From Pollution to Risk:
Ecological Protection and Regulatory Philosophies
at the US Environmental Protection Agency
3 October 1993
Preliminary draft for comments.
Please do not reproduce, quote, or distribute.
Edmund P. Russell m
NMAH-1040, MRC 605
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC 20560
301-309-8930 (H)
AAAS-EPA Environmental Science and Engineering Fellow
Summer 1993
Fellowship Placement:
Science Policy Staff
Office of Regulatory Management and Evaluation
Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation
Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, DC 20460
202-260-5867

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Acknowledgments
This draft report was prepared during the author's tenure as a Fellow
under the American Association for the Advancement of Science/U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency Fellowship Program during the summer
of 1993. The views expressed herein are entirely the author's and do not
represent official policy of either the EPA or AAAS. The report is subject to
further review and revision. Mention of trade names of commercial
products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation.
A number of people deserve thanks for making this report possible.
Angela Nugent (acting director of the Science Policy Staff and fellowship
mentor) and Michael Brody were instrumental in helping to plan and carry
out the study. Donald Barnes, Timothy Barry, Anne Barton, Jay Benforado,
Gerald Filbin, Edward Gray, Dexter Hinckley, James Jones, Thomas Kelly,
Kevin Lee, Ronald McCallum, Suzanne Marcy, Dorothy Patton, Donald
Rodier, Michael Slimak, Leticia Tahan, Edwin Tinsworth, Douglas Urban,
William van der Schalie, Glenn Suter, and Dennis Williams provided useful
information and insights. Heather Gautney, Celia McEnaney, Chris McPhaul,
Karen Morehouse, and Claudia Sturges helped make the AAAS-EPA
Fellowship a delightful and educational experience. I thank AAAS and EPA
for supporting the fellowship program and making this project possible.
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Abstract
Soon after becoming administrator of the Environmental Protection
Agency, Carol Browner announced that ecosystem protection would be one of
her top priorities. What factors are likely to help or hinder the achievement
of that goal? This study addressed that issue by analyzing the history of
ecological protection at EPA from 1970 to 1993. (At EPA, "ecological" is used
to refer to values other than the protection of human health and welfare.)
Originally, two questions guided the study: (1) To what extent did EPA
carry out regulatory activities for ecological reasons? (2) What factors
encouraged or discouraged the use of ecological criteria at EPA? In the course
of the study, another question emerged: (3) How did EPA's regulatory
framework, or paradigm, change over time? Interviews and published
documents provided the sources to address these questions.
EPA placed relatively little emphasis on ecological regulation during
the period of interest, stressing instead its role in protecting public health. It
would be an oversimplification, however, to say that ecological concerns were
unimportant. They played a critical role in the agency's early years. Interest
waned in the late 1970s, then increased again in the late 1980s. Institutional,
legal, political, social, and scientific factors influenced the fluctuating level of
emphasis that EPA placed on ecological protection. Common to debates in all
arenas, however, were values. The high value that Americans placed on
human life, versus the uncertain value that they placed on other species, was
the factor with the most power to influence EPA's trajectory.
Between 1970 and 1980, EPA began a "paradigm shift" from a focus on
pollution to a focus on risk. The pollution paradigm grew out of a crisis
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mentality that demanded a halt to pollution at any cost. This outlook had its
roots in the rapid increase of industrial waste and nuclear fallout during in
the decades before EPA's creation, which contributed to the popular idea that
the earth was a fragile, endangered system. This paradigm was challenged by
a risk paradigm that emphasized tradeoffs rather than absolute values. The
risk paradigm became the central focus for EPA in the mid-1980s as it sought
to reestablish its scientific credibility and to compare threats across programs.
In the late 1980s, the language (but not the quantitative methodology)
of risk assessment became a tool for agency scientists to argue for a
redistribution of resources to increase protection of ecological values. This
gained greater prominence when the EPA Science Advisory Board seconded
that view. The early 1990s have been marked by attempts to develop a formal
ecological risk assessment methodology. It remains to be seen how well the
methodology works in practice.
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Contents
Acknowledgments	2
Abstract	3
Contents	5
Introduction	6
Growth of the Pollution Paradigm (1950-1970)	8
EPA as Embodiment of Tensions (1970)	16
Pesticide Cases: From Ecology to Cancer and Pollution to Risk (1970-
1976)	20
Institutionalizing Cancer and Risk (1977-1990)	30
Conclusion	51
References	54
Figures	60
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Environmentalism at its inception was a grand vision, one that all Americans willingly
shared. Somehow that vision of the essential unity of nature and of the need for
bringing industrial society into harmony with it has been lost among the parts per
billion, and with it we have lost the capacity to reach social consensus on
environmental policy.
William D. Ruckelshaus, 19851
Introduction
Soon after becoming administrator of the US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) in 1993, Carol Browner announced that ecosystem
protection would be one of her top four priorities.2 To many, this might
seem to be an unsurprising goal for an agency charged with protecting the
environment. But, as former Administrator William Ruckelshaus noted in
1985, achieving a consensus on environmental policy, and especially about
protecting "the essential unity of nature," had proved to be an elusive goal.
