Tobacco Documents Online

. Health Effects Institute Links Adversaries , Automobile companies and EPA. are joint sponsors of•f research to sort out health effects of air pollution-, Pacific Grove, California-An unusu- al group of auto executives, federal offi- cials, and scientists met here recently at the ocean retreat of Asilomar to discuss air pollution. They convened at the be- hest of the Health Effects Institute (HEI) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, an ambi- tious outfit created in 1980 to bring to- gether adversaries in the field of air pollution and to fund research. The conference-goers seemed to agree on at least one point, that the science in federal air quality documents is murky and needs cleaning just as much as the air. Many attendees seemed to think the government has overstated the hazards of low-level air pollution. (No one from an environmental group was present to argue the opposite view, however.) Most of the talks dealt not with policy but with the substance of research, de- scribing how airborne chemicals affect human health~ HEI begam making grants only a year ago, so most of the projects are still under way. Nevertheless, sever- al speakers promised results in the off- ing. Some of the projects that could soon have an impact are: • A major study, at four labs, to exam- ine the claim that very low levels of carbon monoxide increase angina. • Development of a technique that might make it possible to identify em- physema victims at a very early stage, long before symptoms appear. • The investigation of nitrogen dioxide as an agent that increases one's suscepti- bility to viral infections. • A search for ways of identifying people who may be unusually suscepti- ble to injury by air pollutants. • The study of animal! carcinogens in diesel exhaust, including a highly potent one recently removed from a copy ma- chine toner compound, 2-nitropyrene. If things work as planned, the various research findings will be accepted~ readi- ly by government and industry once they are finished, for they will have to clear many quality control points. Before data are released, reports will be vetted' by HEI's review group* and critiqued! by the sponsors-auto companies and the Environmental' Protection Agency •'Phe Research Committee is chaired by Walter Rosenblith and includes Josepti Brain: Roger Iv1c- Clellan. Robern Sawver. John i`ukey, and Gerallli Wogan. The Review Committee is chaired by Robert Levy and includes Gareth Green. Millicent Higgins, Paul Meier. Sheldon Murphy„and Arthur Upton. (EPA). The final reports will be pub- lished together with a chapter of "trans- lation" written by the review committee, which will interpret the data for the rest of the world. The institute is the brainchild of a former executive at the Cummins Engine Company, Charles Powers, and EPA of- ficials who wanted to reduce the acrimo- ny in discussions of clean air standards. Powers, the original director of HEI's staff, now has become president •of a clone organization, Clean Sites of Alex- andria, Virginia. It aims to play a similar role in mediating toxic dump controver- sies. At HEI, Powers has been succeed- ed by Thomas Grumbly, a former con- gressional aide and assistant to Stanford University president Donald Kennedy when Kennedy was commissioner of the Food' and Drug Administration. The original plan was to raise research funds from the auto companies and the government and to bring industry scien- tists and academics together for quiet discussions such as this one-HEI's sec- ond annual meeting at Asilomar. HEI Establishing credibility for unbiased research will be the key. plans to spend about $6 million a year, $5 million of it on basic research. Half comes from the EPA and' the other half from dues paid by alll companies selling cars in the United States, including for- eign manufacturers. The spur that en- courages contributions is a section of the 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act requiring the manufacturers to study and report on "unregulated" pollutants. The car makers and the government have agreed to give this task to HEI. In order to succeed, HEI must be credible. For this reason, the founders recruited an eminently credible board of directors. Archibal&Cox„ the Watergate prosecutor who proved so difficult to dismiss, is the chairmam The other di- rectors are William Baker, former chief of the Bell Laboratories, and Donald Kennedy. The institute has further insu- late& its scientists from pressure by en- trusting sensitive decisions to two inde- pendent committees, one that creates the research agenda and another. that _'re- . ~ _.. :a. views finished work. "We are now beginning to have the kind of debate that everyone agreed we should have had a decade ago," said Douglas Costle, administrator of the EPA under President Carter. Appearing on a panel with several other policy- makers, Costle said that regulations un- der the Clean Air Act always have drawn from "a very weak inteilectual bank ac- count." According to Costle, Congress set de- tailed rules and deadlines that put regula- tors in "constant collision ; with the facts." He also gave what he called a "true confession," saying that as EPA chief he made the decision to relax the ozone standard in part to "show that the EPA can change its mind ... that the standards are not set in concrete." Christopher DeMuth, director of the regulatory review shop in the Reagan Administration's Office of Management and Budget until last year, was predict- ably harsher on the system. He said politicians often try to add authority to their views by seasoning them with a little science, even when the science is weak. Some of the data used by Costle in the carbon monoxide and ozone deci- sions now appear to have been flatly "wrong," according to DeMuth. "The puzzlement for me lies in the fact that the use of science by the EPA has been so consistently poor over the years :.. even after gross deficiencies were well understood." It is "no state secret," he concluded, that "in the absence of good scientific information, the pressure is to stick with the status quo." There is "no better hope"'for improving the data than HEI, DeMuth said, but the question re- mains, will anyone use its work? One test of HEFs mettle is a project known as the "multicenter study" on carbon monoxide, due to be finished'in a year. According to Grumbly and' otherss at HEI, the case began severaliyears ago when crucial' data on carbon monoxide collected over many years and used~ in. EPA's air quality standard' began to "disintegrate." Reports that men with angina were likely to see their condition worsen if they were exposed even to very low levels of carbon monoxide were challenged when data could not be veri- . 729 15 FEBRUARY 1955

