That study, actually a statistical analysis, is unique, in that its underlying data are missing . EPA used the same study in 1996 to justify its proposed new standards for particulate matter, saying that 15,000 lives would be saved annually by its action. In both cases, EPA has refused to allow the public to have access to the data on which the new regulations are based. No such independent review of the Pope study has taken place, because EPA and the scientists it funded have refused to release the underlying data to public scrutiny. Ignoring science on chloroform Science at EPA suffered another setback late last year when the agency's brass overruled the recommendations of its own scientists and torpedoed a science-based standard for chloroform in drinking water.
Chloroform is created when water is chlorinated to remove microbial pathogens.
Since trace elements of chloroform and so-called disinfectant byproducts are an inevitable result of the water purification process, water suppliers in the U.S. have come to see them as posing a far lower risk to public health than the pathogens that would otherwise remain in the drinking water. Environmental groups had urged EPA to ignore its scientists' findings. The living dead zone and factory farming Responding to a Congressional mandate, the White House and an inter-agency working group are spearheading efforts to deal with hypoxia where the Mississippi River spills into the Gulf of Mexico. Hypoxia is the name for a low-oxygen area where fish cannot live. Or so we are told.