While shirah and smintheus have been covering the harmful effects of privatization at Walter Reed, there’s been another ongoing story about problems with privatizing federal functions. This time, the work is science, and it could affect all of us.
One of the many government centers dedicated to assessing risks to human health is the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), which is part of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Its job is to review and evaluate scientific information on chemicals that might affect human reproductive health, and pass that information along to the public and to regulatory and health agencies. It’s not really the kind of work that you’d want to outsource to a company with ties to the manufacturers of harmful substances – but that’s exactly what NIEHS has done.
The Environmental Working Group investigated CERHR and found that all of its work was being done by a consulting company called Sciences International. This isn’t unusual in Washington – with all of the backlash against “big government,” a lot of federal agency work is now performed by consultants, rather than government employees who’d want pesky things like retirement and health benefits. The problem, EWG reported, is that Sciences International “has collaborated with Dow Chemical Co. … and has also worked for the tobacco giant RJ Reynolds.”
Bisphenol A up for Review
EWG was particularly concerned about this conflict of interest because from March 5 – 7th, CERHR was scheduled to “review recent scientific data and reach conclusions regarding whether or not exposure to a commonly used chemical, Bisphenol A (BPA) is hazardous to human development or reproduction.”
Here’s the interesting thing about the scientific literature on Bisphenol A: more than 90% of 100+ government-funded studies show adverse health effects from low-level exposures of BPA, but none of the industry-funded studies do. Animal studies have linked prenatal BPA exposures to female genital tract abnormalities and an increased risk of breast and prostate cancers, and one recent study reports that BPA’s estrogenic effect induces insulin resistance in adult mice (which enhances the risk of developing diabetes). (Environmental Health News has a good list of recent studies and news reports.)
Most of us are exposed constantly to bisphenol A – it’s in plastic bottles, the linings of food cans, dental sealants, and other products, so we should all be concerned about this. It’s good that CERHR decided to review the recent scientific literature on BPA. The question, though, is whether we want a company linked to Dow and RJ Reynolds to be conducting that review.
Scientists' Concerns
Two scientists from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Jennifer Sass and Sarah Janssen, submitted comments to NIEHS outlining their concerns about the process and content of the BPA review, and posted a summary at public health blog The Pump Handle (which has been following the whole CERHR/BPA story). As far as the content of the review, they note that the BPA draft report failed to:
• Include some important recent studies on BPA.
• Consider the choice of experimental animals used in the studies when evaluating them – apparently, there’s a particular breed of rat that’s relatively insensitive to estrogenic drugs, so studies using those rats should be evaulated with that in mind.
• Consider whether an adequate positive control was used when evaluating the strength of the studies.
• Consider the impact of bias in industry-funded research.
As far as the larger issue of NIEHS’s outsourcing, they state:
To the extent that NTP farms out critical task, such as scientific reviews and assessments, in some cases to contractors that are also working for regulated industries, without adequate transparency, oversight, or accountability, it seriously compromises both the public trust and the NTPs ability to ensure that it is meeting its obligation to the American public.
The good news in this particular situation is that public scrutiny appears to have put the brakes on a questionable process. Last Sunday, Marla Cone published an LA Times article about the fact that NIEHS work had been outsourced to a company with chemical-industry ties. On Tuesday, NIEHS’s director announced that it was postponing its decision on BPA for six weeks and had begun a review of the ties between CERHR and Sciences International.
Will NIEHS start improving the transparency, accountability, and oversight of outsourced scientific work? Health advocates will continue to keep pressuring them, because the effects on the health of future generations could be enormous.
Cross-posted at Unbossed