., fiied beeause they were lost in a move. EPA officials, including former admin- istrator William D. Ruckelshaus, make it plain that the HEI is meant to bring order. out of chaos in carbon monoxide re- search. This is HEI's first and most important task. The EPA seems less concerned about the nature of the results than determined to get data it can trust. Meanwhile, the auto company sponsors hope that HEI will find that the angina danger has been overblown. If HEI's work does not help relax EPA standards,, the companies hope it will at least dis- courage the EPA from tightening them. HEI unavoidably will be pressured' to cut its science to fit a pattern. But the problems are likely to arise less in the context of a particular topic than in the overall plan of research. Some tensions of this sort appeared at tae annual meet- ing. Both EPA and auto company offi- cials spoke about the need to shift the research plan in new directions, in each case to satisfy some immediate needs. The companies are worried about a move to require "on-board" devices that would prevent vapors from escaping from the gas tank during fueling. And the EPA is eager to get information on form- aldehyde, a problem chemical that has raised its head in other parts of the agency. Neither the government nor the companies seemed particularly eager to follow through on the diesel research that was so urgently requested a couple of years ago. General Motors has bowed out of the diesel market, and, contrary to forecasts only a few years old, there will be no diesel boom. Yet the research begun earlier is now beginning to pro- duce results. Several members of HEI's research committee spoke out, making it clear they were not willing to follow anyone's bandwagon, Faddishness and inconstan- cy, after all, are exactly the problems that bedevil government-sponsored pro- grams. And HEI's leaders say they will not be deflected from their deliberate plans for carrying out research which they think is important, although they do poll sponsors to adjust their priorities. Auto executives and EPA officials who were askedl about HEI's value agreed that it has already shown itself capable of recruiting excellent research- ers and setting very high standard5. The EPA has pledged funding through 1988, and the auto companies are likely to keep up their side of the game at least that long. So the real test of the institute will come in the next year or two, as results come out and as regulators and manufacturers will have to act on them or ignore them.-EuoT MARSHALL 730 OTA Says Aflycan Aid Focuses on Wrong People A congressional research office, ar- guing that the food problems in sub- Saharan Africa wi11 almost certainly worsen in the next few years, has advocated a shift in the focus of agri- cultural policies in the region toward helping small-scale, subsistence-level farmers and'herders. Such producers have largely been ignored by both national governments and foreign as- sistance programs, according to a re- port by the Office of Technology As- sessment (OTA).' The study notes that Africa is the only major region of the worki where per capita food production has de- dined over the past two decades, a consequence of high population growth rates and stagnant food pro- duction. These underiying trends will continue to cause food shortfalls in the region well after the currenf drought-induced crisis ends. Focusing assistance on many low- income small farmers is a far more difficult task than concentrating on raising the productivity of a few larger producers, however. In particular, it requires better developed research and extension programs both to de- velop the appropriate technologies and to transfer them to the field. The OTA study notes that these services are generally a very weakk link in the chain of technological change in African agriculture. Similar- ly, the directors of international agri- cuitural research centers who met in Washington in late January identified the generally underdeveloped state of nationai' agricuitural research and ex- tension services as a major barrier to the transfer of new technologies from the centers to farmers (Science, 8 February, p. 616). . Consequently, OTA recommends that the United States increase its support to indigenous African univer- sities and research centers and en- courage programs in, which farmers, herders, extension agents, and agri- cultural research workers are in- volved: In generali the OTA study also ar- gues that U.S. assistance to sub-Sa- 'A(rica Tomorrow: Issues in Technology, Agdcul, ture and Foreign Aid'(Oftice of Technology As• sessment, Washington,, D.C. 20510). haran Africa has been too crisis-Ori- ented and has lacked clear and con- sistent goals. It emphasizes that iong- - term, consistent support, which is not buffeted around by shifting politicai' winds in Washington, will be needed to make any inroads into Africa's food production problems.-CouN NoRwuw National Science Board Seeks New Role The National! Science Board, the top policy-making body of the National' Science Foundation (NSF), Is at- tempting to shed some of its detailed responsibilities in order to involve ft- self more deeply In NSF and national . science policy. It also Intends to pay more attention to science education and'human resource issues.-: • ..• . The board, whose statutory respon- sibilities include overseeing NSF pro- grams and providing an Independent source of advice on science policy, Roland Schmitt has never been a major player in Washington politics. This stems in part from a legal requirement that it must approve every NSF grant larger than $500,000 a year or which totals more than, $2 million, a responsibility that takes up a large amount of the board's time. Equally important, by the time a project reaches the board for approval, it is generally too late for the board to exercise much influence on its substance. Consequently; at its meeting last month; the board agreed to ask Con- gress to give it the power to delegate SCIENCE. VOL. '-37.