7 ms·

Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

253 points by voisin 5y ago

tru3_power 5y ago
I don’t understand what’s in it for the people pushing for these approvals. Are they getting kickbacks?
- scrps 5y ago
  Jobs, google "Regulatory capture"
- voisin 5y ago
  There is intense pressure to please big corporate interests. I see it in my field often. I have no idea where it comes from. I think maybe fear of the power big corporates have? Fear that their higher ups won’t protect them?
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    At the highest level, the revolving door and cushy "retirement jobs" in industry. And once you have the bosses in your pocket, they exert pressure down the chain. Middle management isn't getting the real pressure, but their bosses are breathing fire down their necks, telling them expectations.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    I always assumed it was the dark corollary of trickle down economics, and one of the few places it works. You throw a bunch of money at a higher up, and the pressure flows downhill. Just like something else that flows downhill that we're all aware of. Eventually you end up with a system where there's a buffer of a few layers between the people benefitting and the people actually signing off on something, and after a while it's not explicit as much as "a feeling I got that my managers expected this to go through."
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > I have no idea where it comes from. One reason could be that company provides jobs so a politician can say he/she brought jobs to the area.
sschueller 5y ago
It won't be a vaccine that makes you sterile. It will be one of the chemicals that end up everywhere because of corruption at the only agency that would protect us. This is also why those people for a unregulated free market are insane. Sure the company pedaling the dangerous chemical will eventual go out of business. But how many people will die and suffer and does anyone think that the people responsible will still around the decades later until the crime is found out? All new chemicals should be assumed dangerous and require rigorous safety studies and we need to make absolutely sure these studies are independent. Pumping millions of gallons of corexit into an oil spill should not be permitted if the ingredients are a trade secret. We need to know what goes where, same goes for chemicals used in fracking.
- voxic11 5y ago
  New chemicals save lives as well, they may be safer than existing alternatives or enable safer processes to be used or they may enable some new technology that saves lives (there is almost unlimited potential here, few areas of technological advancement are as wide impacting as improvements to materials). It sounds like you are advocating for the precautionary principle, but what do you think about the counterargument that by blocking technological improvements before actually investigating their risk you could be doing more harm than you prevent. > Strong formulations of the precautionary principle... when applied to the principle itself as a policy decision, beats its own purpose of reducing risk. The reason suggested is that preventing innovation from coming to market means that only current technology may be used, and current technology itself may cause harm or leave needs unmet; there is a risk of causing harm by blocking innovation. As Michael Crichton wrote in his novel State of Fear: "The 'precautionary principle', properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle." > For example, forbidding nuclear power plants based on concerns about low-probability high-impact risks means continuing to rely on power plants that burn fossil fuels, which continue to release greenhouse gases and thousands of certain deaths from air pollution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Internal_inconsistency:_applying_strong_PP_risks_causing_harm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Intern...
  - OnlineGladiator 5y ago
kingsloi 5y ago
My little girl was born with really rare heart disease and a genetic condition, a boy a few streets behind us developed a really rare cancer. - https://kingsley.sh/posts/2021/staggering-cost-of-surviving-heart-disease-in-the-usa https://kingsley.sh/posts/2021/staggering-cost-of-surviving-... - https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/ind... This comes a year or so after a ArcelorMittal spilled ammonia and cyanide into Lake Michigan, and didn't sound the alarm for a few days. My wife and I were swimming in it during those days, and not to mention we live down wind from many other steel processing plants, oil refineries, mills of other descriptions, etc. https://elpc.org/projects/suing-lake-michigan-polluter-arcelormittal/ https://elpc.org/projects/suing-lake-michigan-polluter-arcel... I think during the early pandemic, EPA reporting restrictions were lowered? Given the shoddy response from the 2019 spill, I lost hope that any future spill would be reported, unless many fish/wildlife were also killed and spotted. https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trump-era/ https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation... I run an air quality sensor: https://millerbeach.community https://millerbeach.community and hoping to upgrade the sensor to track more pollutants. I'd love to test water quality of Lake Michigan, too. It's stuff like this that make me realise I'm doing a community service running my sensor.
- voisin 5y ago
  I am sorry to hear about the personal impact to your family. I think things like the air quality sensor you run are the actual solution here. In the absence of government officials doing their job properly, it is up to individuals to do it for themselves. I wonder if there would be an open source solution for water quality testing and air quality testing, and if enough could be built by citizen hackers to create a distributed screen and alert system for pollutants.
  - kingsloi 5y ago
    Thank you, I appreciate it. I can only bring awareness to it, one man vs mega polluters is an impossible fight. I live a stone's throw from the Lake Michigan shoreline, and would happily go out there daily to get a water sample, before my normal 9-5. If anyone is interested in hacking something together. The air sensor I run is open source, for anyone interested.
topspin 5y ago