In 1990, the agency's Science Advisory Board concluded that EPA "has
considered the protection of public health to be its primary mission, and it has
been less concerned about risks posed to ecosystems."3
^William D. Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and Democracy," Issues in Science and Technology 1
(no. 3,1985): 19-38, see p. 30.
*EPA Insight (June 1993): 1. The other three are pollution prevention; partnerships with
state/local governments, non-profits, and business; and environmental equity. Also, a team of
agency employees organized as part of the 1993 National Performance Review urged the
federal government, with the Environmental Protection Agency as catalyst, create and cany out
"a cohesive and comprehensive national policy on ecosystem protection." US Environmental
Protection Agency, National Performance Review, "Ecosystem Protection," 6 August 1993, p. 3.
3U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Reducing Risk: Setting Priorities and Strategies for
Environmental Protection, SAB-EC-90-021 (Washington: Environmental Protection Agency,
Science Advisory Board, September 1990), p. 9.
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Why has this been the case? And what does that bode for the future of
ecosystem protection at EPA? This study addresses those issues by analyzing
the history of ecological protection at EPA from 1970 to 1980. (At EPA,
"ecological" is used to refer to values other than the protection of human
health and welfare.4) Originally, two questions guided the study: (1) To what
extent has EPA carried out regulatory activities for ecological reasons? (2)
What factors have encouraged or discouraged the use of ecological criteria at
EPA? In the course of the study, another question emerged: (3) How did
EPA's regulatory framework, or paradigm, change over time?
Answers to these questions have theoretical, as well as practical,
implications. A central concern of the new field of environmental history is
understanding how humans have conceived of and organized their
relationship with their surroundings, and historians of science, technology,
and government have long been interested in how government institutions
set and address priorities. The experience of EPA offers an excellent case of
these issues.
The conclusion of this study is that interest in ecological protection at
EPA fluctuated over time for social, institutional, legal, and political reasons.
Common to all debates over the proper role for ecological concerns, however,
were struggles over values. Americans inside and outside EPA placed a
consistently high value on protecting human health, while the importance of
protecting other species was a matter of dispute. The most successful attempts
to promote ecological concerns relied on linking ecological well-being to
^Ecosystem protection is a subset of ecological protection. The EPA National Performance
Review team defined ecosystems as "the complex of living and non-living components that
function together as a unit in a given area such as wetland communities, estuaries and prairies."
US Environmental Protection Agency, National Performance Review, "Ecosystem Protection," 6
August 1993, p. 4.
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human well-being. Work is now being done in many parts of EPA to develop
the tools to incorporate ecological assessments into the agency's regulatory
framework; it remains to be seen how well those efforts tap into values held
widely enough to make such efforts successful. The success of that endeavor
is linked to the agency's broader efforts to shift from a "pollution paradigm"
to a "risk paradigm."5
Much of this narrative focuses on pesticides, with important
developments in other parts of the agency receiving less emphasis. This
results from limits on time and space. Although it would be ideal to provide
a full account of activities across the agency, such a narrative would result in
a book rather than a paper. Pesticides were chosen as the centerpiece of the
narrative because debates over ecological assessments have been particularly
public in that program, with important implications for the agency as a
whole. More specifically, debates over pesticides helped to catalyze a shift in
regulatory emphasis in the 1970s from concern about ecological effects to
concern about cancer. More broadly, these debates also catalyzed the shift in
regulatory philosophy from a focus on pollution to a focus on risk.
Growth of the Pollution Paradigm (1950-1970)
Although EPA was not founded until 1970, it inherited a set of social
tensions created earlier. Many of these tensions came to the fore between
1950 and 1970, when growing national prosperity brought with it benefits and
costs, the relative importance of which were matters of debate. EPA also
^Thomas Kuhn popularized the term "paradigm" to refer to widely-accepted world views.
Although originally applied to world views of scientists, the term has come to be used for other
human endeavors as well. The terms "pollution paradigm" and "risk paradigm" are mine, but
they arise out of terms commonly used at EPA. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
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inherited a set of ideas that Americans developed about the world around
them as a result of the Cold War.
The nation's prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s was a marvel, with the
US gross national product doubling from $534 billion to $1075 billion between
1950 and 1970. (Figure 1.) The tremendous increase in production of goods
represented by these figures had (at least) two important consequences for the
rise of environmental concerns. The first was that per capita personal income
grew at a rapid rate, more than doubling from $1501 in 1950 to $3893 in 1970.6
This increase in prosperity led to the rise of a generation of consumers
interested in the quality of life. Unlike the earlier conservationists, who were
concerned with efficient use of natural resources for production, post-World
War II consumers were largely interested in consumption of natural resources
as way to increase their quality of life. Citizens moved from cities to green
and spacious suburbs, sent their children to camp, took up bird watching and
fishing, and visited national parks in droves.7
Increased production resulted not only in heightened interest in
consumption of "nature," but also in concerns about the wastes generated by
industry. Smoke poured into air and liquids into water were especially
visible, and concerns grew about their threats to human health. In the 1950s,
for example, Americans learned that smoke from smelters were blamed for
killing some two dozen people in a small Pennsylvania town called Donora.
