Clean Air, Dirty Politics.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

When a Dow chemical plant, or for that matter Joe's Furniture Finishing, reports its emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency, it is expected to report all its measurements, the good and the bad, the exculpatory and the incriminating. Company officials who have "cherrypicked" their data to omit inconvenient breaches of limits have gone to jail. Yet in recent months the EPA itself has been engaging in a systematic cherrypicking of data in order to win a policy battle over clean-air regulations. For example, when EPA Administrator Carol Browner testified to a Senate committee February 12, she displayed a poster entitled "Soot/Particulate Matter--The Science Calls for Action." The "science" presented by the EPA summarized the findings of five studies on PM2.5 (particulate matter 2.5 microns and less) which she said called for "action." (Incidentally even the title is unscientific since PM2.5 is far too small to include soot, and PM10 is already regulated.)

One of the studies cited by Miss Browner is a notorious misanalysis (done not by health specialists but by an economist). It purported to show a causal relation between the closure of a steel mill due to a strike and reduced hospital admissions of children in the county where the mill was located. The reduction in admissions was later explained by local epidemiologists as involving quite simply a coincidental drop in the severity of regular infectious bronchitis in the area.

Other studies cited on Miss Browner's poster were headed by a former EPA/ National Resources Defense Council researcher whom Michael Fumento of the American Enterprise Institute describes, in his new book, Polluted Science, as a professional "particulate hunter." Mr. Fumento points out that this man and his colleagues have written (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars) virtually all the studies supporting the EPA's position, the ones Administrator Browner listed on her poster. She left off her poster a greater number of studies that show no association between PM2.5 and ill health.

At a House committee hearing the chairman of the EPA's own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, Dr. George T. Wolff, was asked about the EPA's claims that the studies are "consistent" in showing an association. He replied: "This consistency argument has been one of the arguments that EPA has used, saying that they [the association studies] are all consistent, so they have to be right. They're only consistent if you look at the studies EPA has looked at. If you don't include the ones that are inconsistent, then you come to the wrong conclusion."

Dr. Wolff also told the House Science Committee: "There are many examples where EPA gives more weight to the studies that support their agenda, and they are very skillful, but not always convincing, in providing reasons to dismiss those studies that provide alternative explanations."

One of the EPA's favorite studies has been the subject of extraordinary controversy because, contrary to scientific convention, the authors have refused to release their data sets for review and retesting. The principal author, Joel Schwartz, said he did not want his time wasted answering criticism from what he called "industry thugs."

Miss Browner's repeated assertion that "the science" shows the finer particles, PM2.5, are more dangerous than the already regulated larger particles, PM10, is the reverse of what most studies show. This may be why a study on Phoenix presented by an EPA scientist at a conference in April that found no association of illness with PM2.5, but some association with PM10, is not officially available. (It has been distributed through what some EPA scientists call "samizdat.") Mr. Fumento in his book says the only consistency in PM2.5 studies is that the EPA's three favorite researchers consistently find associations with illness, while other scientists find nothing or inconsistent associations. He says of Miss Browner's poster that it omitted eight relevant studies that presented clearly contrary conclusions and that it misrepresented aspects of four of the five studies it described.

"The EPA campaign [for its new clean-air standards] was so shockingly wrong, so downright dishonest, that it ought to raise the eyebrows of even jaded Washingtonians," said Fumento at AEI this week. Nonetheless, President Clinton last month permitted the standards to go into effect.

What made the EPA's complete victory the more amazing was that it was won over the opposition not just of industry groups and Republicans but of substantial parts of the Clinton Administration itself (the Commerce Department, the Transportation Department, the Office of Science and Technology, the Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury Department), and even EPA scientists. Governors and mayors were also lined up solidly against, as were traditionally Democratic constituencies such as labor. An array of moderate pro-environment politicians such as Rep. John Dingell (Democrat) and Sen. John Chafee (liberal Republican) also opposed the EPA.

In announcing the decision President Clinton said he realized it would be "controversial" but that his priority was to prevent asthma in children, a shameless piece of demagoguery since all the evidence is that asthma is caused by allergens and indoor air, not the outdoor particulates and ozone that are the subject of the new regulations. Clinton seems to have been emboldened recently in his moral posturing by his success in the budget fight and other recent encounters with the Congress.

Not only will the new clean-air standards be horrendously expensive, they may be quite unachievable because, according to estimates from the National Research Council and others, they are in many places close to, or even below, background natural levels. Even the President's science advisor, Jack Gibbons, admits this. Last November he wrote: "None of the proposed standards can be effective in reaching the goal of increasing health protection if they are unachievable, which is a possibility for some areas that are chronically unable to meet the current standard."

But for the ayatollahs of environmentalism at the EPA and in their allied green groups, achievability is of little concern. What is important is not the attainment of the end so much as the means: the regulation of detested "fossil fuel" machinery such as automobiles, power plants, and heavy industry.

BONNER Cohen, the editor of EPA Watch, a specialist newsletter, commented to NATIONAL REVIEW this week on the amazing political muscle shown by the environmental extremists in their victory on air regulations. Cohen says it was an "iron triangle" of leftist law-school graduates in the EPA, the environmental groups, and reporting slots in major newspapers that enabled President Clinton to take the position he did. And the EPA does not stop at the water's edge. Cohen says the green fundamentalists now have their sights set on Kyoto, where at year's end a follow-up to the 1992 Rio conference will be held. The Administration plans, at Kyoto, to commit the U.S. to drastic limits on carbon-dioxide emissions as part of a treaty to combat supposed "global warming." Such commitments on [CO.sub.2] are another attack on the hated "fossil fuel" technology.

Mr. Cohen tells us, however, that a backlash is developing. A broad coalition is forming in the U.S. Congress to roll back the regulations--and its probable leader is, of all people, liberal Michigan Democrat John Dingell. But the coalition faces an uphill fight. It will need a two-thirds majority in both houses, and there is no reason to suppose the White House will give up its tactic of posing the issue as one of industry cost versus kids' health.

Meanwhile, the House Science Committee alluded to another potential source of reaction. It referred to "the possibility that imposing a standard based on ambiguous science could cause state and local governments who must develop new implementation plans ... to conclude that it is too costly to conform to the new standards and simply refuse to comply." Even if the forces of reason do not prevail in Washington, D.C., they may in the afflicted communities.

Mr. Samuel is an NR contributing editor.