special equipment had to be used to measure pm10s and then pm2.5s.
Quite challenging technically as well as expensive. One reason for GangGreen to like it. Another is that the finest dust pm2.5s “fugitive dust” isn’t even visible unless you look very carefully. Ah! We were told. But it is the most dangerous!!! Aaargh!
So we assembled a group of boffins and had them do a proper scientific study. This led to a number of interesting conclusions. Firstly, once the very small pm2.5s had been generated they were absolutely fugitive and were very well mixed and quite capable of travelling enormous distances. So, measuring pm2.5s around the perimeter of a Yorkshire Coalmine spoil heap or opencast mine produced results not greatly different to measuring them a mile away. The boffins with their electron microscopes and all the other gear could pick out the odd tiny coal fragment or the odd bit of sandy stuff likely from a haul road but then there were bits of fly ash from a power station somewhere, a bit of soot ,
something that could have been rubber from a motorway, dust that was almost certainly blown in from the Sahara, salt crystals from Atlantic storms – and all the rest. Not even to mention copious quantities of topsoil from farmer Giles harrowing his field and creating a covering of highly visible ‘dust’ covering small roads and people’s homes.
Was the latter a problem?? No no no. Of course not.
That would be about the time when GangGreen discovered how deadly these pm2.5s are. If they couldn’t hang it round the coal industry’s neck , then they’d sure use it to hammer those pesky motorists.
I think everyone on here (even Willem) will know the rest. Even Willem would have to admit that study after study showed that respiratory health and life expectation amongst workers at quarry or mine sites, including dumper and dozer drivers, was slightly better than average. (Not so for underground workers. But GangGreen weren’t interested in them, anyway.)
Still, we must wave the shrouds for the 40,000 unidentifiable folk who allegedly die every year from this scourge.
Magical thinking. Don’t you love it?
Do you have a/any reference/s regarding the issue of the particle entering the bloodstream?
Actually the mucus in our lungs and the attendant cilia are there to carry these particles upward. What evidence is there that particles <1 micron enter the blood stream. As a biochemist and long time science editor, I have never seen or heard of such a study. If smoke particles are so deadly, how did we survived the stone age and having fires in caves?
If we weren’t killed by any of the local wild-life, or nearby warring tribes on the look out for slaves/prisoners/spoils etc, we would probably have died from common viruses floating around, or even simple cuts & grazes that became infected, then there is a possibility we would have died inhaling all that CO2 breathed out in the cave because it was too cold to venture outside!!! Humans are pretty amazing creatures we have survived for the best part of two million years & are still here!!! Anyhow it’s Friday, HAGWE everyone, (including Griff)!!!
Wrong on virtually every point.
N95 fabric masks are rated for capturing 95% of particle matter (PM), mostly particulates 2.5 micron and larger.
Some manufacturers claim their masks can capture 0.5 micron PM… But they only show inhouse “testing”. Testing is in quotes because it appears the “testing” was very casual for such miniscule particulates.
EPA committed misconduct in their attempts to prove particulates smaller than 2.5 microns. EPA
continued from above.
EPA’s research had people breathing small particulate matter.
Their experiment, when uncovered, was an absolute failure. No damage to lungs for any patients.
1 micron particles can simply enter the bloodstream? How bizarre.
0.3 micron viruses have to be able to enter cells and blood streams in order to be infectious. They don’t just float in, they have to key their way through the membrane.
“These are extremely toxic particles”
Carbon particles are toxic? Carbon is neutral as a particle. That would be the vast component of combustion exhausts.
In western civilizations, those exhausts are scrubbed to remove their more noxious components, sulfates, nitrates, and of most particulate matter.
Leaving us questioning just what is toxic?
Whenever people talk about “toxins” in the environment without naming what they are or at what dosage they cause ill effects, you can be sure they have no idea what they are talking about.
Because if they could name them and cite the dosages, you can be sure they would, as avoiding “toxins” preoccupy such a large percentage of their daily lives.