The term used to describe these (primarily industrial) wastes in air and
water was "pollution." The word became so common that its use scarcely
6Information Please Almanac 1989 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989), p. 51.
^Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States,
1955-1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp 13-39.
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caused comment, but its connotations were telling. "Pollution" came from
the Latin word pollutus, meaning defilement or uncleanness.8 Unlike the
more neutral term "waste," which focused on the source of a substance,
"pollution" emphasized the effect of a substance on whomever or whatever
received it. Moreover, the effect was moral as well as physical. To be clean
and pure was good; to be dirty and contaminated was bad. This suggested that
"pollution" invoked deep values about morality and proper relationships
between humans and their world.
Concern about pollution focused not only on visible industrial wastes,
but also on invisible nuclear radiation. A product of the Cold War between
the United States and the Soviet Union, above-ground nuclear arms tests
created plumes of fallout that drifted over enormous areas. In 1958, scientists
led by Barry Commoner formed The Greater St. Louis Committee for Nuclear
Information, which publicized concerns about the effects of fallout on human
health. One of their activities—collecting and assessing the radiation burden
of baby teeth from children across the nation—emphasized features of fallout
that many people found especially disturbing: its invisibility (what you could
not see could hurt you), and its effect on some of the most vulnerable people,
children.9
The debate over nuclear fallout in the 1950s led to interest in the
possibility that ionizing radiation might cause cancer. One of the issues
debated was the relationship between doses of radiation and the likelihood of
8Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged
(Springfield, MA: Memam-Webster Inc., 1986).
9Hays, Beauty, p. 174; Ralph H. Lutts, "Chemical Fallout: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring,
Radioactive Fallout, and the Environmental Movement." Environmental Review 9 (1985): 210-
225.
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contracting cancer. Researchers found that the risk of cancer did rise with
dosages, but they found no threshold below which a population was free of
risk. Similarly, concerns arose that small amounts of chemical additives in
food might cause cancer, and Congress passed the Delaney Gause of the Pure
Food and Drug Act, which banned all food additives that showed evidence of
carcinogenicity.10
In 1963, a treaty restricting above-ground nuclear tests diminished fear
of fallout from tests but did not eliminate fears of invisible pollutants. In
1962, Rachel Carson had published Silent Spring, a scathing attack on pesticides
and the people who promoted them. Called "the most important chronicle of
this century for the human race" by Supreme Court Justice William O.
Douglas, Silent Spring described pesticides as "sinister and little-recognized
partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world [emphasis added]."
Carson argued that chemicals "work unknown harm" through their
"contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal
materials [emphasis added]."11
Like "pollution," "contamination" connoted impurity and
linguistically linked one's physical and moral states.12 Carson made this
implication of her rhetoric explicit when she said that spray programs raised
"a question that is not only scientific but moral The question is whether any
civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and
10US Environmental Protection Agency, "Health Risk and Economic Impact Assessments of
Suspected Carcinogens,'' Federal Register 41 (1976): 21402-21403, see p. 21402.
^Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1962), pp. 16-17. Quotation by
Douglas appears on the hack cover of this edition. Commoner also explicitly compared
pesticides to radiation. Hays, Beauty, p. 174.
^The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1976).
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without losing the right to be called civilized [emphasis added]." In one of the
most-noticed chapters of the book, Carson raised the specter that chemical
contamination caused cancer. Again comparing pesticides to radiation, she
argued that "there is no 'safe' dose of a carcinogen [emphasis added]."13 This
argument was consistent with her use of "contamination:" organisms were
either pure and healthy or polluted and in danger.
One of the reasons for the power of Carson's rhetoric was that the
atomic bomb had led to a reassessment of the relationship between humans
and their world. A long tradition in Western history had held that nature
was something humans needed to conquer in order to turn it to profitable
use. Science and technology were seen as playing important roles in that
effort.14 But the atomic bomb, one of the most sophisticated applications of
scientific knowledge to technological development, was seen as having
crossed a line. The bomb conferred the capacity for, in Carson's words, "the
extinction of mankind."15 In the bomb's blinding light, the world looked
much more fragile than it had before.16
Largely but by not solely because of Silent Spring, pesticides became
symbols for many Americans of the dangers that pollutants posed to human
health and to other species. In the 1960s, scientists and lawyers formed a
13Carson, Silent Spring, pp. 95,206.
14Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (New
York: Harper and Row, 1980); Lynn White, Jr., "The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,"
Science 155 (1967): 1202-1207.
^Carson, Silent Spring, p. 18.
l^The perceived similarity between radiation and pesticides led to, for example, a thick tome
titled Chemical Fallout: Current Research on Persistent Pesticides, which brought together
papers from a conference that included radiation biologists, entomologists, and other scientists.
Morton W. Miller and George G. Berg (eds.). Chemical Fallout: Current Research on Persistent
Pesticides (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1969).
