White House Downplayed the Risks of Mercury in
Proposed Rules, Scientists Say
By JENNIFER
LEE
New York Times
 WASHINGTON,
April 5 — While working with Environmental Protection Agency officials
to write regulations for coal-fired power plants over several recent
months, White House staff members played down the toxic effects of
mercury, hundreds of pages of documents and e-mail messages show.
The staff members deleted or modified information on mercury that
employees of the environmental agency say was drawn largely from a 2000
report by the National Academy of Sciences that Congress had
commissioned to settle the scientific debate about the risks of mercury.
In interviews, 6 of 10 members of the academy's panel on mercury said
the changes did not introduce inaccuracies. They said that many of the
revisions sharpened the scientific points being made and that
justification could be made for or against other changes. Most changes
were made by the White House's Office of Management and Budget, which
employs economists and scientists to review regulations.
But scientists on the academy panel and others outside it as well as
environmentalists and politicians expressed concern in recent interviews
that a host of subtle changes by White House staff members resulted in
proposed rules that played down the health risks associated with mercury
from coal-fired power plants. The proposal largely tracks suggestions
from the energy industry.
While the panel members said the changes did not introduce outright
errors, they said they were concerned because the White House almost
uniformly minimized the health risks in instances where there could be
disagreement.
"What they are saying is not scientifically invalid on its face,"
said Alan Stern, a New Jersey toxicologist who served on the panel.
"Partially they edited for clarity and relevance from a scientific
standpoint. But there appears to be an emphasis on wordsmithing that is
not necessarily dictated by the science."
Last Thursday attorneys general from 10 states and 45 senators asked
the E.P.A. to scrap the proposed rules, saying they were not strict
enough.
They also asked Michael O. Leavitt, the agency's administrator, to
extend the comment period for the rules, which now ends April 30. Under
a court-ordered agreement, the rules are to be in final form by Dec. 15.
In some cases, White House staff members suggested phrasing that
minimized the links between power plants and elevated levels of mercury
in fish, the primary source from which Americans accumulate mercury in
their bodies, in a form known as methylmercury.
The academy has found that exposure to elevated levels of mercury can
damage the brains of children and fetuses.
In another instance, a draft passage originally read, "Recent
published studies have shown an association between methylmercury
exposure and an increased risk of heart attacks and coronary disease in
adult men."
It was changed to "it has been hypothesized that there is an
association between methylmercury exposure and an increased risk of
coronary disease; however this warrants further study as the new studies
currently available present conflicting results."
The change understates known science, some academy panel members said
in interviews.
The proposed regulations are available on the E.P.A. Web site (epa.gov/).
The proposed rules would limit mercury emissions by an estimated 70
percent over decades and would also allow power plants to buy and sell
among themselves the rights to create mercury pollution.
Mr. Leavitt is reconsidering elements of the rules.
Small amounts of mercury occur naturally in the environment. In
December 2000, however, the environmental agency concluded that mercury
from power plants should be classified as a hazardous air pollutant to
be strictly regulated under the Clean Air Act. In December 2003, the
Bush administration reversed that finding.
The proposed regulations for power plants — the single-largest source
of mercury emissions in the United States — are the culmination of 14
years of lawsuits, scientific review and government reports.
Coal and utility groups lobbied intensively to help shape the
regulations, which will cost billions of dollars. Paragraphs in the
proposed rules are inserted nearly verbatim from memorandums from the
firm of Latham & Watkins, where two top political officials in the
E.P.A.'s office overseeing air regulations, Bill Wehrum and Jeffrey
Holmstead, once worked.
White House officials and E.P.A. political appointees say the changes
in the draft rules reflect the typical back and forth of developing
regulations among agencies, and environmental agency officials had the
option of rejecting the suggestions, which in some cases they did.
"This is a standard collaborative process that involved experts
across the government to create a solid product," said Dana Perino, the
spokeswoman from the Council on Environmental Quality, which coordinates
federal environmental efforts.
But some critics are not convinced. "This is a pattern of undermining
and disregarding science on political considerations," said Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, citing a recent letter by
the Union of Concerned Scientists, signed by 60 scientists, including 20
Nobel laureates, which criticized the administration's handling of
science issues.
Others feel the White House's Office of Management and Budget is
overstepping its bounds. "O.M.B.'s role is supposed to be to review the
economics of rules — which they did very poorly here — not to fly speck
the science and minimize health threats," said Lisa Heinzerling, a
professor at Georgetown University who is a co-author of the book
"Priceless," on cost-benefit analysis.
Throughout an E.P.A. draft of the proposed regulations circulated in
November, a White House staff member crossed out the word "confirmed"
from the phrase describing mercury as a "confirmed public health risk."
In some instances, sentences in the final proposals were changed to
mercury "warrants regulation."
Mr. Wehrum, the chief counsel of E.P.A.'s air regulation office, said
that the handwritten changes were prompted by his agency's desire to use
more precise legal language from the Clean Air Act.
Some members of the National Academy said that sections of the
regulations on health effects could have been made more clear, but that
the science was strong enough not to delete them entirely.
An official with the Office of Management and Budget who emphasized
that neurologic risks to children were the most important concern, said
language on other health effects was deleted or softened for a number of
reasons. In some cases the draft had overstated the known science, while
in others, like cerebral palsy, the effects were not relevant to mercury
exposure in fish or power plants.
Even taking into account studies that have been published since their
report in 2000, some panel members said the language was made too soft
in several cases.
"There is increasing evidence of an association between mercury
exposure and cardiovascular effects," said Thomas Burke, an
epidemiologist from Johns Hopkins University and a member of the panel.
"I would call it stronger than a hypothesis."
In another case, a toxicologist with the Office of Management and
Budget recommended changes to a sentence saying children exposed to
mercury in the womb "are at increased risk of poor performance on
neurobehavioral tests." The final sentence that was published said
children "may be at increased risk." That pattern was repeated a number
of times throughout regulations where "are" or "can" was changed to
"may." The official said that the softened language reflected the fact
that low levels of mercury exposure below the safe dose were not known
to be risky, even to children.
Other scientists interpret the edit differently. Joseph L. Jacobson,
a professor of psychology at Wayne State University, who served on the
academy panel, said, " `May be' suggests an effort to discount the fact
that we have consistent evidence across more than one study."
While it is standard for the White House to review federal agency
testimony and reports, E.P.A. staff members say the Bush administration
also minimized the amount of mercury that comes from power plants. Over
agency staff objections, the White House on several occasions in the
past year added the statement that coal burning produces "roughly one
percent of mercury in the global pool."
According to the E.P.A. staff, the 1 percent figure was added to an
agency report on children's health; Senate testimony by Christie
Whitman, who was the E.P.A. administrator; and Senate testimony of Mr.
Holmstead, who is the assistant agency administrator for air.
While that figure is cited in the E.P.A.'s 1997 report to Congress,
agency staff members and independent scientists say it is misleading
because much of the mercury that ends up in the nation's water and soil
comes from nearby sources.
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