By the way, Oxygen, when breathed in too high a concentration is toxic.
Carbon particles are toxic? Perhaps the dear fellow should explain “life on Earth” if Carbon particles are toxic!!! Everything is toxic up to a point, including Di-Hydrogen-Monoxide, it’s a killer if you consume too much too quickly!!! Personally I prefer a small drop in my whisky for a pre-dinner drink!!!
In fact for a few years now the engine standards in the EU mean that the exhaust gases leaving a car are Cleaner than the air taken in before combustion …….
We have the same problem Old England.
A significant problem with bureaucracies is they are unable to recognize true success.
After demanding and achieving ever greater reductions of alleged ‘pollutants’ including particulates, their demands became bizarre.
That is, they demanded that expelled air from all sources, including windows and fans had to be far cleaner than any air in nature.
They’re still trying to force those additional pollution reduction regulations on America.
It sort of reminds me of the cleaning products that boast of killing “99.9%” of household germs, etc. As an engineer I’d be worried about the 0.1% of germs they didn’t manage to kill!!!
Because of comments, I offer the following source, which is just one of many
EXCERPT from:
https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/what-makes-air-unhealthy/particle-pollution
Ever look at dirty tailpipe exhaust?
The dirty, smoky part of that stream of exhaust is made of particle pollution. Overwhelming evidence shows that particle pollution—like that coming from that exhaust smoke—can kill. Particle pollution can increase the risk of heart disease, lung cancer and asthma attacks and can interfere with the growth and work of the lungs.
What Is Particle Pollution?
Particle pollution refers to a mix of tiny solid and liquid particles that are in the air we breathe. Many of the particles are so small as to be invisible, but when levels are high, the air becomes opaque. Nothing about particle pollution is simple. In fact, it is so dangerous that it can shorten your life.
blob:https://wattsupwiththat.com/e4a62e29-411a-425a-850a-a7949191f26f
Size matters. Particles themselves are different sizes. Some are one-tenth the diameter of a strand of hair. Many are even tinier; some are so small they can only be seen with an electron microscope. Because of their size, you cannot see the individual particles. You can only see the haze that forms when millions of particles blur the spread of sunlight.
Researchers categorize particles according to size, grouping them as coarse, fine and ultrafine. Coarse particles (shown as blue dots in the illustration) fall between 2.5 microns and 10 microns in diameter and are called PM 10-2.5. Fine particles (shown as pink dots in the illustration) are 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller and are called PM2.5.
Ultrafine particles (not shown) are smaller than 0.1 micron in diameter1 and are small enough to pass through the lung tissue into the blood stream, circulating like the oxygen molecules themselves. No matter what the size, particles can harm your health.
The differences in size make a big difference in where particles affect us. Our natural defenses help us to cough or sneeze some coarse particles out of our bodies. However, those defenses do not keep out smaller fine or ultrafine particles. These particles get trapped in the lungs, while the smallest are so minute that they can pass through the lungs into the bloodstream, just like the essential oxygen molecules we need to survive.
A mixture of mixtures
Because particles form in so many ways, they can be composed of many different compounds. Although we often think of particles as solids, not all are. Some are liquid; some are solids suspended in liquids. As EPA put it, particles are really “a mixture of mixtures.”2
The mixtures differ between different regions in the United States and in different times of the year.
Much of that comes from the sources that produce the particles. For example, nitrate particles from motor vehicle exhaust form a larger proportion of the unhealthful mix in the winter in western states, especially California and portions of the Midwest.
By contrast, eastern states have more sulfate particles than the West on average, largely due to the high levels of sulfur dioxide emitted by large, coal-fired power plants.3
No, it doesn’t – the so-called “evidence” is a mountain of manure. That’s the point of this discussion.
You are saying the American Lung Organization is wrong?
Please perform a literature search, and use URLs to refute.
Argon is the third-most abundant gas in the Earth’s atmosphere, at 0.934% (9340 ppmv). It is more than twice as abundant as water vapor, 23 times as abundant as carbon dioxide (400 ppmv), and more than 500 times as abundant as neon (18 ppmv).