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group called the Environmental Defense Fund to push for limits on the use
of insecticides. In a landmark case brought by the Environmental Defense
Fund in Wisconsin, a hearing examiner concluded that DDT was a pollutant
under Wisconsin law. This case illustrated the potential of the legal system as
a way for "environmentalists" to achieve their goals.17
The Wisconsin DDT hearings also illustrated the extent to which ideas
about pollution influenced legal standards. Under Wisconsin law, one could
bring suit to halt the discharge of a "pollutant." Significantly, it was necessary
only to prove that a pollutant caused danger. The benefits of a substance were
irrelevant to this designation.18 This was consistent with the idea that
pollutants should be eliminated entirely, the sort of argument Carson made
when she said that there was no safe level of a carcinogen.
Other events, some small and some spectacular, in the 1960s and early
1970s also contributed to growing concerns about the effect humans had on
their surroundings: an oil spill in Santa Barbara killed wildlife; rivers
foamed with detergents and occasionally caught fire; photos of Earth taken
from space made many people pause and think that this one planet was all
they had. These concerns culminated on 22 April 1970, when millions of
people celebrated "Earth Day." An estimated 10 million school children at
10,000 grammar and high schools, and students at some 2,000 university
campuses, participated. Ten thousand people flooded the mall in
Washington, DC, with crowds of up to 25,000 people attending rallies in New
^Thomas R. Dunlap, DDT: Scientists, Citizens, and Public Policy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981), p. 4.
*®In fact, the hearings also involved testimony about benefits, but the hearing examiner said
that economic benefits were not considered in deciding the case. Dunlap, DDT, p. 233.
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York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Time magazine called it the nation's "biggest
street festival since the Japanese surrender in 1945."19
These events helped precipitate in the late 1960s and early 1970s a
mood of crisis or, as President Richard Nixon's deputy assistant later called it,
"hysteria." A 1970 poll found that Americans believed pollution was "the
most serious problem" facing their communities.20 Whatever his personal
views on the environment (and many observers thought his interest in the
issue was low), Nixon responded to public concern in his 1970 State of the
Union address. With language consistent with the pollution framework's
emphasis on absolute cleanliness and immediate action, Nixon said the 1970s
"absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by
reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters and our living environment. It is
literally now or never [emphasis added]."21
Congress, with prompting from the media and environmental and
consumer groups, likewise responded to wide public concern about pollution
by passing an array of tough new or revised laws.22 Also consistent with the
pollution paradigm, two of the most prominent carried the word "clean" in
their titles, called for the elimination of danger from the environment, and
l^John Quarles, Cleaning Up America: An Insider's View of the Environmental Protection
Agency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), pp. 11-13, with selection from Time quoted
on p. 13.
20john C. Whitaker, Striking a Balance: Environment and Natural Resources Policy in the
Nixon-Ford Years (Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research,
1976), pp. 9. 27. Whitaker provides abundant data for the rapid rise of environmental concern
in the late 1960s on pp. 1-16.
21Quoted in Philip Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), p. 112.
22The EPA's first administrator later commented on the mood of cnsis leading to laws that
demanded the elimination of danger. William D. Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and
Democracy," Issues in Science and Technology 1 (no. 3,1985): 19-38, see pp. 21,27.
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used words such as "integrity" that (like "pollution" and "contamination")
had moral as well as physical connotations. The Clean Water Act called in its
preamble, for example, for the nation "to restore and maintain the chemical,
physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters. In order to achieve
this objective it is hereby declared that, consistent with the provisions of this
chapter-(l) it is the national goal that the discharge of pollutants into the
navigable waters be eliminated [emphasis added]."23
The language used to promote the Gean Water Act bespoke a belief
that human well-being was linked to the "health" of the environment,
implying that the latter functioned in a manner analogous to an organism.
Speaking in favor of the act, Senator Edmund Muskie said, "Our planet is
beset with a cancer which threatens our very existence and which will not
respond to the kind of treatment that has been prescribed in the past. The
cancer of water pollution was engendered by our abuse of our lakes, streams,
rivers and oceans; it has thrived on our half-hearted attempts to control it;
and like any other disease, it can kill us."24 In fact, the relationship between
pollutants and effects on ecosystems were largely unknown.
Environmentalists and members of Congress believed that industry would
use uncertainties in scientific knowledge to delay enforcement if the act used
water quality as the criterion for judging success. As a result, the Clean Water
Act focused on technological control of emissions.25
^Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 USCA § 1251).
Legislative History of the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, pp. 161-162,
quoted in Clean Water Network, Briefing Papers on the Clean Water Act Reauthorization
(Washington, DC: Clean Water Network, March 1993), p. 3.
^Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and Democracy," p. 23.
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The Clean Air Act also reflected the pollution paradigm. After a 1967
bill was criticized for failing to impose national emissions limits, Senator
Edmund Muskie proposed in 1970 a stringent act that set national standards,
rigid deadlines, and, strikingly, prohibited balancing of costs and benefits.26
The Endangered Species Act similarly placed an absolute value (regardless of
economic cost) on protecting part of the environment, endangered species.
