Excerpt's from The Michigan Messenger;

For the last six years, University of Michigan research funded by Dow Chemical has figured prominently in public discussions over what to do about the dioxin contamination caused by the company in the Saginaw River watershed. Federal and state environmental agencies have warned that U-M’s Dioxin Exposure Study has failed to answer crucial questions and that its results are being misinterpreted.

Despite this, U-M’s lead researcher on the project — a man some environmental health scientists say should not be seen as objective because of his track record of working for industry interests — is actively insisting his study should shape regulatory action on dioxin.

Some warn that the project is biased, and that the University of Michigan is being used as part of a Dow campaign to avoid liability for some of the most serious dioxin contamination in the entire nation.

Dr. David Garabrant, professor emeritus and founding director of U-M School of Public Health’s Risk Science Center, is the lead researcher on U-M’s Dioxin Exposure Study which was funded with $15 million from Dow.

...

In a confidential EPA memo leaked to the media in the summer of 2007, the agency was more blunt, naming the university’s Dioxin Exposure Study as one of several Dow actions intended to impede cleanup.

The results of the study are consistent with current EPA/MDEQ understanding, and will not have any significant effect on corrective action activities. However, public presentations of the preliminary results have emphasized how little effect living on contaminated soils has on an individual’s dioxin blood level. This emphasis has resulted in numerous media stories, an understanding by some members of the public, that remediation of dioxin contamination is unnecessary.

...

A 2007 International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health article titled Industry Influence on Occupational and Environmental Public Health by James Huff — now associate director for Chemical Carcinogenesis at the Office of Risk Assessment Research at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences — named Garabrant as an example of an “industry-aligning expert.”

“Academic credentials often are used to shield industry views and to create the illusion of objectivity,” Huff wrote. “In fact, a person’s professional address or organization does not reflect his or her public health philosophy, nor does the institution necessarily reflect a purity of pursuit.

“Industry often forms institutes to contradict or cloud damaging findings. One alarming result is that public health officials increasingly accede to or are coerced by industry persuasion.”

Dr. David Egilman, associate professor of community health at Brown University, has written extensively on how corporations fund science as part of a strategy to avoid liability for harms associated with their products.

In an article titled “Maximizing Profit and Endangering Health: Corporate Strategies to Avoid Litigation and Regulation” published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health he wrote:

In order to reach potential jurors, who are unlikely to read scientific publications, corporations have developed programs to restrict and coordinate the flow of health information to the media. H & K’s asbestos media strategy relied on securing interviews of and placing bylined articles by experts “sympathetic to the company’s point of view.” H & K consultants referred to this as “capturing ‘share of mind’” on the national level.

In an interview, Egilman said that he was familiar Garabrant’s work, not on dioxin but on asbestos.

“He got paid to do these asbestos studies that I critiqued. Those studies were used to deprive workers of compensation for their illnesses. Companies paid for a result that helped in presenting evidence to juries that their asbestos brakes never hurt anybody.”

Click here to view the confidential EPA memo detailing Dow's deceptive tactics accidentally released to the Lone Tree Council as part of a FOIA request.  See 12/7/07  Detroit Free Press story for an interpretation.  Note: there have been two breaking stories in the last 24 hours, the whistle blower lawsuit filed yesterday about Dow submitting flawed data to the MDEQ is unrelated to the leaked EPA memo above. However they both share a common theme: a sneaky and unscrupulous Dow Chemical The Detroit Free Press reports (a few snippets)

"In a real-life epilogue to "Erin Brockovich," a peer-reviewed medical journal will retract a fraudulent article written and placed by a science-for-hire consulting firm whose CEO sits on a key federal toxics panel. The retraction follows a six- month internal review by the journal, prompted by an Environmental Working Group (EWG) investigation" ... "It is abundantly clear that CDC's contractor, ChemRisk, does not have the necessary scientific or ethical integrity to engender public trust," EWG's Wiles wrote to CDC Director Julie Gerberding in March. "It is also clear that ChemRisk founder and president Dennis Paustenbach has been directly involved in the firm's unethical behavior." Click here to view entire article, source: www.ascribe.org.

Why should we be concerned? Dow's "Sound Science" has Paustenbach fingerprints all over them

Paustenbach is involved with a number of firms contracted by Dow for their manipulated studies. "There is a whole industry that exists to convince regulators that exposures aren't dangerous in order to get companies off the hook  and Paustenbach and (his former firm) Exponent are in the middle of that industry." ," says David Michaels, an environmental research professor at George Washington University who served as assistant secretary for Environment, Safety and Health at the U.S. Department of Energy from 1998 through January 2001.   Incidentally, when a Newark Star-Ledger's investigator asked a former Clinton Administration environmental official about Paustenbach, he replied: "Ah, Dr. Evil."

The Environmental Working Group put together an excellent expose on the matter, below are the tactics used by Paustenbach to fraudulently submit "sound science" papers to unsuspecting Medical journals.

The bottom line: The next time you hear Dow supporter utter "Sound Science", think of Dr. Evil
 

According to a recent API story, The International Life Sciences Institute , funded by hundreds of corporations including Dow Chemical, was barred by the World Health Organization (WHO) from helping set global standards for protecting food and water supplies because of its funding sources.