SKAPP Authors Expose Chromium Industry’s Data Manipulation
2/28/06: David Michaels and Celeste Monforton of SKAPP, along with Peter Lurie of Public Citizen, made the news from Washington, DC to Los Angeles with a report on the chromium industry’s attempt to suppress results of research on its products’ hazards during OSHA rulemaking.
After lawsuits by Public Citizen and workers’ unions, a federal appeals court ordered OSHA to revisit its permissible exposure limit (PEL) for hexavalent chromium, Cr(VI), a known carcinogen used in chrome plating and in the production of metal alloys and pigments.
The existing Cr(VI) PEL, of 52 micrograms per cubic meter, was recommended in 1943 to prevent nasal perforations and was adopted by OSHA without formal review in 1971. Worker advocates petitioned the agency in 1993 to reduce its PEL to 0.25 micrograms on the basis of its carcinogenicity. In 2004, OSHA published a proposed rule setting the PEL at 1 microgram.
Through the bankruptcy proceedings of an industry foundation, SKAPP and Public Citizen obtained documents that showed how an industry group, the Chrome Coalition, hired consulting firms to obtain and re-analyze raw data from an extensive EPA study and conduct its own study in order to draw conclusions more favorable to the industry.
During its rulemaking in 2004, OSHA asked for additional data, but the industry did not divulge the results of a study that the consulting firm ENVIRON had completed and submitted to the industry foundation in 2002. That study found a significantly elevated risk of lung cancer mortality associated with low exposures to Cr(VI), and its results suggested that even OSHA’s proposed 1 microgram PEL would be inadequate.
Instead of submitting those results to OSHA, the authors broke the results into two smaller studies that showed no increased cancer risk for workers exposed to low levels of Cr(VI), and submitted those results to the agency just before its comment period ended. The chrome industry also emphasized to OSHA that implementing controls for a 1 microgram standard would be very expensive.
Michaels, Monforton, and Lurie published a report of these findings in the journal Environmental Health just days before OSHA’s court-imposed deadline for announcing its new PEL. Several major news sources -- Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, USA Today, and Washington Post -- picked up the report and published stories on the issue.
OSHA announced a PEL of 5 micrograms per cubic meter -- a tenfold decrease over the previous standard, but five times higher than its initial proposed standard, and 20 times higher than what worker advocates had requested.
“The industry undertook a ten-year-long campaign to shape science to fit their agenda rather than allowing science to shape regulation,” Michaels said. “The result is a weak standard that leaves a large number of workers dangerously exposed to a known carcinogen.”
Read more:
* Environmental Health article, "Selected science: an industry campaign to undermine an OSHA hexavalent chromium standard"
* SKAPP’s chromium case study
* Associated Press, “OSHA issues new rule on chromium”
* Los Angeles Times, “Chromium Industry Hid Cancer Risks, Report Says”
* Reuters, “Industry study withheld data on carcinogen -- report”
* USA Today, “Report: Chromium industry withheld data on lung cancer”
* Washington Post, “Chromium Evidence Buried, Report Says”
