Great Lakes Study Suppressed

"For more than seven months, the nation's top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially 'alarming information' as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates," reports the Center for Public Integrity.

Chris De Rosa, former director of the division of toxicology and environmental medicine at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), has charged that he was demoted for writing the report.

That claim may be harder to evaluate, because it seems ATSDR (housed at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta) may have demoted De Rosa for writing another report - the one saying formaldehyde in FEMA trailers distributed after Hurricane Katrina was a health risk. CDC has been accused of suppressing that information also.

The original peer reviewers of the study reportedly had no major problems with it and still want it published.

The House Science Committee has begun an investigation into the matter.

• "Congressional Committee Probes Killing of Great Lakes Cancer Report," Twin Cities Daily Planet, February 21, 2008, by Eartha Jane Melzer, Minnesota Monitor.
• "Great Lakes Danger Zones?" Center for Public Integrity, Feb. 7, 2008, by Sheila Kaplan.
• "Delay of Report Is Blamed on Politics," Washington Post, February 18, 2008, by Kari Lydersen.
• "Toxic Info Withheld," Living On Earth, Steve Curwood interviews De Rosa on show airdated week of Feb. 15, 2008.