EPA as Embodiment of Tensions (1970)
It was in this complex stew of public concerns and political responses
that EPA came into being, although the shape of the agency was not
immediately clear. In February 1970, a White House task force drew up a
"President s Message on the Environment," which proposed that a new
Department of Natural Resources be created to combine environmental
protection and natural resource programs. Although previous
administrations had also proposed similar departments, the task force's
proposal differed from those in using "ecological" concepts to justify the need
for a national growth policy. Specifically, the task force argued that the nation
needed to preserve ecological balance and decontaminate a polluted
environment.27
Nixon delegated the reorganization to the Ash Council, a group of
business leaders, a management consultant, a business school dean, and a
lawyer formed to recommend ways to streamline government. The council
staff took over the proposal, at first advocating the merger of development
2t>Marc K. Landy, Marc j. Roberts, and Stephen R. Thomas, The Enxrironmental Protection
Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 28-30;
Alfred A. Marcus, Promise and Performance: Choosing and Implementing Environmental Policy
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), p. 97.
^Marcus, Promise, pp. 31-32.
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and protection activities. The idea was that a merger would create a balanced
national policy by shifting emphasis from growth at any price to protecting
ecosystems. This was consistent with the new National Environmental
Policy Act, which declared it to be national policy to "prevent or eliminate
damage to the environment and stimulate the health and welfare of man."28
This proposal quickly fell on hard times. Within the Ash Council, staff
members thought that development interests would swamp concern about
environmental protection should both functions be combined in one agency.
Cabinet secretaries who stood to lose functions to a new agency opposed the
proposal. The logical department to incorporate new environmental
responsibilities, Interior, was headed by Walter Hickel, who had alienated the
President by writing a letter expressing sympathy for anti-war protesters and
by seeming to be too enthusiastic a supporter of Earth Day.29
So a stalemate ensued, to be broken only after the secretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare changed his position and supported the creation of a
new agency. The secretary argued that, although environmental protection
was a question of public health, a new agency would be better able to compete
for funds than if its functions were housed in the enormous HEW. Nixon,
however, feared that a new agency might concern itself with health and
ecological welfare while ignoring costs. As a counterweight, another
environmental agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration was created in the pro-business Department of Commerce.30
^National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 USCA § 4321).
^Marcus, Promise, pp. 40-42; Quaiies, Cleaning Up, pp. 14-19.
^Marcus, Promise, pp. 42-47.
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While publicly explaining the need for an agency to protect the
environment, however, Nixon sounded very much like the
environmentalists he feared, even echoing their concerns about ecological
systems: "Despite its complexity, for pollution control purposes the
environment must be perceived as a single interrelated system. A single
source may pollute the air with smoke and chemicals, the land with solid
wastes, and a river or lake with chemical and other wastes. Control of air
pollution may produce more solid wastes, which then would pollute the land
or water. ... A far more effective approach to pollution control would
identify pollutants; trace them through the entire ecological chain, observing
and recording changes in form as they occur; determine the total exposure of
man and his environment; examine interactions among forms of pollution;
[and] identify where on the ecological chain interdiction would be most
appropriate." Nixon submitted a reorganization plan to Congress in July 1970
and, without opposition from Congress, EPA started operations in December
1970.31
Although described as a new agency, EPA was in fact cobbled together
primarily from units of other departments. From Interior came the largest
program, the Federal Water Quality Administration. Other units came from
Health, Education, and Welfare, Agriculture, and Atomic Energy. The
personnel in these pre-existing units brought their previous agencies
cultures with them to EPA. In the case of pesticide regulation, the personnel
transferred to EPA came from the Department of Agriculture. Viewing
themselves as providing a service to agriculture, members of this office had
31 Marcus, Promise, p. 47; Quarles, Cleaning Up, pp. 20-21; Nixon is quoted in Ruckelshaus,
"Risk, Science, and Democracy," p. 22.
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traditionally tried to protect farmers from false or mislabelled products by
overseeing the licensing of pesticides. In the case of air and water pollution
control, previous federal efforts had focused on research, planning, grants and
technical assistance.32
Those approaches could not have contrasted more with the outlook of
members of the one EPA office created anew, the Office of General Counsel
and Enforcement. Trained to be advocates, lawyers in this office came to EPA
to be environmental advocates. This orientation toward aggressive law
enforcement fit perfectly with the strategy adopted by the first administrator,
William Ruckelshaus. Himself a lawyer, Ruckelshaus based EPA's fortunes
on public opinion, rather than on established structures of political power,
and he believed that the public opinion demanded aggressive action against
polluters.33 Ruckelshaus wasted no time bringing action. The bureaucrats
and scientists inherited from other agencies became sources of advice about
potential targets for action, but the lawyers staffing the Office of General
Counsel and Enforcement, headed by John Quarles, took the lead. In the first
week of its existence, EPA sued major municipal and industrial polluters, and
undertook "over a thousand enforcement actions" in its first two years.
