A federal agency responsible for studying and responding to adverse health effects caused by toxic waste is reticent to acknowledge patterns of illness near contaminated sites, according to a report released by the House Science Committee subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) often paints a rosy picture of the health in communities near toxic waste sites, according to the report. In the process, scientific integrity has been sacrificed. An ATSDR staffer told the subcommittee, “It seems like the goal is to disprove the communities’ concerns rather than actually trying to prove exposures.”

ATSDR is a key agency in implementing Superfund, the national toxic waste clean-up program. While EPA handles environmental assessment and remediation, ATSDR works on the health side, assessing community health and studying the links between toxic exposure and illness.

The report outlines several examples in which ATSDR has failed to serve in the best interest of communities at risk. In most cases, ATSDR simply doesn’t acknowledge the severity of the situation. From the subcommittee’s report:

[T]ime and time again ATSDR appears to avoid clearly and directly confronting the most obvious toxic culprits that harm the health of local communities throughout the nation. Instead, they deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate concerns and health considerations of local communities and well respected scientists and medical professionals. 

For example, after asbestos contaminate debris began washing up on an Illinois beach, the Illinois Department of Public Health and ATSDR released a report in 2000 that concluded “no apparent public health hazard exists.” The debris continued to wash up for years, and when ATSDR revisited the issue (in 2007) it once again concluded the beaches were safe from asbestos, according to the subcommittee’s report.

But tests from 2006 showed that asbestos had made its way into the sand on the beach, leading a local EPA office to object to a draft version of ATSDR’s findings, according to the subcommittee’s report. However, the final version went unchanged.

The subcommittee released the report in advance of an oversight hearing scheduled for Thursday at 10am. Current ATSDR head Dr. Howard Frumkin, of whom the report is quite critical, is scheduled to testify.

Image by Flickr user cpkatie, used under a Creative Commons license.

Update: Opening statements and witness testimony from Thursday's hearing are now available on the hearing webpage.