Argon is a non toxic, inert gas that reacts with nothing. But certainly, according to the American Lung Association, this is air pollution as you breathe in Argon molecules everyday of your life.
Doonman
Please show the URL that says the ALA judges argon toxic in the atmosphere
The American Lung Organization was taken over by GangGreen activists years ago.
They are not unbiased!
You’re really into light years. Maybe that’s because that’s how far you are out in left field.
Thank You, Steve Milloy! This needed to be said and you stated it bluntly, beautifully, and accurately.
My favorite EPA study was performed after the EPA had told Congress that a certain concentration of PM2.5 was lethal. Their experiment exposed human subjects to 50 times that concentration.
Wait! What? They must have expected them to die, based on what they told Congress! Was this disclosed to the subjects in the experiment disclosure statement—likely not. Anyhow, no one died, but one woman’s asthma acted up.
There is nothing new about basic epidemiology, practiced long before I was born. One of the few advantages of old age is having to learn about it, helps to have at least a little medical background. There are some in EPA that know better.
As these authors realize, just a “rediscovering the wheel” sort of thing, suggesting abandoning statistical significance and using the methods of decision theory, clinical psychology and medical epidemiology. Lots of “Monte Carlo, bootstraping” and other ‘new’ statistical methods turning up in lots of different discipline papers.
Germano, J. D. 2001. Reflections on statistics, ecology, and risk assessment. 2001. pp. 33-42, In, J. Y Aller, S. A. Woodin and R. C. Aller (Eds.). Organism-Sediment Interactions. University of South Carolina Press
EPA are war criminals. Hanging is needed.
That’s too harsh. Even under past GOP admins they are simply a bureacracy that tries to gather more budget and staff in an ever growing fight for relevance in the federal budget.
There is no profit incentive for efficeincy. The EPAs customer are the career revolving door Environmental NGOs that place people within EPA civil servioce, and then act as a revolving door to private careers with better salaries, and then back as senior politcal appointtees at those agencies if they remain faithful and useful to the agenda.
It takes a strong leadership pushback, as Trump tried to impose, to stop the bureacrats. These are career civil service whose main incentives are to grow the beast and get promoted to higher GS/SES salaries.
The Federal budget is the fuel, their food. The beast needs to go on a drastic caloric ($’s) reduction diet. The beast though is a swamp critter, and the swamp fought back viciously against a sitting president, in part funded by well oiled ENGOs. Now we have a President in his increasingly fewer lucid moments is a willing participant in the DC swamp culture.
There are two solutions: starve the beasts or thin the herd. The next Republican president should do both. Lay off at least 5 percent of the staff each year, starting with the highest level. Refuse to sign any budget that isn’t at least 5 percent lower than the previous year. After 4 years we might start to get this under control.
One might say the EPA at this stage is about as useful as an inflamed appendix; time to get rid of it.
Hey I resemble that remark!
No place for that suggestion here, glaikie.
Jeez, I hate this moral virtue signalling. I’m sure that gbaikie did not mean that literally … one of the problems with the climate realist movement is that it is too well mannered for its own good. When did you ever see the left wing socialista treat anybody with respect ? You didn’t! They are absolutely committed to their cause and you and your family are dispensable, they do not care if you die as a consequence of their actions.
High crimes are the worse crimes:
“ Germany, 10 high-ranking Nazi officials are executed by hanging for their crimes against humanity”
It wasn’t murder or something, rather it was a high crime.
I did mean it literally.
But not going to happen, politically, so I will compromise with life in prison.
Streetcred,
I am a left wing socialist and I treat everybody with respect except for those whose attacks of me earn my contempt. And the suggestion that I and those like me think people are “dispensable” is contemptible.
Richard
I was a left wing socialist, but then I turned 30.
Richard, I have to bear witness that what you say is absolutely true.
