Manufacturing Uncertainty

"David Michaels writes today in the LA Times about 'The Washington Monthly.' As he says, the Bush administration's war against science isn't so much an effort to argue that scientific research is wrong, so much as it's an effort to toss up enough mud that no one is sure what's really going on:

Manufacturing uncertainty is a business in itself. You too can launch a pretty good campaign. All you need is the money with which to hire one of the main players in the "product-defense industry," many of whose stalwarts first honed their craft defending cigarette smoke. These firms will hire the scientists, throw the mud, crank up the fog machine.

A classic case is beryllium, a lightweight metal useful in nuclear weapons. For many years it has been clear that workers exposed to beryllium levels below the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration standard can develop chronic beryllium disease.

When OSHA tried to lower the standard, the industry hired Exponent, a leading product-defense firm to focus on all the things we don't understand, calling for more research before OSHA could act. Meanwhile, workers are still exposed at the old, unsafe level, and are still getting sick.

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