Subcommittee Investigates CDC's Environmental Health Policies and Practices

Chairman Brad Miller

On May 20, the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee examined the policies and procedures used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Environmental Health Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR). NCEH/ATSDR serves as the CDC’s expert in performing environmental health risk assessments. At this hearing, Subcommittee Members questioned CDC officials for relying upon flawed science and incomplete data to make critical public health decisions, such as the DC lead-in-the-water crisis and public health investigations of toxic exposure on the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico. As part of its examination of the DC lead-in-the-water crisis, the Subcommittee released a staff report, A Public Heath Tragedy: How Flawed CDC Data and Faulty Assumptions Endangered Children’s Health in the Nation’s Capitol, which detailed CDC’s response to the crisis. In addition, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry: Policies and Procedures for Preparing Public Health Products Should Be Strengthened , which found the policies and procedures used to prepare and release its public health documents at ATSDR to lack the “critical controls to provide reasonable assurance of product quality.”

“In prior hearings we documented problems with ATSDR’s work on formaldehyde and the safety of trailers provided to families that survived Hurricane Katrina. We also documented problems with ATSDR’s environmental assessments at Camp LeJeune, Vieques, Puerto Rico and Midlothian, Texas. Three of the four cases mentioned have seen the health evaluations withdrawn by ATSDR, and the fourth case is under review,” stated Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller .“We need more honesty and transparency and less attitude from these offices. When you work at a public health science agency and the words most frequently used are ‘haphazard,’ ‘hit-or-miss’ and ‘ad hoc,’ maybe you should pause and reflect.”