But I have to add that you are one exception that proves the increasingly nasty rule
The left wants to provoke you into violent acts, then they can justify retaliation in spades. That’s what they are doing with January 6th event.
Founding Fathers roll over in their graves with people like you and the motto “Just take the abuse so we look morally justified!”
No need for that. Mass firings and severe budget cuts will do.
What if he said, “EPA are war criminals. lengthy prison terms needed.” There, fixed it.
The only surprise is you are surprised.
Some scientist on a presumed scientific panel should respond to the testimony of Milloy. That is, they should respond unless they wish to hide behind the political science of stealing taxpayers money.
The last time the EPA tried to regulate PM2.5, they were blocked by a judge because they refused to release any of the studies or data that they used to make the regulations.
Let’s hope that judges continue to be that level-headed.
Having been involved in EPA rule making years ago I’m sorry to say that they are perfectly willing to respond to such detailed evidence based challenges by saying “sorry, we don’t agree”. They do not seem to feel any duty to respond to challenges based on scientific principles with a scientific rebuttal.
Same experience.
They want the reduced PM2.5 standard because it will put every county in the USA in nonattainment which will prohibit permitting any new source unless emission can be more than offset by reductions at another source.
They, delusionally, want no economic growth. The bureaucracy and this administration is insane.🤪
Thomas, that is true. Even dust from dirt roads exceeds their standards.
Well then, there goes farming.
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BTW, that incident with pResident Brandon and Camilla… wasn’t there some massive violation of air quality standards? Had to be. Europe, U.S., heck, even China doesn’t allow releasing particulates of that size in that quantity.
The Nazis had their Brown Shirts. I suspect pResident Brandon is the acknowledged leader of the Brown Shorts.
In the 1980s and 1990’s the EPA created regulations for diesel engine manufacturers to reduce their toxic emissions. They were primarily regulated on NOx, CO, HC, and PM. It is my understanding that at the time PM is not well understood as a toxic emission, but since it makes the exhaust look smoky, black and ugly, they regulated it. NOx, CO, and HC is decently understood for toxicity and smog production.
Engine manufacturers met that requirement by using higher injection pressures, higher boost pressures and other combustion techniques. This reduced the PM mass exhausted by the diesel engine. It also shifted the vast majority of the PM size into the PM2.5 range. Before, large amounts of PM emission measured by g / kwhr, but all large molecule size. After regulation, the mass rate was reduced but its all PM2.5 and smaller. The net effect is that during the 1990s and 2000s, PM2.5 emissions, by aggregate mass, was increased by orders of magnitude.
Now the EPA and acedemia is coming out saying, that it wasn’t the large PM that was the problem all along. Its always been the micron sized particles and smaller causing respiratory illness.
This seems like a blatant admittance that the science was junk before. And using junk science they made the problem worse. Of course the EPA won’t admit fault, and the manufacturers don’t want to explain how their solutions made the “problem” worse. So this debacle gets swept under the rug.
Now is there bad science on PM2.5 too? First I’d heard of this.
Milloy says these particulates are harmless so why did I always have a sore throat after working on construction sites with diesel earth moving equipment running all day. I believe the construction equipment had a different emissions standard from motors that operate on the highway so maybe that’s it.
Because there is more to diesel emissions than just particulate matter. If one type is harmless, it doesn’t mean the other types are harmless too. NOx, SOx, CO, HC, formaldehydes, and other carcinogenic compounds are going to be present. But if I were to guess, HC emissions are the most likely cause of sore throat. The HC can sting eyes and coat the mouth, when its thick.
Maybe it wasn’t the machinery but the dust from earthmoving operations drying your throat … I have experienced this on civil sites but never as a consequence of being near busses, trucks, etc.
It appears Donald Trump has his work cut out when he returns to the White House. Hope he is compiling a list so to have a flying start.
And yet neither the EPA nor its managers nor its data doctors will ever face consequences for their malfeasance. The beat merely goes on. The relentless march of the insane.
“EPA staff now claims that the cleaner air is, the more dangerous it is.”
