NIEHS

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

=glyphi NID attack threat funding lamar smith and chaffetz=le monde<h6 style="background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248); margin: 3rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.2;">Intrusive and bureaucratic guerrilla warfare</h6>Within the space of a few months, at least five individuals presented themselves as a journalist, independent researcher or assistant in law firms to approach IARC scientists and researchers involved in IARC’s work. All were seeking very specific information about the agency’s procedures and funding.One of them, Miguel Santos-Neves, works for a New York-based economic intelligence company called Ergo.According to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/nyregion/investigation-of-conservationist-conducted-on-ubers-behalf-crossed-the-line-judge-rules.html?_r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">report in the New York Times</a> in July 2016, he was collared during a U.S. judicial investigation for misrepresenting his identity. On behalf of Uber, Mr. Santos-Neves had investigated a plaintiff who had filed a classaction suit against the company and questioned his professional entourage under false pretenses. Ergo did not respond to Le Monde’s enquiries.Just like Christopher Watts, two sister organizations with nefarious reputations are interested not only in IARC but also in the Ramazzini Institute. The Energy and Environmental Legal Institute (E&E Legal) introduces itself as a non-profit organization, the missions of which include to “hold accountable those who seek excessive and destructive government regulation that’s based on agenda-driven policy making, junk science, and hysteria.”The Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, for its part, says “it seeks to provide a counter-weight to the litigious environmental movement that fosters an economically destructive regulatory regime in the United States.”According to Le Monde, they have initiated no fewer than 17 FOIA requests to the NIH and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Engaged in legal, bureaucratic and intrusive guerrilla warfare, they have demanded the correspondence of several American officials “containing the terms ‘IARC’, ‘glyphosate’, ‘Guyton'” (Kathryn Guyton is the IARC scientist responsible for the “Monograph 112”).They seek the smallest of details on scholarships, grants and other financial and nonfinancial relationships between these American agencies, IARC, some scientists, and the Ramazzini Institute.<h6 style="background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248); margin: 3rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.2;">“Let nothing go”</h6>The two organizations are headed by David Schnare, a confirmed climate sceptic who is known for harassing climate scientists. In November 2016, Mr. Schnare temporarily left E&E Legal to join Donald Trump’s transition team. As for Steve Milloy, who is also among the leaders of the organization, he is a wellknown figure in the small world of tobacco industry funded propaganda. When asked about their motivations and sources of funding, the president of E&E Legal replied by email: “Hi, we’re not interested in participating.” The attention on these FOIA requests is amplified by op-eds published in some media outlets.One of them, The Hill, is mandatory reading for every political player in Washington DC. Their authors are a squadron of propagandists that the association US Right to Know (USRTK) has documented as having longstanding ties to agrochemical companies and conservative think tanks, such as the Heartland Institute or the George C. Marshall Institute, both known for their major role in the manufacture of climate skepticism. Their writings expose exactly the same arguments. And sometimes even the same phrases: the “shoddy science” of an IARC ravaged by conflicts of interest and “widely criticized”—yet without ever saying by whom.The lawyers involved in U.S. lawsuits revealed that Monsanto also used more discreet means. Responding under oath to questions from lawyers representing people who attribute their cancer to Roundup, the firm’s executives revealed a confidential program aimed at countering all criticisms and called “Let Nothing Go.”The transcripts of these hearings remain confidential. But memos from the law firms involved allow a little more to be known. They show that Monsanto uses third-party companies that “employ individuals who appear to have no connection to the industry but who in turn post positive comments on news articles and Facebook posts, defending Monsanto, its chemicals, and GMOs.”<h6 style="background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248); margin: 3rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.2;">The machine seems to be racing ahead with the advent of Mr. Trump</h6>In recent months, the coalition against IARC has grown. At the end of January 2017, a few days after the inauguration of Donald Trump at the White House, the American Chemistry Council joined its ranks. The U.S. chemical lobby has opened a new front on social networks in the form of a “Campaign for Accuracy in Public Health Research,” with a dedicated <a href="http://campaignforaccuracyinpublichealthresearch.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">website</a> and a <a href="https://twitter.com/The_CAPHR" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Twitter account.</a>Its stated purpose is to obtain a “reform” of the IARC monograph program. The powerful lobbying organization has put aside the kid gloves: “A side of bacon or a side of plutonium? It’s all the same according to IARC.” The tweet goes with a photomontage showing two fluorescent green bars dipping into bacon and eggs on a plate.In October 2015, IARC indeed classified processed meats as “carcinogenic” and red meat as a “probable carcinogen” like glyphosate. Perhaps having privileged access to President Trump’s closest circle provides a feeling of omnipotence to these chemical and agrochemical industries? The chief American lobbyist of the American Chemistry Council, Nancy Beck, taken over as Deputy Assistant Administrator at the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention of the U.S. EPA, the very agency that oversees the re-examination of the glyphosate file.And was not Andrew Liveris, the boss of Dow Chemical, a member of the American Chemistry Council, entrusted by Donald Trump in person to lead the president’s “Manufacturing Jobs Initiative”?The machine seems to be racing ahead with the advent of the Trump era. At the end of March, the Republican Texan Lamar Smith, chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, <a href="https://science.house.gov/news/press-releases/sst-committee-probes-niehs-contract-grant-recipients" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">addressed</a> the now former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price. Smith focused his demands on the financial links between the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the Ramazzini Institute in order, he wrote, to “ensure that grant recipients adhere to the highest standards of scientific integrity”.<h6 style="background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248); margin: 3rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.2;">Ignorance and lies</h6>=https://www.propublica.org/article/as-trump-slashes-epa-worry-over-the-fate-of-an-agency-doing-similar-work

It  has little name recognition, a budget less than 10 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency’s, and is part of a government institute embraced by both of the nation’s major political parties.