Ruckelshaus's nickname, "Mr. Clean," reflected not only on his personal
reputation, but also on the pollution paradigm's language that made
cleanliness (i.e., the elimination of pollution) a central goal.34
32Quarles, Cleaning Up, p. 47.
^Quarles, Cleaning Up, p. 36. Quarles was EPA's first general counsel and assistant
administrator in charge of enforcement. The title of his book about his EPA experiences,
Cleaning Up America, illustrated the commitment to the pollution paradigm.
^Quarles, Cleaning Up, pp. 24,37-53.
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Lack of scientific or technical certainty was no hindrance. Quarles later
admitted that early enforcement actions were initiated "in areas where
effective standards and pollution control requirements had themselves not
yet been set."35 Ruckelshaus himself remembered, "From its earliest days
EPA was often compelled to act under conditions of substantial scientific
uncertainty. . .. Although scientists were often in the forefront of the early
struggles against pollutants, most people did not need a scientific panel to tell
them that air is not supposed to be brown, that streams are not supposed to
ignite and stink, that beaches are not supposed to be covered with raw sewage
[emphasis in original]."36
The willingness of the agency's lawyers to proceed without what
scientists considered to be firm scientific information was one part of a larger
conflict of values. This conflict was exemplified in the struggle over pesticide
cancellations, one of the earliest battle grounds in the debate over ecological
values at EPA.
Pesticide Cases: From Ecology to Cancer and Pollution to Risk (1970-1976)
When EPA was formed, it inherited not only personnel but issues
from the Department of Agriculture. One day after EPA began operations, the
Environmental Defense Fund petitioned the new agency to cancel and
suspend all registrations of aldrin and dieldrin, two insecticides related to
DDT. (The Environmental Defense Fund had made aldrin, dieldrin, and
DDT targets of legal action prior to the formation of EPA but had not
35Quarles, Cleaning Up, p. 53.
^Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and Democracy," p. 25. This is a good statement of the
"violation of the proper order of life" aspect of the pollution paradigm.
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succeeded in having all uses cancelled of any of them.) The petition charged
that aldrin and dieldrin caused ecological damage and were carcinogenic,
although the latter issue stood in the shadow of the ecological concerns.37
The agency also inherited the Environmental Defense Fund's petitions to the
secretaries of Agriculture and Health, Education, and Welfare asking for
suspension of all uses of DDT.38
The hearings that ensued were massive undertakings. The DDT
hearings began in August 1971, lasted eighty days, involved 125 expert
witnesses, and produced 9,000 pages of testimony.39 The combined
aldrin/dieldrin case was before the agency for almost 1700 days, involved 249
witnesses, and produced 60 feet of shelf space of records. In the
aldrin/dieldrin case alone, EPA spent an estimated $5.5-6 million, the
manufacturer (Shell) said it spent "several million dollars," and the
Environmental Defense Fund estimated its expenses as $300,000.40 Clearly,
the agency and others had decided that these were important battles to fight.
These cases revealed a fault line in EPA. On the one side, the Office of
Pesticide Programs viewed its role as a licensing organization. It saw its job as
helping industry bring effective new products to market and protecting
farmers from misbranded or fraudulent products. The species considered
relevant to these decisions were humans, vertebrate animals, and vegetation.
^Lawrence E. McCray, "Mouse Livers, Cutworms, and Public Policy: EPA Decision Making for
the Pesticides Aldrin and Dieldrin," in National Research Council, Decision Making in the
Environmental Protection Agency: Case Studies (Washington: National Academy of Sciences,
1977), pp. 58-118, see pp. 60,73.
^®Dunlap, DDT, p. 206.
39Dunlap, DDT, 211.
4®McCray, "Mouse Livers," pp. 61,101.
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Pesticides were useful tools for agriculture, not a threat to human survival.41
In fact, the Office of Pesticide Program's former home department,
Agriculture, sent representatives to testify against banning DDT.42 On the
other side, the Office of General Counsel took the lead in the fight against
these pesticides. The lawyers in the Office of General Counsel saw
themselves as protecting birds as well as humans from dangerous pollutants,
and Rachel Carson had made persistent pesticides such as DDT, dieldrin, and
aldrin into powerful symbols of environmental contaminants.43
These differences developed into open conflict. EPA lawyers felt that
entomology as a field was dominated (as Rachel Carson had argued) by
chemical company funding, making it difficult to trust entomologists'
assessments of the costs and benefits of chemicals. For their part, scientists in
the Office of Pesticide Programs felt that the lawyers were pursuing the
aldrin/dieldrin case for political reasons and as a power grab.44 It has been
suggested that EPA leaders could not control the Office of Pesticide Programs
directly, so they tried to gain control of pesticide registrations through case-by-
case litigation. Members of the Office of Pesticide Programs were troubled
that EPA lawyers focused on the harm that insecticides caused without taking
^ Earlier disputes over DDT had brought forth evidence that the Department of Agriculture
had not enforced the relevant statute, the 1947 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide
Act, until 1967, and had done little after that to keep any products off the market. Dunlap,
DDT, p. 201.
