NP - Dioxins are Good for You

[David Morris]

http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/opinion/columns/032143.htm

Published Tuesday, July 17, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News

Bush nominee is comfortable with toxins
BY DICK DURBIN

IS A little bit of dioxin, a carcinogen, good for you? John Graham thinks it 
might be. Graham is President Bush's nominee to head an obscure but powerful 
White House agency, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which 
is part of the Office of Management and Budget. Its administrator acts as a 
sort of ``regulatory czar'' who can block any new regulation, whether 
arsenic standards for drinking water, worker-protection rules or the 
public's right to know about toxic chemicals.

As a participant in the Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory 
Board subcommittee on dioxin, Graham said that reducing dioxin levels too 
far might ``do more harm ... than good.'' He argued that dioxin might 
prevent cancer in some cases, a hypothesis that a senior EPA official called 
``irresponsible and inaccurate.'' Graham also told Congress that smog 
protects people from the harmful effects of too much sunlight.

He also rejects the notion that pesticides on foods may be a health concern, 
calling this a ``trivial'' problem that reflects public ``paranoia'' about 
toxic chemicals. He claims that our choice of environmental regulations 
contributes to the death of 60,000 people under a theory he calls 
``statistical murder.''

How does he arrive at these ``scientific'' results? Graham is an academic in 
the field of risk analysis. His philosophy, which involves ``discounting'' 
lives, is that we should get the biggest bang for the buck when reducing 
risks. Why spend society's scarce resources on programs that would save, 
say, only 100 lives when, for the same amount, we could save 1,000?


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