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