Why are the various 'manager' names carefully avoided in this sort of reporting? Many other names, including the whistleblowers, are prominently offered. What rule is the Intercept complying with that has them bleep out (thus we known these names are known) the name of a manager in the audio and assiduously omit any manager names in the writing? Names would reveal relationships. Doubtless these managers are former or prospective Dow employees, or related or have some other pedigree of corruption. That's how all of this works. Failure to name names contributes to the problem.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  But if you steal a tin of catfood your name will be in the newspapers for the whole world to read and google three decades later.
  - kingsloi 5y ago
    Same thing applies for dumping ammonia and cyanide in say Lake Michigan, you or I would get charged with water supply terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_terrorism, but do it as part of the steel process and it's a magical loop hole
  - gumby 5y ago
    Typically only once you’ve been arrested.
    - zug_zug 5y ago
      Well that wasn't the case with cops in last year's protest. Sometimes the names need to come first so the public can insist on the crimes being acknowledged.
- voisin 5y ago
  Probably trying to avoid libel since nothing has been proven in court.
cogman10 5y ago
This is, frankly, the legacy of the Trump administration. This story of blatant corruption to favor businesses was common throughout the federal government. The Trump admin went out of it's way to both install the worst of the worst and to push out as many competent federal employees as possible. Prime examples of Trump swamp creatures include such hits as Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt (Who likely started the policies of the article), and Louis DeJoy.
- hanniabu 5y ago
  Not sure why you're getting so heavily voted for something so blatantly obvious.
  - mandmandam 5y ago
    Probably because the article expressly states: > “The problems in OCSPP are not due solely to the Trump administration and its appointees,” said Bennett. “The issues faced by our clients occurred before Trump took office, during the Trump years, and continue now.”
    - jpgvm 5y ago
      Distinctly from this case however he is correct. Trump did go out of his way to install cronies into these departments to hobble the EPA, FCC, FTC etc. Pretending that because some of it existed prior to that somehow changes the immense damage he did is also incredibly dishonest. What he couldn't directly deregulate with executive orders he indirectly deregulated through budget cuts and installation of abhorrent management. Sadly that is exactly what his supporters expected and undoubtedly paid him for.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- 55555 5y ago
  Sorry but this is nothing new for the US federal government. This sort of corruption was going on for centuries before Trump. Unless you can tie Trump to this case specifically, your comment is overly political. It's also not useful; if this is Trump's fault, why was this problem occurring before he took office, and why is it still occurring? Let's discuss solutions.
mtreis86 5y ago
Do they mention which chemicals were involved?
chrisked 5y ago
Ok
zug_zug 5y ago
I try not to get emotional, but part of me thinks if death penalty were applicable to such crimes it would be an extraordinarily pragmatic decision. The history of chemicals damaging American lives due to corruption is long and sordid. Many of these chemicals, if improperly classified, can ruin an order of magnitude more lives than any serial killer. It can be rather shocking and disturbing to remind oneself exactly how fragile our bodies are to even the tiniest amounts of certain chemicals, particularly in vitro.
- thescriptkiddie 5y ago
  I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty and to punitive prison sentences in general, but I do feel like there needs to be some kind of extra harsh treatment for people who do things like this. I'm honestly at a loss for what it might be. Maybe public humiliation, or exile?
  - autoexec 5y ago
    mass poisoning is psychopath territory. Take the people responsible and throw them in mental hospitals to be evaluated and hopefully treated. It's that or prison. In any case they need to be kept away from the rest of society because they've already demonstrated that they'll hurt large numbers of people in monstrous ways just to satisfy their own greed. I'm not at all interested in vengeance. I think it's tragic to have to keep some people locked up, but the public needs to be protected from people like that.
- yunohn 5y ago
  I agree with most of your comment around harsher punishments for corruption, especially when it involves public health in this manner. Not sure a death penalty will solve anything though. > The history of chemicals damaging American lives due to corruption is long and sordid. Is there a reason you specifically called out “American” lives here? Is it that you believe the perpetrators aren’t American somehow? Or that, when American companies harm the public in other countries, it doesn’t matter? Would really like to know more.
anm89 5y ago
There should be manslaughter charges here.
graderjs 5y ago
This is so tragic, and just wrong. Actively changing scientist's recommendations and assessments because a company "balked" at the very standards and methods that are designed to keep it and its environment safe? This is the very reason the EPA was created to begin with, so this kind of stuff does not happen. That's so fucking sad that it's not only happening on their watch, but from inside the EPA itself. Such a tragedy...And to the commenter who said it had to do with Trump, no this had nothing to do with Trump. While Trump did make many unusual, business-focused appointees for department heads, the issue of corruption is as old as human institutions themselves. I'd only hoped the robust institutions in the states wouldn't so blatantly fall prey to this kind of bogus horseshit. Trying to shift the convo to Trump or suggest this is actually orange man bad's fault is actively harmful to a fruitful discussion about this, because it provides active cover for the real perpetrators. But sure, keeping pointing the finger of blame at Trump for everything while the real perps slip right through your other fingers, chump.

