Word: epa
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Attempts by several states to fill the policy vacuum floundered this year, and the tactics of the environmental lobby were at least partly responsible. The contest over California's "Big Green," Proposition 128, for instance, was marked by overstatement on both sides of the issue. Prominent environmentalists, including EPA Administrator William Reilly, were troubled by the sweep of some of Big Green's provisions, like the pesticide curbs that would have banned any chemical found to cause cancer in any rat. Given the legitimate debate over many of the provisions in the proposition's 16,000 words, it was entirely...
...alarmists have gained some qualified support from the Environmental Protection Agency. In the executive summary of a new scientific review, released in draft form late last week, the EPA has put forward what amounts to the most serious government warning to date. The agency tentatively concludes that scientific evidence "suggests a causal link" between extremely low- frequency electromagnetic fields -- those having very long wavelengths -- and leukemia, lymphoma and brain cancer. While the report falls short of classifying ELF fields as probable carcinogens, it does identify the common 60-hertz magnetic field as "a possible, but not proven, cause of cancer...
...report is no reason to panic -- or even to lose sleep. If there is a cancer risk, it is a small one. The evidence is still so controversial that the draft stirred a great deal of debate within the Bush Administration, and the EPA released it over strong objections from the Pentagon and the White House. But now no one can deny that the issue must be taken seriously and that much more research is needed...
...Pentagon is far from persuaded. In a blistering 33-page critique of the EPA report, Air Force scientists charge its authors with having "biased the entire document" toward proving a link. "Our reviewers are convinced that there is no suggestion that ((electromagnetic fields)) present in the environment induce or promote cancer," the Air Force concludes. "It is astonishing that the EPA would lend its imprimatur on this report." The Pentagon's concern is understandable. There is hardly a unit of the modern military that does not depend on the heavy use of some kind of electronic ! equipment, from huge ground...
Several Administration officials are also skeptical about the EPA's conclusions. Last June draft language classifying ELF fields as a "probable carcinogen" was deleted from an earlier version of the EPA report after it was reviewed by the White House. At the time, the EPA denied that it was pressured into dropping the offending words...