EPA: Smoke and Mirrors

federal judge last month issued a 92-page opinion blasting the Environmental Protection Agency's assertion that second-hand tobacco smoke causes cancer. The ruling, which is likely to be appealed, was cited as a minor setback in the war against tobacco companies. It's real significance is broader: The EPA can't always be trusted to tell the truth.

    Most studies have failed to establish a significant link between second-hand smoke and cancer. The risk from drinking coffee or milk appears greater. Undaunted, the EPA in 1993 defined second-hand smoke as a Class A carcinogen, or cancer-causing agent.

    The EPA's findings received wide coverage in the press and inspired smoking bans in workplaces, airplanes and eateries. There was even talk of regulating tobacco use inside residences - in order to protect children, of course. And it gave new impetus to the Clinton administration's efforts to use its anti-tobacco campaign as a Trojan horse for a big tax increase.

    District Court Judge William Osteen found that the EPA, in order to reach its conclusion, relaxed its statistical standards of "significance" and violated guidelines requiring input from tobacco companies, among other things. Such high-handed tactics wouldn't be too surprising. The second-hand smoke story follows a pattern of EPA deception on other issues. Consider a few:

* Dioxin: The agency banned dioxin even though it had no evidence of a tangible health risk. The EPA now admits that its original ban was based on shoddy science and promises to reassess the matter. It hasn't yet acted.

* PCBs: The EPA has declared that PCBs are a cancer threat, also in the absence of overwhelming evidence. The agency wants to dredge the Hudson River, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, to remove the PCBs there. Ironically, the dredging operations are likely to increase dramatically the public's exposure to the supposed cancer-causing compounds.

* Ozone: Last year, the EPA blamed ground-level ozone for the increase in asthma rates - even though ozone levels have fallen in recent years!

* Environmental racism: The agency recently distributed "guidelines" requiring states to ensure that minorities do not suffer "disproportionate impact" from pollution. As our David Mastio has reported, however, the EPA deliberately concealed up to 1,000 pages of reports on the issue, possibly because the research indicates that the regulation would do more harm than good to minority citizens. The practical effect of the rule would be to outlaw development in economically deprived inner cities.

* Climate change: The EPA constantly warns that global warming threatens our very survival. It wants Congress to adopt an international agreement reached last year in Kyoto, Japan, that would bind the United States to reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the year 2012 to the levels that prevailed in 1990. Yet even scientists who worry about global warming concede that it's too early to say for sure whether warming is taking place - or what the effects would be.

    The problem is that the EPA, under Vice-President Al Gore's hand-picked administrator, Carol Browner, ignores evidence that contradicts its beliefs. Congress should hold hearings exposing such cover-ups, as it is already doing on the environmental racism issue. It should also pass a bill, sponsored in part by Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, requiring cost-benefit analysis of any regulation coming from the EPA, which would force a more realistic appraisal of EPA claims. Finally, if that's not enough to get the EPA's attention, Congress should simply slash its budget.