You wouldn't deregulate Wall Street Investment Banks during the Financial Collapse of 2008, would you?
You wouldn't further de-regulate (and de-enforce what was left) of the environmental and safety regulations on deep-water oil and gas drilling while the Gulf Oil spill was still bubbling away, would you?
(Ok. Later maybe, when the heat had died down, sure. But in the middle of a catastrophe, politically speaking it is just not done.)
It would be like the EPA issuing new guidelines that loosened the standards of what was acceptable amounts of radiation in food, drinking water and the soil after a major incident at a nuclear power plant for goodness sake. It would be just, what's that word again, inconceivable.
Well. As we've heard: "Timing is everything." But as we've also heard now more than once, "never let a crisis go to waste".
What would you think if you found out that while we were all distracted by the events in Japan, our own EPA was planning to sneak one by on us to radically loosen the standards for acceptable levels of radiation in food, water and soil?
With the plumes (real or imaginary) of Fukushima radiation hanging over our heads, that's what appears to be on the menu.
UPDATE: Correcting link to naked capitalism guest post of George Washington.
UPDATE II: Corrected link to current 1992 Protective Action Guide per Deep Harm's clarifying comment below. Relocated previously referenced document to end of diary for reference.
Now, you might say as I certainly did,
"WTF? I thought we had Democrats running the EPA."
Seems that at the end of the Bush administration folks inside the EPA were trying to rush through a big change in what levels are considered dangerous (and conversely adequate for clean-up) after a "radiological incident". "Radiological Incidents" include both dirty bomb events and events like those unfolding at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The current Protective Action Guide was evidently produced in 1992 but has already been subject to a number of updates. (I think it might refer to this PDF: MANUAL OF PROTECTIVE ACTION GUIDES -AND PROTECTIVE ACTIONS FOR NUCLEAR INCIDENTS Revised 1991 Second printing, May 1992.) More issues relating to the topic of Radioactive Contamination discussed in Deep Harm's excellent diary Deep Harm's diary, Radioactive contamination of food: A primer for consumers.
The Bush-minions' blitz to lower the standards by "updating" was fended off - evidently in large part due to the efforts of PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Safety). (I have to say, that name alone would probably make Scot Walker's brain melt down to a molten slag and escape out his nose.)
But bad regulatory proposals don't die, and like demons in a tv watched by a little blonde girl, they're baaa-aack.
So what do they have in mind? A little tinkering hear, a little adjustment there, rounding off some sharp edges and such?
Not so much or rather way, way more. The new, looser standards would allow
• A nearly 1000-fold increase for exposure to strontium-90;
•A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for exposure to iodine-131; and
•An almost 25,000 rise for exposure to radioactive nickel-63.i
Via his guest post at Naked Capitalism, George Washington is letting us know that they are making yet another run at this gutting of the enforcement guides radiation levels in food, water and soil.
His sources:
EPA Plans to Reduce Cleanup of Nuclear Fallout Now“No rest for the wicked!" Says EPA Employee With a Smileby Michael Kane
...Right now there is another push within the EPA to resurrect this agenda. Many mid and upper-level managers currently at EPA were working for the agency under Bush and are, in fact Bush-Cheney era appointees.
One such person is Sara DeCair, a health physicist with the EPA’s Office of Radiation and Indoor Air since 2003. She is currently one of those rewriting the standards.
In an internal EPA email that was obtained by PEER, DeCair explains that the Head Administrator of the EPA, Lisa P. Jackson , had given the green light to go forward with these changes sometime in the beginning of May, 2010. In that email, which was time-stamped 05/06/2010 04:35 PM EDT, DeCair ominously wrote the following:
“We have noticed that she (Lisa P. Jackson) does not like any delay between deciding a thing and moving forward. No rest for the wicked, I like to say! Thank you :)” (emphasis added)iv (see below)
Notice how Sara DeCair closes the email with a smiley face. Why didn’t she just go ahead and throw in a LOL or LMFAO ? No rest for the wicked, indeed.
Not all in EPA agreed to the Draconian changes. There is an internal battle being fought, but it appears – based on the email obtained by PEER which is published at the end of this report – that the battle may have already been won since Lisa P. Jackson has seemingly given the green light.
Jackson is the Head Administrator of EPA. The final decision rests with her and President Obama. While it seems she may have already been swayed by the Dr. Strangelove wing of her agency, she needs to be swayed back down to reality on planet earth with the rest of us.
Here is Jackson’s email address: jackson.lisap@epa.gov
...
Another source is the aformentioned, Walker-brainslag-producing PEER who warned us back in April 2010 that this ill-timed and ill-considered loosening of standards had not gone quitely into that good night.
In their release entitled, RADIATION EXPOSURE DEBATE RAGES INSIDE EPA — Plan to Radically Hike Post-Accident Radiation in Food & Water Sparks Hot Dissent, PEER reports that there is continuing and serious dissent within the EPA on the proposal to loosen these standards:
...Other divisions within EPA contend the ORIA plan geometrically raises allowable exposure to the public. For example, as Charles Openchowski of EPA’s Office of General Counsel wrote in a January 23, 2009 e-mail to ORIA:
“[T]his guidance would allow cleanup levels that exceed MCLs [Maximum Contamination Limits under the Safe Drinking Water Act] by a factor of 100, 1000, and in two instances 7 million and there is nothing to prevent those levels from being the final cleanup achieved (i.e., it’s not confined to immediate response of emergency phase).”
Another EPA official, Stuart Walker of the Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation, explains what the proposed new radiation limits in drinking water would mean:
“It also appears that drinking water at the PAG concentrations…may lead to subchronic (acute) effects following exposures of a day or a week. In a population, one should see some express acute effects…that is vomiting, fever, etc.”
“This critical debate is taking place entirely behind closed doors because this plan is ‘guidance’ and does not require public notice as a regulation would,” stated PEER Counsel Christine Erickson. Today, PEER sent EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson a letter calling for a more open and broader examination of the proposed radiation guidance. “We all deserve to know why some in the agency want to legitimize exposing the public to radiation at levels vastly higher than what EPA officially considers dangerous.”
...
It would seem odd that an EPA administered by a Democrat would continue such a Bush-era attempt at 'loosening' this type of regulation.
It would seem odder still for Obama to allow it to occur under the shadow of Fukushima's plume.
At the very least, this seems to fall into one of the Grand Canyon-sized exceptions to the 'don't look back' doctrine.
Why is it that they seem to only be interested in 'looking back' when it concerns the carrying-on of really, really, really bad ideas?
Per Deep Harm's comment below, the government publication originally linked to above was really the following:
FDA guidance for human food and animal feed
Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 1982 guidance, "Accidental Radioactive Contamination of Human Food and Animal Feeds: Recommendations for State and Local Agencies, dated 1998