The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [77]
Another huge issue is that so-called independent advisory committees that provide policy recommendations or scientific advice to government are stacked with people who have financial interests in the very activities on which they are advising. Isn’t that what people mean when they say “the fox is guarding the henhouse”? In the United States there are about nine hundred advisory committees that provide peer review of scientific research, develop policy recommendations, evaluate grant proposals, and serve other functions to support good governance.177 These committees are so active in providing advice to Congress, federal agencies, and the president that they are sometimes referred to as the “fifth arm of government.”
Federal law requires that these independent committees have members who represent a balanced diversity of views and who are free from conflicts of interest (that is the “independent” part). In spite of that mandate, however, industry influence continues to dominate these committees, undermining their value and credibility as sources of independent and unbiased expertise. For example, in 2008, the FDA released a report that found that bisphenol A (BPA), a plasticizer used in food packaging and many water bottles, is safe.178 This report followed growing concern about BPA’s links to neurological, developmental, and reproductive harm to children. Then the Integrity in Science Project reported that the two main studies on which the FDA based its analysis were funded by a unit of the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group that includes companies that produce or use BPA.179 This is just one example from a long list of suspect information sources and appointments among government advisory committees. (And there’s still no federal ban on BPA, despite proof that it causes reproductive damage in animals. To help get BPA out of food packaging, visit www.saferstates.com/2009/06/safer-cans.html.)
The nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is one organization that researches and campaigns against corporate influence on science-based public policy. CSPI scrutinizes more than two hundred science-based federal advisory committees for undisclosed conflicts of interest and posts the results in a searchable online database (www.cspinet.org/integrity). In early 2009, CSPI released a new report, Twisted Advice: Federal Advisory Committees Are Broken, which revealed that government advisory panels continue to be skewed toward industry, largely through an overrepresentation of industry members with direct financial interest in the outcome of the committees’ work.180
It’s clear that the current approach to regulating toxic chemicals, worker safety, and broader environmental issues is not functioning to protect us. In some cases—like the chemical industries stuffing advisory panels with their people—the intent is bad. In other cases—like the mix-and-match collection of laws and agencies with overlapping areas of jurisdiction—the structure is bad. In either case, we clearly need another way. We need regulators and scientists who are working for the well-being of people, not for specific industries. And we need laws and agencies that understand and reflect the complexity of the planet, including the natural environment, the built environment, communities, workers, kids, mothers—the whole package.
Professor Ken Geiser, who is also the director of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, laid out a vision for a different approach in his 2008 paper Comprehensive Chemicals Policies for the Future. According to Geiser, a new chemicals policy would consider chemicals as components of the broader system of production in which they are used, not as isolated individual entities, which is never how they actually show up. A more successful approach to chemicals policy would include researching and disseminating