That sounds dangerously homeopathic.
Sounds like a lot – all – of woke causes centered around health and environment.
Do stop mincing your words, Milloy. Spit it out, man!
Public Law 106-554; H.R. 5658 requires US Government Agencies to work under Quality Assurance standards. Clearly, they only give lip service to those requirements. Any science that has high financial impact is expected to go well beyond simple peer review and not be biased by study selectivity and manipulated boards.
The Attribution Lawsuit movement will eventually prevail unless technical, legal and financial resoures are brought to bear to force agencies to comply with the law. You can already see agencies are steering their message towards support the attribution movement and courts are expected to defer to government scientist on making science based rulings, as was stated by Amy Coney Barrett at her confirmation hearings.
If we are not proactive, we will continue to loose.
Here is the opening to EPA’s Quality Assurance Guidelines.
Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity, of Information Disseminated by the Environmental Protection Agency
Developed in response to guidelines issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)1 under Section 515(a) of the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (Public Law 106-554; H.R. 5658), the Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by the Environmental Protection Agency (the Guidelines) contain EPA’s policy and procedural guidance for ensuring and maximizing the quality of information we disseminate. The Guidelines also outline administrative mechanisms for EPA pre-dissemination review of information products and describe some new mechanisms to enable affected persons to seek and obtain corrections from EPA regarding disseminated information that they believe does not comply with EPA or OMB guidelines. Beyond policies and procedures these Guidelines also incorporate the following performance goals:
I have not kept up with Steve Milloy, but aren’t these the same lack of “manipulative causation” arguments that he used in his well paid pimping for Big Tobacco? If so, then that, and his denial of many strong, prevailing guidelines for inference of causation are quite predictable. I am sure that there is a CHANCE that there is no significant negative health effects from breathing fine particles, but it would be much too small to be calculated on my engineering laptop.
bigoilbob,
You seem to be confused.
I do not know if Milloy was or was not paid for “pimping Big Tobacco”.
I do know that whether or not Milloy supported “Big Tobacco” (or Small Tobacco) is not relevant to his arguments about PM2.5 scaremongering.
Your mention of “Big Tobacco” is a ‘red herring’ which is probably intended to deflect consideration of Milloy’s argument while it ‘poisons the well’ by discrediting Milloy personally. Such behaviour discredits you and says nothing about Milloy and/or his arguments about PM2.5.
You are the one supporting the contention that there are significant “health effects from breathing fine particles”.
If such effects exist then there would evidence of them.
If no such effects exists then there would be no discernible evidence of them.
Milloy contends there is no published evidence of harmful “health effects from breathing fine particles”. So, the onus is on you to show there is such evidence, and your failure to cite any such evidence supports Milloy’s contention that that there is no such evidence.
Richard
“Milloy contends there is no published evidence of harmful “health effects from breathing fine particles”. So, the onus is on you to show there is such evidence, and your failure to cite any such evidence supports Milloy’s contention that that there is no such evidence.”
Chris Hitchens begs to differ. The EPA has a Trumpian YUGE doc full of such evidence. Milloy merely dismisses it out of hand because it uses a plethora of inferential causation observations to effectively cut out any other explanation (which he does not ever offer) for the observed bad outcomes. In the real world, when you have anything like the bounty of inferential causation the EPA assiduously dug up, it can be used operatively, as in every other human endeavor. Even without duck DNA, it’s likely enough to be a duck, that soups on. So, it is up to Milloy, not I, to lend lie to Chris’s truth that “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”.
BTW, we can also, validly, dismiss claims by those with extensive, established histories of paid up lying. Lies that have resulted in extra death and suffering. Unlike Pat Frank, who is merely a victim of bad wiring, Milloy knows better…
To clarify, YUGE fan of public comment periods. I am grateful to be living in a country with a government that allows anyone who wishes to open mic it. Whether it’s paid up lobbyists like Milloy, or confused sinecurists like Pat Frank, they all can say their piece and then rebroadcast them on subterranean sites like this. I take satisfaction that the sunlight that they claim to seek illuminates the true Homerity of their claims.