^Dunlap, DDT, p. 214.
4^This split is consistent with that described by Samuel Hays (Beauty) and Christopher Sellers
(paper presented at 1993 meeting of American Society for Environmental History), in which
environmental values are associated with consumers and stand in opposition to values of
producers. Here, OGC would represent the former and OPP the latter. Re OGC taking the lead
at EPA, and values of its lawyers, see McCray, "Mouse Livers," pp. 64,105.
^McCray, "Mouse Livers," pp. 78,80.
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benefits into account, even though the relevant statute called for balancing
costs and benefits.45
The early pesticide cases catalyzed two important shifts in agency
approach. First, they prompted a shift from a focus on ecological effects to a
focus on health effects, and specifically cancer. At the outset, complaints
against these chemicals emphasized ecological threats, with concern about
health being secondary. When William Ruckelshaus announced his
intention to cancel most uses of aldrin and dieldrin in 1972, for example, he
devoted but one sentence to health, a reference to tumors developing in mice
given high doses of dieldrin. Most of the dangers he emphasized had to do
with wildlife and the atmosphere.46 When he banned DDT on crops,
Ruckelshaus said that evidence "compellingly demonstrates the adverse
impact ... on fish and wildlife." Among the effects of greatest concern was
what seemed to be the tendency of DDT to cause birds to lay eggs with thin,
easily-broken shells. Ruckelshaus also mentioned DDT's "potential"
carcinogenicity. "47
In court, however, cancer became a central concern. A Court of
Appeals involved in part of the aldrin/dieldrin case pointed out (perhaps
inadvertently) the potential strength of carcinogenicity as a legal argument.
Troubled by EPA's laconic treatment of the cancer issue, the court wrote,
"[C]andor compels us to say that when the matter involved is as sensitive and
fright-laden as cancer, even a court scrupulous to the point of punctilio in
^Landy et al, Asking, pp. 181-182. The statute governing pesticide registration was the
Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).
^McCray, "Mouse Livers," p. 74.
^Quoted in Dunlap, DDT, p. 234.
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deference to administrative latitude is beset with concern when the cross-
reference is so abbreviated."48 As advocates, EPA lawyers were interested in
arguments that would help them win their case, and here judges were telling
them what dangers were especially worrisome. The final brief in the DDT
cancellation hearings contained seven "general principles applicable to
determination of carcinogenic hazards." The principles held that substances
causing tumors in animals "should be deemed potentially carcinogenic in
man," and that "the principle of zero tolerance is valid."49
Cancer came even more to the fore in the aldrin/dieldrin case. In
January 1973, a meeting at the National Cancer Institute reviewed the
evidence that EPA's attorneys had collected about the potential for
aldrin/dieldrin to cause cancer in humans. The experts said that the case was
sound, which the trial staff later recalled as a "major milepost in the case."
Meanwhile Shell, the manufacturer, offered to remove some uses of
aldrin/dieldrin from the label, a compromise that scientists from the Office of
Pesticide Programs thought reasonable.50
Attorneys from Office of General Counsel, however, said that "no
settlement that allowed for indefinite use of a potential carcinogen would be
acceptable."51 The Office of Pesticide Programs objected to this position in an
April 1973 memorandum that said, "[Y)our case is based in part on the claim
*®Quoted in McCray, "Mouse Livers," p. 76.
49Nathan J. Karch, "Explicit Criteria and Principles for Identifying Carcinogens: A Focus of
Controversy at the Environmental Protection Agency," in National Research Council, Decision
Making in the Environmental Protection Agency: Case Studies (Washington: National Academy
of Sciences, 1977), pp. 119-206, see p. 132.
SOMcCray, "Mouse Livers," p. 79.
51 McCray, "Mouse Livers," p. 79.
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that no benefit will justify the risk of cancer.... For EPA to officially state
such a position, even if it is overturned, is setting a dangerous precedent that
we as scientists cannot condone."52 After two EPA scientists (at least one a
pathologist) told the EPA lawyers that the data on aldrin/dieldrin did not
support the cancer argument, the lawyers looked for experts from outside
EPA, saying that no EPA scientists met the criteria for scientific competence.
Eventually, the two EPA scientists offered to testify on Shell's behalf.53
Despite these protests, the EPA's final brief in the aldrin/dieldrin case
contained nine "established principles of carcinogenicity which can be applied
to individual substances to determine their human cancer hazard." The
principles drew on the testimony of Umberto Saffiotti, formerly associate
director for carcinogenesis of the Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention of
the National Cancer Institute. Like the DDT cancer principles, the
aldrin/dieldrin principles denied that there was a safe threshold for
carcinogens. The same nine cancer principles then appeared at the beginning
of the agency's next pesticide hearings, which focused on
heptachlor/chlordane. The cancer principles, by virtue of their use in the
aldrin/dieldrin case, gained the stature of "facts" in the heptachlor/chlordane
case and others. In other words, they became powerful legal precedents.54
S^Quoted in McCray, "Mouse Livers," p. 80.
