Double Flee A

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Reasons to Dispatch Bush
Day 81:

In March 2001, President Bush's EPA announced that, in order to cut costs for the mining industry and water suppliers, it would withdraw a new standard for arsenic in drinking water and reinstate an outdated standard established in 1942.

The new standard—10 parts per billion (ppb)—was implemented by the Clinton administration after a decade of testing and studies. One of those studies authorized by Congress cost $2.5 million annually from 1997 to 2000. Another report, by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1999, concluded that the previous 50 ppb standard could "easily" result in a 1-in-100 cancer risk and recommended that acceptable levels be lowered "as promptly as possible."

When the president made the decision to go back to the original 50 ppb standard, he said: "At the very last minute, my predecessor made a decision, and we pulled back his decision so that we can make a decision based upon sound science and what's realistic." His EPA administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, said the standard had not been based on the "best available science."

In October 2001, following a new NAS study concluding that the 10 ppb standard was scientifically justified and possibly not low enough, the EPA finally adopted that standard. But by this time it was widely recognized that a 3 ppb standard (the lowest level that EPA studies consider technically and economically feasible to achieve) would best safeguard consumers. In fact, studies now show that the 10 ppb standard presents cancer risks 10 times higher than the level EPA considers acceptable in regulating other water contaminants.

(Sources: David Corn, "The Other Lies of George Bush," The Nation, September 25, 2003. www.nrdc.org.)

posted by dale @ 10:28 AM