Health agency covered up lead harm (withheld evidence-tap water caused lead poisoning in kids)

[kpete]

Source: Salon


Health agency covered up lead harm

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention withheld evidence that contaminated tap water caused lead poisoning in kids.

By Rebecca Renner

Salon

April 10, 2009 | From 2001 to 2004, Washington, D.C., experienced what may have been the worst lead contamination of city water on record. Tens of thousands of homes had sky-high levels of lead at the tap, and in the worst cases, tap water contained enough lead to be classified as hazardous waste. Not that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the government oversight agency for public health, was worried.

A 2004 CDC report found that water contamination "might have contributed a small increase in blood lead levels." The study has been influential. School officials in New York and Seattle have used the CDC report as justification for not aggressively responding to high levels of lead in their water, and other cities have cited the report to dispel concerns about lead in tap water.

But the results of thousands of blood tests that measured lead contamination in children were missing from the report, potentially skewing the findings and undermining public health. Further, the CDC discovered in 2007 that many young children living in D.C. homes with lead pipes were poisoned by drinking water and suffered ill effects. Parents wondered whether the water could have caused speech and balance problems, difficulty with learning, and hyperactivity. Yet the health agency did not publicize the new findings or alert public health authorities in D.C. or other federal agencies that regulate lead, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or Housing and Urban Development.

"This is a disaster of accountability from CDC's point of view," says John Rosen, a pediatrician and national expert on lead poisoning at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. "This raises troubling questions about CDC's complicity in passing on dubious data -- and further questions about why CDC did not publicize the 2007 results more broadly."

Read more: http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2009/04/10/cdc_lead_report/

[MisterP]

1. if I get another "in the Good Old Days we had lead paint and didn't all die

and lived in freedumb from the nanny state" email, I'll ram this and the Powell memo down their throats--if they're lucky

[DCKit]

2. And all that time we were receiving yearly reports on our pristine water quality...

You'd have thought our taps were spewing Evian.

Given that DC's tap water (unfiltered) gives me stomach aches, I'm still more than a bit skeptical.

[truedelphi]

3. I forget the guy's name, kpete, but the original EPA investigater

Whose data proved that lead paint was bad for kids, and that we should also get the lead out of our gasoline, that guy was being shit canned by the EPA, as the EPA didn't want to affect the paint industry or the gas industry in a negative way.

Lo and behold, the MacArthur Foundation offers the researcher an award, while his pink slip paperwork is sitting on tthe desk of his EPA boss.

It would then have been far too embarassing to fire him, so not only did he keep his job, his research and suggestions that lead be banned went on to become EPA policy.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JTFrog]

5. Good, the mods will be using it on you. n/t

[groundloop]

6. Gee, I never got to see the deleted comment

I bet it would be highly amusing to see a compilation of all the comments that have been removed by the moderators.