Anyone who follows CTGN knows that I routinely call EPA out for obvious and blatant disregard for actual human health and safety. The “P” in EPA likely refers to protecting themselves against liability, by lying and covering up what they actually know, and has little or nothing to do with protecting the environment, let alone the people. If THIS article doesn’t give you enough reason to march to Washington and join the Spill Into Washington Rally Labor Day weekend to demand EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson be fired on the spot (along with most of her minions), I don’t know what it takes to get you to take action.
In fact, I move that Hugh Kaufman be immediately moved into the Administrative position, since he seems to be the ONLY person anywhere near the EPA that cares more about the people than money. Kaufman has a lot of moxie speaking out, but it’s nice to have confirmation of what we’ve suspected (known) all along. The EPA is essentially worthless when it comes to doing the job it was created to do, and should be disbanded and reassembled, under the guidance of Hugh Kaufman.
An Environmental Protection Agency staff member is accusing his employer of being coy when it comes to dispersant use in the Gulf. Career whistleblower Hugh Kaufman says EPA officials know that the chemicals present a threat to public health and the Gulf ecosystem and should be banned; they just don’t want to say so.
Kaufman, a senior policy analyst in the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, alleges that agency administrator Lisa Jackson sidestepped the issue last week in her answers to questions about whether the agency has the authority to call off use of dispersants in the Gulf. The agency, he says, is deliberately downplaying the threat—and its own role in regulating the chemicals—to protect itself from liability and keep the public from getting too alarmed.
This is far from the first time Kaufman has raised concerns about the EPA’s handling of a major national disaster. In fact, he has been blowing whistles on the EPA since he began working there in 1971, just a few months after it was founded. He criticized the Carter administration’s handling of hazardous waste issues, including the infamous Love Canal example in the late 1970s and is credited with spurring the formation of the Superfund program. In 1982 he went after the Reagan administration for not enforcing laws on hazardous waste and toxic chemicals as well, and helped send deputy EPA administrator Rita Lavelle to jail for perjury in 1983. The 2002 book Whistleblowing includes an entire section on Kaufman.
The article goes on to tell how Kaufman exposed the EPA’s cover up of actual air quality following the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11.
“What’s going on in the Gulf is the same cover up that was going with the 9/11 environmental issue,” said Kaufman. “The Bush White House ordered EPA to lie about the environmental and public health situation at the World Trade Center because of economic ramifications. So they did.”
“I’ve been through this before,” he continued. “It was the same kind of crap.”
Lest you think Kaufman must have a bone to pick with his employer:
But Kaufman is not alone in his concern. According to Ruch, at least 10 other EPA staffers, including several toxicologists, have come to PEER to raise concerns about dispersants and other health problems in the Gulf, claiming that their superiors at the agency are not doing due diligence when it comes to dispersants. “[EPA] appears to be making decisions at the behest of BP and not exercising much, if any, independent judgment,” says Ruch.
You should read the entire article. It goes on to talk about the hearings last week when Lisa Jackson was apparently “blindsided” by a question about EPA’s actual authority. If you are Administrator of the EPA and you do not know the bounds of your authority off the top of your head, you are either an idiot undeserving of your position or you are a liar. For either reason, Jackson does not belong in that role and should be removed immediately.
From the next paragraph from the story, I can tell you this EPA claim is a blatant lie. I know that it is, because MANY times I sent copies of my full scientific literature review of 450 articles spanning 11 years on dispersant use in oil spills to Lisa Jackson and the EPA. One after another state that dispersants make the oil more toxic and the effect on the marine life significantly worse. See for yourself. But then the data was out there, I shouldn’t have had to do the EPA’s job for them. So the fact that I did and they STILL ignored it is certainly indicative of the claims Kaufman is making here.
Jackson says that her agency is concerned about the dispersants, but it’s not going to force BP to stop using the chemicals because the agency believes they are still safer than the oil itself. “The number one enemy is the oil,” Jackson said a May 24 press conference. Yet she has said repeatedly that the EPA didn’t know enough about the long-term impacts of the chemicals to ban them. “With the use of dispersants, we are faced with environmental trade-offs,” Jackson told the panel last week. “The long term effects on aquatic life are largely unknown.”
But Kaufman says you can’t have it both ways—either you know it’s safe enough to say it’s better than the oil, or you don’t know enough. “They’re admitting they have the evidence to make a balancing test,” says Kaufman. “If they have the evidence, then why testify they don’t? Which way is it?” He says there is more than enough evidence, between a 2005 National Academy of Sciences study and the warnings that come with the dispersant productsto show that they’re problematic.
Despite his long history of griping about the EPA, Kaufman says his criticism of the agency is nothing personal. “I’m not partisan,” he says. “I just want an honest EPA because I was there when we formed it 40 years ago.”
about 1 year ago
I wish I could act surprised. But Kaufman is right that this is the usual song and dance by bureaucrats who want to avoid being culpable, liable for damages. Its not just the 911 air quality, something that shocked me, I knew that was not true the day it was announced. I worked with hazardous materials in the military. No one believed me. Not that it mattered, because I didn’t know anyone important enough who could have stopped the insanity. But back to the point. This is exactly the attitude taken by our govt, like the DoD and the Veteran’s Affairs Administration on Agent Orange, Project Blue Water, Gulf War Syndrome, the Burning Trash heaps in the Middle Eastern War Theatres now, Depleted Uranium Shells, and who knows what else. I am sure we could come up with a list. I am also reminded of the assurances of safety with films of children playing in DDT fogs, and Physicians selling cigarettes on television. This practice of avoiding liability for damages while profitting off the public’s misery has a very long and apparently proud tradition. Lisa Jackson should be fired and most likely be put in jail for perjury. Individuals affected by the press blackout–read disenfranchised citizens deprived of their civil liberties by a foreign occupying corporate power–have been reporting that Corexit is being sprayed directly on residential areas in the gulf. That completely flies in the face of what Jackson and the NOAA rep stated at the congressional hearings last week. How come we can’t find those people to go to washington and contradict this incredible oily glob of corporate BS?