Word: epas
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...alarming lack of attention to environmental causes of cancer has been exacerbated by recent actions of the Reagan Administration. As part of its deregulation craze, the current Administration lately took steps to ease the control of cancer-causing substances. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ostensibly the watchdog of the environment, markedly loosened its regulations in dealing with the recent dioxin contamination crisis at Times Beach, Mo. The FPA established much higher acceptable exposure levels after the crisis than those dictated by previous risk assessments. This recent backslide in the regulation of carcinogens reflects the same problem manifested in the misdirection...
...government conducts a little over half the research done in this country into the causes of cancer via the National Cancer Institute (NCI). And the NCI, which spent over $1 billion researching he causes of cancer in 1981, devotes a miniscule amount to investigation of potential carcinogens. Both the EPA and Food and Drug Administration refer suspected carcinogens to the NCI but the NCI tests only 26 suspected chemical carcinogens per year, according to a spokesman for the National Institute of Environmental Health Services...
...efforts to foster a different impression, the controversy has only heightened suspicions that her goal, and that of the Reagan Administration, is to slash the agency's budget and staff so deeply that its regulations become flaccid. Environmentalists like to say that during her stewardship, the EPA has been transformed into the "industry protection agency." Morale among employees has sunk so low that the EPA is the most leak-prone bureaucracy in town. "It's not easy to run an agency when the whole work force is either under subpoena or at the Xerox machine," a chagrined Gorsuch...
...financially strapped states to contribute more to cleanup efforts, her proposed 1984 budget slashes state grants by 26%, from $233 million to $172 million. In fiscal 1980, the last full year of President Carter's Administration, 200 civil cases against air and water polluters were referred by the EPA to the Justice Department. Last year 100 were referred. The number of both chemical-company and hazardous-waste-facility inspections has fallen sharply. Efforts to enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act have virtually ceased...
Republicans, already concerned that a foot-dragging EPA would present the Democrats with a potent political issue, found last week's developments distressing. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont was beating the drums. "We can enforce our environmental laws or ignore them," he railed. "Thus far, the Administration has done everything pos sible to ignore them." Scheuer said he plans to introduce legislation this week to restructure the EPA as an agency run by an independent commission, apart from the Executive Branch...