Re: [Fwd: Junkscience.com Bulletin: Federal Court trashes EPAdrinking water

[BLHamrick@aol.com]

In a message dated 04/01/2000 1:57:48 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
maury@webtexas.com writes:

<< The Court said the EPA's failure to reject the linear no threshold model
 > of carcinogenesis for chlorine was arbitrary and capricious. >>

But, in this case, the EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB), convened to 
examine the available data, had already determined that chloroform was 
"unlikely to be carcinogenic below a certain dose range."  Earlier in the 
decision, the Court notes "[t]he Agency's default method of inferring risk at 
exposure levels for which it has no adequate data is linear extrapolation 
[for] cancer incidence inferred [from] exposures for which it does have 
data.....Thus, either if the evidence suports linearity, or if there is 
"insufficient" evidence of nonlinearity, EPA assumes that if a substance 
causes cancer at any exposure it will do so at every non-zero 
exposure....petitioners here assume the validity of the linear default 
assumption."  I.e., that assumption was not challenged.   What was challenged 
is that, even though the EPA's SAB had concluded the dose response was 
non-linear, and had a non-zero threshhold, EPA promulgated a zero threshhold 
rule.  That was what the court found arbitrary and capricious.

I just wanted to say I don't think this is quite the blow to the EPA that 
Steve Milloy thinks.

JMHO,

Barbara Hamrick
BLHamrick@aol.com
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