253 points by voisin 5y ago

tru3_power 5y ago

I don’t understand what’s in it for the people pushing for these approvals. Are they getting kickbacks?

scrps 5y ago
Jobs, google "Regulatory capture"
voisin 5y ago
There is intense pressure to please big corporate interests. I see it in my field often. I have no idea where it comes from. I think maybe fear of the power big corporates have? Fear that their higher ups won’t protect them?
- ethbr0 5y ago
  At the highest level, the revolving door and cushy "retirement jobs" in industry. And once you have the bosses in your pocket, they exert pressure down the chain. Middle management isn't getting the real pressure, but their bosses are breathing fire down their necks, telling them expectations.
- kbenson 5y ago
  I always assumed it was the dark corollary of trickle down economics, and one of the few places it works. You throw a bunch of money at a higher up, and the pressure flows downhill. Just like something else that flows downhill that we're all aware of. Eventually you end up with a system where there's a buffer of a few layers between the people benefitting and the people actually signing off on something, and after a while it's not explicit as much as "a feeling I got that my managers expected this to go through."
- sumedh 5y ago
  > I have no idea where it comes from. One reason could be that company provides jobs so a politician can say he/she brought jobs to the area.

sschueller 5y ago

It won't be a vaccine that makes you sterile. It will be one of the chemicals that end up everywhere because of corruption at the only agency that would protect us. This is also why those people for a unregulated free market are insane. Sure the company pedaling the dangerous chemical will eventual go out of business. But how many people will die and suffer and does anyone think that the people responsible will still around the decades later until the crime is found out? All new chemicals should be assumed dangerous and require rigorous safety studies and we need to make absolutely sure these studies are independent. Pumping millions of gallons of corexit into an oil spill should not be permitted if the ingredients are a trade secret. We need to know what goes where, same goes for chemicals used in fracking.

