For Immediate Release, July 19, 2002

New Book Recommends Local Government Control to Rein in Huge Federal Program that Ignores Data, Puts Politics Above Science

San Francisco, CA — Superfund, a huge federal program costing taxpayers $1.26 billion per year, continues its “lead scare” campaign, wreaking havoc on the lives of affected citizens. According to Lead Astray: Inside an EPA Superfund Disaster, recently released by the Pacific Research Institute, Superfund employs junk science, wastes resources, and destroys the lives and property of citizens and communities nationwide in a war against lead poisoning that has already been won.

“The EPA has run amok, looting the funds of major corporations and dissipating the tax dollars of local communities, jeopardizing jobs, disrupting people’s lives, and corrupting science while doing little or nothing for health or the environment,” said author Peter Samuel, economist and public-policy writer.

Lead Astray details genuine problems with lead contamination but also charts the decline in lead poisoning, an “overlooked American success story.”

From 1975 to 1995, lead emissions fell from 224,000 tons to 4,900 tons, a decline of 98 percent in two decades and one that continues. Blood levels of lead have been falling dramatically since measurements were first taken during the 1930s. But the EPA relies on a computer model known as UBK, which the author calls “a case study in pseudo-science.”

In Superfund, ordinary citizens wanted a simple cleanup of hazardous wastes. They were not asked and have never agreed to what the author calls a “witch-hunt against non-existent or trivial hazards.”

“EPA’s practice of using its own model as a substitute for reality is the epitome of junk science,” said Samuel. “It flatly contradicts the position taken by the major professional body working in this field, the Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health.”

Lead Astray outlines the politics, polemics, and science of lead risk and provides a wealth of detail about blood-lead levels, including cases in which EPA analysis has been at odds with the facts. The author shows how agency militancy has touched off an anti-EPA revolt that pits ordinary citizens against a huge federal program whose growing costs might someday rival those of social security and national defense.

The major remaining lead hazard is old deteriorating paint in 50s-era houses. “But this is not where the EPA is active,” says Samuel.

“Instead of attacking the true lead danger areas, our environmental protectors are distorting science to try and tease out new dangers from a diminishing and largely nonexistent foe in centers of mining and metals.”

Because of agency misconduct, Lead Astray makes the case that Superfund issues should be taken away from the EPA and federal government and transferred to local government.

“State governments need to set a legal framework of responsibility for hazardous materials,” Samuel said. “But the decisions – site by site – should be made in the cities, towns, and counties. It’s their business.”

The 243-page Lead Astray includes:

• 1970s case studies of El Paso, Texas; Bunker Hill, Idaho; and East Helena, Montana.
• Variations in standards for lead contamination.
• Analysis of the EPA’s Integrated Exposure Uptake Bio-Kinetic model, the UBK.
• EPA misconduct in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey; Bartlesville, Oklahoma; Salt Lake City, Utah; Granite City, Illinois; and other locations.
• Citizen revolts against the EPA in Triumph, Idaho, and Smuggler Mountain, Colorado.

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Born in Australia, Peter Samuel earned a degree in economics from the University of Melbourne. As a U.S. resident since 1980, Samuel has written widely on environmental, transportation, and defense issues

The Pacific Research Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c) 3 organization that advances parental choice in education, high academic standards and accountability, charter schools, teacher quality, and school finance reform.