[CPEO-MEF] Health Assessments

[Pauline Simon <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

[Lenny Siegel's response to Marty Martinson's query on health
assessments]

As I understand it, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry (ATSDR) is supposed to conduct health assessments at Superfund
sites. Usually there is money in the (Defense) Environmental Security
budget to support ATSDR's work at military bases.

The ATSDR process may provide the opportunity to raise health issues,
but the agency is notorious for its conservative methodology - which
environmental groups labeled, in a report several years ago,
"Inconclusive by Design." For example, if response actions are cutting
exposure pathways, ATSDR may find that there is little or no human
health risk.

Though most RABs focus on cleanup, as opposed to the impact of past
exposures, they have reviewed ATSDR reports. The Moffett Field RAB was
so critical of the ATSDR findings here that the City of Mountain View
wrote a letter criticizing the agency's report.

So one can:

1) ask ATSDR to conduct a health assessment,

2) make sure ATSDR holds public meetings and establish a presence at
those meetings, and

3) create low expectations, based on the national experience, for
ATDSR's conclusions.

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 222B View St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/968-1126
lsiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org



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