voxic11 5y ago
New chemicals save lives as well, they may be safer than existing alternatives or enable safer processes to be used or they may enable some new technology that saves lives (there is almost unlimited potential here, few areas of technological advancement are as wide impacting as improvements to materials). It sounds like you are advocating for the precautionary principle, but what do you think about the counterargument that by blocking technological improvements before actually investigating their risk you could be doing more harm than you prevent. > Strong formulations of the precautionary principle... when applied to the principle itself as a policy decision, beats its own purpose of reducing risk. The reason suggested is that preventing innovation from coming to market means that only current technology may be used, and current technology itself may cause harm or leave needs unmet; there is a risk of causing harm by blocking innovation. As Michael Crichton wrote in his novel State of Fear: "The 'precautionary principle', properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle." > For example, forbidding nuclear power plants based on concerns about low-probability high-impact risks means continuing to rely on power plants that burn fossil fuels, which continue to release greenhouse gases and thousands of certain deaths from air pollution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Internal_inconsistency:_applying_strong_PP_risks_causing_harm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Intern...
- OnlineGladiator 5y ago

kingsloi 5y ago

My little girl was born with really rare heart disease and a genetic condition, a boy a few streets behind us developed a really rare cancer. - https://kingsley.sh/posts/2021/staggering-cost-of-surviving-heart-disease-in-the-usa https://kingsley.sh/posts/2021/staggering-cost-of-surviving-... - https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/ind... This comes a year or so after a ArcelorMittal spilled ammonia and cyanide into Lake Michigan, and didn't sound the alarm for a few days. My wife and I were swimming in it during those days, and not to mention we live down wind from many other steel processing plants, oil refineries, mills of other descriptions, etc. https://elpc.org/projects/suing-lake-michigan-polluter-arcelormittal/ https://elpc.org/projects/suing-lake-michigan-polluter-arcel... I think during the early pandemic, EPA reporting restrictions were lowered? Given the shoddy response from the 2019 spill, I lost hope that any future spill would be reported, unless many fish/wildlife were also killed and spotted. https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trump-era/ https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation... I run an air quality sensor: https://millerbeach.community https://millerbeach.community and hoping to upgrade the sensor to track more pollutants. I'd love to test water quality of Lake Michigan, too. It's stuff like this that make me realise I'm doing a community service running my sensor.

voisin 5y ago
I am sorry to hear about the personal impact to your family. I think things like the air quality sensor you run are the actual solution here. In the absence of government officials doing their job properly, it is up to individuals to do it for themselves. I wonder if there would be an open source solution for water quality testing and air quality testing, and if enough could be built by citizen hackers to create a distributed screen and alert system for pollutants.
- kingsloi 5y ago
  Thank you, I appreciate it. I can only bring awareness to it, one man vs mega polluters is an impossible fight. I live a stone's throw from the Lake Michigan shoreline, and would happily go out there daily to get a water sample, before my normal 9-5. If anyone is interested in hacking something together. The air sensor I run is open source, for anyone interested.

topspin 5y ago

Why are the various 'manager' names carefully avoided in this sort of reporting? Many other names, including the whistleblowers, are prominently offered. What rule is the Intercept complying with that has them bleep out (thus we known these names are known) the name of a manager in the audio and assiduously omit any manager names in the writing? Names would reveal relationships. Doubtless these managers are former or prospective Dow employees, or related or have some other pedigree of corruption. That's how all of this works. Failure to name names contributes to the problem.

jacquesm 5y ago
But if you steal a tin of catfood your name will be in the newspapers for the whole world to read and google three decades later.
- kingsloi 5y ago
  Same thing applies for dumping ammonia and cyanide in say Lake Michigan, you or I would get charged with water supply terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_terrorism, but do it as part of the steel process and it's a magical loop hole
- gumby 5y ago
  Typically only once you’ve been arrested.
  - zug_zug 5y ago
    Well that wasn't the case with cops in last year's protest. Sometimes the names need to come first so the public can insist on the crimes being acknowledged.
voisin 5y ago
Probably trying to avoid libel since nothing has been proven in court.