“In light of what President Trump wants to do to the EPA, I don’t think any agency that deals with issues unpopular with the current government is going to escape,” said Tracey Woodruff, a professor at University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is a branch of the National Institutes of Health based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Founded in 1966 under President Lyndon B. Johnson, it has a 2017 fiscal year budget of $771 million, far less than the EPA’s $8.2 billion and a tiny fraction of the NIH’s $32 billion.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">The NIEHS studies the health effects of pesticides, chemicals and cancer-causing compounds. Some of its work is akin to the EPA’s efforts on environmental health — programs that would be eliminated or rolled back under President Trump’s proposed 31 percent cut to the EPA’s budget.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">Trump’s initial 2018 budget calls for a 19 percent cut in NIH funding and an unspecified “major reorganization” of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers “to help focus resources on the highest priority research and training activities.” But it doesn’t mention the NIEHS.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">It’s not like the NIEHS hasn’t found itself in political crosshairs before.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">Last spring, for instance, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, demanded documents from the NIEHS <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2016-03-03-JEC-Lummis-to-Birnbaum-NIEHS-BPA-due-3-17.pdf" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">about its research with the Food and Drug Administration on Bisphenol A (BPA)</a>, a chemical used in food packaging that mimics the hormone estrogen. The FDA banned BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups in 2012, and California regulators <a href="https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/crnr/bisphenol-listed-known-state-california-cause-reproductive-toxicity" style="background: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">declared the chemical a known reproductive toxicant</a> three years later. Chaffetz’s wide-ranging inquiry asked for a slew of documents including “all communications referring or relating to BPA between any NIEHS employee and any FDA employee since April 1, 2008.” In response, NIEHS scientists met with GOP staffers from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which Chaffetz chairs, and spent an hour briefing them on the BPA study.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">In 2013, after NIEHS Director Linda Birnbaum wrote a journal article summarizing the public health threat of endocrine disruptors — chemicals that can harm child development and reproductive health — two GOP members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology sent a letter to Birnbaum’s boss, NIH Director Francis Collins, demanding to know if the article represented Birnbaum’s personal views or the views of the Obama administration. An NIH official wrote back, saying the article was published in a peer-reviewed journal, and that Birnbaum’s “scientific views cannot be separated from her role as an institute director.”<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">And when the NIEHS released a congressionally mandated Report on Carcinogens in 2011, an industry group sued the Department of Health and Human Services for the report’s inclusion of styrene (used in rubber and plastics manufacturing) as a compound that’s “reasonably anticipated” to cause cancer. The suit was dismissed, but it led to a contentious House hearing at which Republican representatives criticized the NIEHS while Democrats condemned the chemical lobby.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">Although Congress has final say over agency budgets, the White House proposal has added to general anxiety over the future of science, climate and environmental health funding. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt created a flurry of controversy recently when he declared carbon dioxide was not a primary contributor to climate change, rejecting decades of scientific consensus. And Trump’s budget would eliminate the EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program, which evaluates up to 1,000 chemicals a year for their potential to act as endocrine disruptors.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">The NIEHS and the White House Office of Management and Budget didn’t respond to requests for comment about the budget. An NIH spokeswoman referred to a statement from Secretary Tom Price, who leads NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services. “HHS is dedicated to fulfilling our department’s mission to improve the health and well-being of the American people. This budget supports that mission and will help ensure we are delivering critical services to our fellow citizens in the most efficient and effective manner possible,” Price said.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">Cuts to federal environmental health programs could reach beyond the NIEHS and EPA. The Centers for Disease Control, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the Food and Drug Administration all do similar work, though the White House budget says little about their funding. Details of individual agency and program budgets will be hashed out over a monthslong process in Congress.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">...

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Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and potential EDCs are mostly man-made, found in various materials such as pesticides, metals, additives or contaminants in food, and personal care products. EDCs have been suspected to be associated with altered reproductive function in males and females; increased incidence of breast cancer, abnormal growth patterns and neurodevelopmental delays in children, as well as changes in immune function.

Human exposure to EDCs occurs via ingestion of food, dust and water, via inhalation of gases and particles in the air and through the skin. EDCs can also be transferred from the pregnant woman to the developing fetus or child through the placenta and breast milk. Pregnant mothers and children are the most vulnerable populations to be affected by developmental exposures, and the effect of exposures to EDCs may not become evident until later in life. Research also shows that it may increase the susceptibility to non-communicable diseases.

In response to these concerns, WHO published several publications, including the latest information on the subject in the <a href="http://www.who.int/ceh/publications/endocrine/en/index.html" target="new" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals 2012</a>, which was done in collaboration with UNEP and key scientific experts. A resolution to include EDCs as an emerging issue under Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was also adopted in September 2012 by the third International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM3) in Nairobi during which WHO and UNEP jointly raised public awareness on EDC issues during a ise-event and technical briefing session (partially supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences).

<h3 class="section_head1" style="margin: 0px 20px 9px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Short information documents for decision makers</h3>

<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px 5px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 15px;"><a href="http://www.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78102/1/WHO_HSE_PHE_IHE_2013.1_eng.pdf?ua=1" class="" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Summary for decision makers of ‘State of the science of endocrine disrupting chemicals 2012’</a>

pdf, 2.84Mb</li>

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