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SCOTT J. FERRELL/CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY
THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY’S ability to
determine how science is used to shape the
national debate over product safety is being
investigated by a key House committee.
“Our committee intends to determine
what influence the chemical industry
yields over the scientific community and
whether that influence is proper,” said Rep.
John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the
House Energy & Commerce Committee,
in a statement releasing an April 2 letter to
the American Chemistry Council (ACC).
The letter seeks a long list of documents
from the U.S. chemical industry’s primary
lobbying arm.
In mid-March, Dingell’s committee
also asked the Environmental Protection
Agency for related documents and raised
similar concerns that agency science is biased
in the chemical industry’s favor. Both
requests demand the information within
two weeks from the dates of the letters.
The genesis of the congressional investigations
is ACC’s successful demand that
EPA retroactively remove the views of the
chairwoman who had overseen a peer re-
GOVERNMENT & POLICY
EPA SCIENCE
INVESTIGATED
House committee probe of INDUSTRY BIAS
in agency review reaches former ACS president
CHERYL HOGUE AND JEFF JOHNSON, C&EN WASHINGTON
view assessment on a family of flame retardants.
The agency struck the chairwoman’s
views after the report had been published.
The investigation, however, goes beyond
this apparent influencing of EPA.
Among the requested data from ACC are
“all records of payments and communications”
between former American Chemical
Society president William F. Carroll and
ACC. Carroll served as ACS president in
2005 and, as a member of the three-year
presidential succession, was a member of
the society’s board of directors in 2004–06.
The Energy & Commerce Committee
is particularly concerned about “crosspollination”
between Carroll’s role as the
head of a society of chemical professionals
while at the same time serving as a chief
industry proponent for the vinyl industry, a
committee staff member says.
Carroll has worked for Occidental
Chemical continuously for nearly 30
years and is currently the company’s vice
president for chlorovinyl issues. He was
identified in the House committee letter
as an executive with the Vinyl Institute, an
WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 35 APRIL 14, 2008
REDACTED
EPA’s support
of industry’s
request to strike
a peer reviewer’s
comments has
led to a House
committee probe
directed by Rep.
John D. Dingell
(right).
industry group allied
with ACC. But Carroll
strongly denies
this: “I was never an
executive with the institute.
Our company
is a member, but I
have never worked for
them,” he says.
Carroll has had a
long relationship with
ACC, however, and
was acting managing director of ACC’s
chlorine division for six months in 2006.
And in 1994–96, he was a staff member of
the Chlorine Chemistry Council, an ACC
subsidiary. Carroll says he was never on the
payroll of ACC or the chlorine council.
The committee is also seeking information
on nine scientists with industry
contacts who served on EPA review panels,
as well as information on a law office and a
public relations firm.
ADDITIONALLY, the committee is exploring
industry and science ties through information
it is seeking about ACC’s relationship
to the International Society for Regulatory
Toxicology & Pharmacology and its
journal, Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology,
which is owned and published by
Elsevier. The society, the committee staff
member says, is funded by several corporations
and associations, including ACC.
Environmental and public health advocates
have been critical of the journal. Jennifer
Sass, a toxicologist with the Natural
Resources Defense Council, says that in
studies the journal publishes, previously
reported toxic or adverse health effects
from chemical exposure are downplayed,
dismissed, or simply not mentioned. The
journal includes mainly mathematical
models and meta analyses of other published
studies, she adds, and its editorial
board includes attorneys who represent
corporations.
Dingell asked ACC for records of any
payments to journal officials, but Gio B.
Gori, editor of the journal, tells C&EN he
has never received money from ACC and
is paid for his editing work by Elsevier. “I
don’t know why they’re investigating us,”
he says. “We have nothing to hide.”
At the heart of the investigation is
Deborah C. Rice, a former EPA scientist
and currently a toxicologist with the state
of Maine, who chaired an EPA external peer
review panel set up to conduct a toxicological
review of polybrominated diphenyl