<<Bush v. Junk Science
George Bush's latest act of compassion.
By Angela Logomasini, director of risk and environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
March 22, 2001 11:55 a.m.
Republican politicians frequently surrender to the leftist environmental agenda rather than face the wrath of powerful
environmental activists. But President George Bush has revealed in recent weeks that he's not that kind of Republican. Last week he publicly opposed federal regulation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, a move that will enable Bush to promote affordable energy.
An aberration? It doesn't appear that way. This week, the Bush administration flexed its muscles again on another controversial environmental issue. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman announced that the agency would delay a controversial drinking-water standard on arsenic to assess the underlying science. Clinton had rushed out this standard during his final hours in office.
Like the carbon-dioxide decision, this move illustrates that Bush is applying his compassionate conservatism in some nontraditional ways. Bush recognized that if he didn't act, the arsenic rule would have imposed enormous costs on Americans ? especially lower-income families.
The impact of this rule could have been devastating to many communities, particularly rural towns that have few people among whom to divide the costs. Faced with such costs, families will have fewer resources to spend on essential items like health care. And in some places, the rule might have led rural water providers to disconnect service altogether to avoid regulation.
The total costs of this rule, as estimated by the Clinton EPA, would have ranged from a total of $180 million to $205 million annually. But even Clinton's conservative cost estimates translate into very high per-household costs. The Clinton standard could have added an average of $326 per household annually in towns with fewer than 100 water connections and as much as $162 in communities with up to 100,000 water connections.
Consumers could not even be sure that they would derive any benefit because the rule is based on very shaky science. As a 1999 National Research Council (NRC) ? (a division of the National Academy of Sciences) ? report noted: "No human studies of sufficient statistical power or scope have examined whether consumption of arsenic in drinking water at the current MCL [the drinking water before Clinton acted] results in the incidence of cancer or non-cancer effects."
The Clinton rule was based on studies that show elevated cancer rates in poorly nourished Taiwanese populations who were exposed to relatively high levels of arsenic over long periods of time. But at question here is whether it makes sense to apply Taiwanese populations and exposures to that of the U.S. given considerable differences in nutrition (deficiencies can make arsenic more toxic), exposure levels, and genetic variations. In addition, the Taiwanese studies contained numerous confounding factors.
Other data suggest that arsenic may be safe and even beneficial at low levels. There is evidence that our bodies can safely eliminate a certain amount of arsenic from the body via digestion. Animal research indicates that arsenic might even be an essential nutrient. Moreover, studies of populations in Utah failed to find adverse impacts among a community exposed to relatively high arsenic levels in drinking water ? levels 20 times higher than the Clinton standard. While the Utah data has its limitations, it does raise additional questions that need evaluation.
The Clinton EPA had defended its rule based on the 1999 NRC report, whose executive summary called on the administration to make the rule more stringent. But that NRC recommendation appears to have been orchestrated by EPA. In letters to the EPA Office of Congressional Intergovernmental Relations, members of the NRC panel said they felt pressured by EPA into making that strong policy statement. According to one NRC member: "Conclusions cited in the Executive Summary are much stronger than the data support."
Bill Clinton may have had the unique ability to make Americans think he could "feel our pain," but this environmental policy would have inflicted more. Apparently, George W. Bush is more likely to do something to prevent pain. In an act of compassion, he has shown that it's not right to impose very real burdens when all he could promise in return were very questionable benefits.>> |
