Dioxin Review Panel Includes Industry Supported Scientists
 ENS 1nov00

WASHINGTON, DC - Farmers, Vietnam veterans, health and environmental groups issued a warning Tuesday that the dioxin industry is funding six members of the review panel scheduled to review the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) reassessment of the chemical dioxin today and Thursday.  "For 50 years, the tobacco industry kept our government from taking action against smoking," explained Lois Gibbs, executive director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), a Falls Church, Virginia based nonprofit organization. "The tobacco companies did this by paying certain scientists to go to meetings like tomorrow's meeting of the Dioxin Reassessment Review Committee of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board. ...That's exactly what we can expect from the dioxin industry funded scientists tomorrow."

Six of the committee members - Stephen Brown, Kenny Crump, John Graham, William Greenlee, Genevieve Matanoski and Dennis Paustenbach - have received organizational support from 91 dioxin polluting corporations.  Two of the committee members, Morton Lippmann and Genevieve Matanoski, were involved in a 1990 controversy in which they did not disclose their ties to a tobacco industry funded think tank while serving on an EPA panel reviewing the health effects of secondhand smoke. "Industry doesn't have to control a majority of the scientists on a committee to advance their agenda," said Charlotte Caldwell of the Indigenous Environmental Network. "The 50 year history of the tobacco industry's control of public policy shows that you just need a few, well placed scientists on every decision making body to serve as the skeptics."