cogman10 5y ago

This is, frankly, the legacy of the Trump administration. This story of blatant corruption to favor businesses was common throughout the federal government. The Trump admin went out of it's way to both install the worst of the worst and to push out as many competent federal employees as possible. Prime examples of Trump swamp creatures include such hits as Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt (Who likely started the policies of the article), and Louis DeJoy.

hanniabu 5y ago
Not sure why you're getting so heavily voted for something so blatantly obvious.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  Probably because the article expressly states: > “The problems in OCSPP are not due solely to the Trump administration and its appointees,” said Bennett. “The issues faced by our clients occurred before Trump took office, during the Trump years, and continue now.”
  - jpgvm 5y ago
    Distinctly from this case however he is correct. Trump did go out of his way to install cronies into these departments to hobble the EPA, FCC, FTC etc. Pretending that because some of it existed prior to that somehow changes the immense damage he did is also incredibly dishonest. What he couldn't directly deregulate with executive orders he indirectly deregulated through budget cuts and installation of abhorrent management. Sadly that is exactly what his supporters expected and undoubtedly paid him for.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
55555 5y ago
Sorry but this is nothing new for the US federal government. This sort of corruption was going on for centuries before Trump. Unless you can tie Trump to this case specifically, your comment is overly political. It's also not useful; if this is Trump's fault, why was this problem occurring before he took office, and why is it still occurring? Let's discuss solutions.

mtreis86 5y ago

Do they mention which chemicals were involved?

chrisked 5y ago

zug_zug 5y ago

I try not to get emotional, but part of me thinks if death penalty were applicable to such crimes it would be an extraordinarily pragmatic decision. The history of chemicals damaging American lives due to corruption is long and sordid. Many of these chemicals, if improperly classified, can ruin an order of magnitude more lives than any serial killer. It can be rather shocking and disturbing to remind oneself exactly how fragile our bodies are to even the tiniest amounts of certain chemicals, particularly in vitro.

thescriptkiddie 5y ago
I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty and to punitive prison sentences in general, but I do feel like there needs to be some kind of extra harsh treatment for people who do things like this. I'm honestly at a loss for what it might be. Maybe public humiliation, or exile?
- autoexec 5y ago
  mass poisoning is psychopath territory. Take the people responsible and throw them in mental hospitals to be evaluated and hopefully treated. It's that or prison. In any case they need to be kept away from the rest of society because they've already demonstrated that they'll hurt large numbers of people in monstrous ways just to satisfy their own greed. I'm not at all interested in vengeance. I think it's tragic to have to keep some people locked up, but the public needs to be protected from people like that.
yunohn 5y ago
I agree with most of your comment around harsher punishments for corruption, especially when it involves public health in this manner. Not sure a death penalty will solve anything though. > The history of chemicals damaging American lives due to corruption is long and sordid. Is there a reason you specifically called out “American” lives here? Is it that you believe the perpetrators aren’t American somehow? Or that, when American companies harm the public in other countries, it doesn’t matter? Would really like to know more.

anm89 5y ago

There should be manslaughter charges here.

graderjs 5y ago

This is so tragic, and just wrong. Actively changing scientist's recommendations and assessments because a company "balked" at the very standards and methods that are designed to keep it and its environment safe? This is the very reason the EPA was created to begin with, so this kind of stuff does not happen. That's so fucking sad that it's not only happening on their watch, but from inside the EPA itself. Such a tragedy...And to the commenter who said it had to do with Trump, no this had nothing to do with Trump. While Trump did make many unusual, business-focused appointees for department heads, the issue of corruption is as old as human institutions themselves. I'd only hoped the robust institutions in the states wouldn't so blatantly fall prey to this kind of bogus horseshit. Trying to shift the convo to Trump or suggest this is actually orange man bad's fault is actively harmful to a fruitful discussion about this, because it provides active cover for the real perpetrators. But sure, keeping pointing the finger of blame at Trump for everything while the real perps slip right through your other fingers, chump.