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The Memphis Commercial-Appeal (and other U.S. newspapers) Sunday, November 15, 1992 Great hoax on asbestos finally ends  Key originator of infamous 1978 'estimates document' acknowledges report's fun(lamental mistakes. By Michael J. Bennett "We did what scientists so often do, which was to use ... estimates without questioning them." -Marvin Schneiderman, statistician National Cancer Institute T HERE'S one thing wrong with that statement: It should read, "We did what government regu- latory scientists do...." And it illus- trates why NBC commentator John Chancellor is underscoring a disturb- ing reality when he wistfully recalls, "I can remember when you could win an argument by citing government statis- tics." Government statistics are no longer trustworthy in such sensitive and sig- nificant matters as human health, can- cer and the environment. For almost a generation, the American public has been the victim of a hoax, perpetrated by its own government, that cancer is caused by environmental factors, and particularly industry, and not by per- senal habits, primarily smoking. Rut now the myth of environmental cancer caused by industry has been fi- nslly laid to rest, among scientists at least, by perhaps its most important ori- p,inator. Marvin Schneiderntan, cited above, was one of nine contributors to what is known as "the estimales document," the report, prepared in 1978 for the Oc- cupational Health and Safety Adminis- tration (OSHA), that launched Ameri- ca's great asbestos hoax. This docu- ment, using figures originally devel- oped by the late Dr. Irving Selikoff, projected that 58,000 to 75,000 people would die each year front asbestos-re- lated cancer-aoout 17 percent of all cancer fatalities. Based on that projection, the U.S. gov= ernment tipped the number of cancers presumably caused by industrial expo- sure from 2 percent to as much as 40 r rcent. The Age of the Environment d dawned; the United States was in the middle of a cancer "epidemic" caused, Schneiderman told OSHA, by its own industrial civilization. TEN YEARS LATER, Schneiderman was the Environmental Protection Agency's principal scientific authority in what the agency hoped would be a precedent-setting ban on asbestos, which is used primarily as fire protec- tion in buildings and in brake linings. Last month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the ban when the EPA failed to make a case for even 13 to 15 asbestos-related cancer deaths a year, among heavily exposed brake workers. EPA administrator William Reilly, in the words of the National Association of School Boards, had provided Congress with "a broad indictment of the EPA's lack of scientific basis for its policy pro- nouncements." EPA's own science advi- sory board asked Reilly why the scien- tific basis for the government's asbes- tos policy had ever had "the benefit of review" by the board. W hy? And why did 58,000 to 75.000 as- bestos-related cancer deathseventually fall to 13 to 15-and those unprovable in court? The answer lies in environmental ideology, not in science- Real scienlists - thosc prmah, and government researchers who stdrmit their work topeer review in prulcssiou- al journals - can't be blamed. '1'he "es- timates document" was never submit- ted for peer review, and the "contribu- tors" have never admitted actual au- thorship. Immediately denounced by the jour- nals Science and Lancet, the document was castigated by Sir Richard f)oR of Oxford, the epidemiologist who conclu- sively proved the relationship between smoking and lung cancer, in lus defini- tive study, "The Causes of Cancer." "No arguments based, even loosely, upon (these estimates) should he taken seriously," Doll wrote. "It seems likely that whoever wrote the OSHA paper did so for political rather than scientific reasons... by t hose who wish to empha- size the importance of occupational fac- tors ... in newspaper articles and ... journalism." NOT ALI. JOURNALISTS were conned. In 1984, Edith Elron published The Apocalyptics: Cancer' and the Big Lie, which was hailed by Dr. Bruce Ames of the University of California at Berkeley, the nation's leading author- ity on carcinogenesis, as the "Silent Springof the couwrterrevolution." By 1985, when I published a series of articles on asbestos in the Detroit News (later nominated for a Pulitzer Prize), it had become obvious, largely through the work of Dr- Malcohn Ross of t he U.S- GeologicalSurvey,that only heavy as- hestos exposure among workers - with risks multiplied some 80-90 times over by smoking - was dangerous. Further, those dangers were largely limited to the past, primarily the World War 11 era, when exposure was coln- plelely llltfeglllatell. Rosti %t'onl'lltsionls were atlnmcd by the Al11. I I,..., ,!..li ral Assnrlation and by a sludv. <otnmis- siotled by Congress, Irom 1hv Ilcalth NI- lects Institute in Cambridge. Mas,., headed by former Waterg.ue proseru- 2074144105 tor Archibald Cox. "We made the inappropriate estinlate that short-term exposures were just as nasty, as carcinogenic and deadly as long-term exposures:" Schneiderman told the Aournal of the National Cancer Institute in April. "Now it looksas if you have to have fairly continuous expo- sure to cause the worst effects." So the great industrial cancer epi- demic is over, ht fact, it never was, as conununities with the financial and in- tellectual resources to study the issue catne to realize. Newton, Mass., with two biologists on its town board, reject- ed a $3.5 billion asbestos removal pro- posal last winter. An $8.5 million ashes- tus removal referendum was rejected in Canaan. Conn., in June by a vote of 2 to 1. But to date, casualties of the "esti- mntes document" include more than a dozen corporations in bankruptcy, thnusandsthrown out of work, and well over 150,000 asbestos tort cases clog- ging the courts. Schools and private- pfoperty owners have already spent some $27 billion of an estimated $150 billion for asbestos removal, although an EPA guidance document, released almost surreptitiously two years ago, advised that removal is "often not (em- phasls EPA's) a building owner's best course of action" and that improper re- moval could "create a dangerous sittm- tion where none existed before." The Ilnited States has paid an enor- mous price because questions weren't asked earlier. There is no excuse for not ask i ng them now - particu larly on behalLnl puorer cnmmtmities, where scarce financial resources would he hrltrr ~prnt fnr virtually any nther pur- pose. M1firhuel.l Uerulrtl, jr~ut'ntdist nnd nu- thor of'I'he Asbeslos Racket: An Envir- onmental Parable, is at'filiared with the Washington-based Science & Environ- ulrn tal Pulir)' Pn grrt. The Science & Environmental Policy Project, 2101 Wilson Blvd., #1003, Arlington, VA 22201 •(703) 527-0130 • .