Scientists: WH Minimized Risks of Mercury in Proposed Rules

[DeepModem Mom]

White House Minimized the Risks of Mercury in Proposed Rules, Scientists Say
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

Published: April 7, 2004


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....

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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....

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"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....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/07/politics/07MERC.html

[rabid_nerd]

1. I'm too tired to pay attention to anything else

except that Jennifer Lee's middle initial is a number.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. It is, indeed, "8" -- at least until someone alerts copyeditors --

Maybe they're tired, too!