Playing the “Big Tobacco” card? Just like playing the race card, the homophobe card, etc, etc. Boooorriinng…..
It’s dust and we humans have been living in dusty conditions for a long time.
Hmmm… there is any amount of evidence based science from medical researchers and respected medical institutions on the bad effects of PM 2.5 – plenty from independent UK researchers if you’d like to compare it.
Junk Science and the Precautionary Principle weapon. The last 20 years have proven that Milloy wasn’t overreacting back then. Incredible amount of coercive force in those two things and growing.
“… the 2017 study by Young, Smith and Lopiano that considered every death, two million of them, that occurred in California between 2000-2012 and reported no association between PM and deaths.”
It should be mentioned that [Kirk] Smith simultaneously and contemporaneously supported the notion that indoor air pollution (IAP) from the combustion of solid fuels contributes to the premature deaths of several million people each year. I noticed that his claims for the number affected increased according to a formula: every 18 months the number of premature deaths increased by a factor of ~1.3. I speak here of his claims, not deaths.
Reading these publications together means ambient air pollution does not cause mortality and IAP does.
The EPA happily promoted this IAP “cause” as did the WHO. Acting together, they greatly influenced the content of a new set of ISO Standards from TC-285 for cooking stoves that purports to require “safe” stoves. The relevant documents are:
ISO 19867-1(2017), ISO/TR 19867-3 and ISO 19869.
“Safe” turns out to mean “LPG” and electricity, maybe ethanol. Essentially it is a ban on wood as a cooking fuel and a requirement to use liquid petroleum gas. Guess where most LPG comes from.
Re: the idea that PM2.5 IAP does or does not cause health specific, identifiable consequences. Please refer to https://www.nature.com/articles/s41533-019-0144-8.epdf and the section on IAP in rural Kyrgyzstan. I believe this is definitive
Regarding Steve M’s statement that, “There is not a single toxic substance known to science that operates on the principle that a little exposure is worse than a lot. Not a single one.”
Please see multiple studies that show exposure to low level ionizing radiation reduces disease incidence in general. Reducing exposure to zero does in fact lead to more negative health consequences. Above a certain level, such exposure leads to negative health consequences – the part of the exposure curve that is widely publicised.
The current limit imposed for exposure is “100 milliSieverts” p.a. which is 20% of a safe level of ~500. If recognized as “a substance”, radioactive materials such as granite seem to confer a health benefit that is absent when the person is completely shielded. No surprise, we evolved in that environment.
Vitamin A is a toxic substance found in high concentration in the livers of crocodiles and polar bears. Eat a little and you die. There is an essential benefit at low doses, and definite bodily harm when reduced to zero. The poison is in the dose, as is the medicine. Lots of toxic substances are most beneficial at non-zero doses. The Linear No-Threshold (NLT) assumptions of the EPA are based on the argument that “We do not know they aren’t.” No kidding. It is that foolish.
And on top of all of that, PM2.5 is not a “substance”, toxic or not, it is a diameter: 2.5 microns. Some toxic particles are dreadful poisons, some are benign. The EPA says they are equally toxic if they are smaller than 2.5 microns. That is known as the “equitoxicity rule”. They say they are, because we don’t know they are not. Hence, LNT assumptions.
Internationally, the US EPA is ground zero for claims that PM2.5 is invariably bad for your health, no safe threshold. If it is overthrown on the basis of logic and reason, it will have global impacts.
I have to make a correction to some of the above post having received additional information from a friend to whom I copied it.
Correction: The “Smith” mentioned in the reference article was Richard smith, not Kirk Smith. My comments about Kirk’s work stand.
The essential points about PM2.5 and health are these:
The “Culture of Leftist Liars” has captured control of all of Western Civilization’s Institutions… and the Liars have corrupted them all.
This is not fixable this side of a nasty revolution.