A strong majority (58%) said they know of cases in which high-level Commerce Department appointees or managers “have inappropriately altered NOAA Fisheries determinations”; and more than half of all respondents (53%) are aware of cases in which “commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of NOAA Fisheries scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention”; and only one-quarter of the scientists say they “trust NOAA Fisheries decision makers to make decisions that will protect marine resources and ecosystems.”

The political pressure is also reflected in the agency’s scientific and technical output: More than one third of respondents working on such issues (37%) have “been directed, for non-scientific reasons, to refrain from making findings that are protective” of marine life; and nearly one in four (24%) of those conducting such work reported being “directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a NOAA Fisheries scientific document.”

The field of epigenetics studies how we can have intergenerational consequences for public health hazards without the genes themselves being mutated. Researchers look at, for example, how molecules can attach themselves to the DNA molecule without changing the genetic sequences themselves, but then ride along from generation to generation.

The latest issue of Rachel's Environment & Health News reports on the latest epigenetic discovery:

The latest information appears in a new study by Michael Skinner and colleagues at Washington State University, published in the June 3 issue of Science magazine. Skinner found that mother rats exposed to hormone-mimicking chemicals during pregnancy gave birth to four successive generations of male offspring with significantly reduced fertility. Only the first generation of mothers was exposed to a toxin, yet four generations later the toxic effect could still be detected.

Prior to this study, scientists had only been able to document epigenetic effects on the first generation of offspring. These new findings suggest that harm from toxins in the environment can be much longer lasting and pervasive than previously known because they can impact several generations.

And therefore a precautionary approach to toxics is even more important that previously believed.

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues. Before coming to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

The Times obtained the documents from the hardworking folks over at the Government Accountability Project.

Posted by Robert Shull, 08:25:54 PM

Friday, June 03, 2005