S^McCray, "Mouse Livers," p. 105.
^The validity and appropriateness of these principles were disputed by the principal
registrant of heptachlor/chlordane, the Velsicol Chemical Corporation, but EPA successfully
argued that the DDT and aldrin/dieldrin cases, including a ruling by the US Court of Appeals
that EPA had acted appropriately in suspending uses of aldrin/dieldrin, had made these
principles into policy. In their decision, the US Court of Appeals cited the "strong probability
[emphasis in original]" that aldrin/dieldrin was carcinogenic in animals. Karch, "Explicit
Criteria," pp. 134-140; "probability" quote is on p. 136 and "facts" appears on p. 138. Saffiotti
later said that the principles "were naive and failed to represent the real science to which he
alluded in his testimony." Quoted in Karch, "Explicit Criteria," p. 133.
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The aldrin/dieldrin case marked a fundamental shift in legal
emphasis, if not necessarily in motivations for bringing actions. No longer
would ecological issues be the focus; cancer would be. In fact, the scientific
evidence for ecological effects and for carcinogenicity were both matters of
dispute within the scientific community, so it was unlikely that quality of
evidence was the critical factor in the success of each argument. What was at
work, then, was a greater willingness of the legal system to grant deference to
an administrative agency trying to protect the public from cancer than to non-
human species. When judges heard EPA attorneys say that 98-99% of
Americans carried residues of dieldrin in their bodies at levels close to what
caused tumors in rodents, it was not hard for EPA to argue that there was no
margin for safety with these chemicals and that they should be banned.55
Everyone valued the protection of human health, especially from a disease
that the Court of Appeals called "fright-laden;" there was far less universal
agreement on the importance of protecting birds.
In addition to shifting regulatory emphasis from ecology to cancer, the
pesticide cases also prompted a shift from a focus on pollution to a focus on
risk. At least two factors were at work. First, the ongoing struggle between
the Office of Pesticide Programs and the Office of General Counsel reached
such a pitch that it spilled into the media, forcing Administrator Russell
Train to take sides. It was difficult for Train to justify having the Office of
General Counsel set pesticide policy; that was, after all, the responsibility of
the Office of Pesticide Programs.56
55McOay, "Mouse livers," p. 70.
S^Landy et al., Asking, p. 182.
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In a 1975 reorganization, Train put the technical personnel in the Office
of Pesticide Programs back in charge of decisions about registrations. This
move so alienated the Office of General Counsel that several attorneys,
including former associate general counsel Anson Keller, quit in protest.57
This marked the end of the Office of General Counsel's role as de facto policy
office for EPA. After that imbroglio, EPA lawyers acted much more like
attorneys in firms who represented the interests of their clients (the program
offices), rather than as independent agents pushing their own agendas.
The implications of this demotion of the role of Office of General
Counsel were profound for EPA, for the agency's lawyers had taken the lead
in promoting the pollution paradigm. This paradigm was especially suited to
the adversarial American legal system, in which issues were portrayed as
stark choices between one course of action or another. Convinced that
pesticides were pollutants, the attorneys moved to eliminate them altogether.
This all-or-nothing approach was anathema to the Office of Pesticide
Programs, which wanted (and in fact was directed by law) to take benefits as
well as costs into account when evaluating chemicals. As former members of
the Department of Agriculture, scientists in this office believed that pesticides
played an important role in boosting agricultural productivity and in helping
farmers survive in a difficult business.
Many people shared the belief that EPA should balance costs and
benefits-and that the balance sheet should be focused on human costs and
benefits. When Russell Train testified in 1973 at hearings about his
confirmation as EPA administrator, committee chairman Jennings Randolph
^Keller went to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, where he worked on
drafting a generic policy for regulating carcinogens in the workplace. Landy et al., Asking, p.
182.
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stated that the goal of environmental programs was the protection of public
health, and that such programs needed to be balanced against the need to
protect the economy. (This contrasted sharply with Ruckelshaus' hearings in
1970, at which the questions had focused on whether he would be tough
enough in enforcement.) Train found his confirmation delayed over the
summer recess by Senator William Scott of Virginia, who was apparently
troubled that Train was identified as a conservationist in Who's Wfto.58
The cost-benefit approach found its way into the debate over pesticide
regulation. EPA lawyers had explicitly stated that no safe level existed for
carcinogens, which implied that the only proper regulatory action was to ban
carcinogens altogether. Although well suited to adversarial legal proceedings,
this approach sat poorly with many interested parties. Manufacturers
resented the all-or-nothing approach of the Office of General, and many
scientists and members of Congress shared industry's belief that eliminating
all risk, especially for chemicals with high economic value, was impractical.59
EPA Administrator Russell Train heard this message when he was
called before Congressional hearings. A change in course was in order, and
A1 Aim, assistant administrator for policy, suggested that a policy could be a
process. Train formed a Carcinogen Assessment group under Roy Albert of
the Institute of Environmental Medicine at New York University, and this
group set out to develop quantitative methods for assessing risk. Ironically,
the method developed relied on the same findings about carcinogenicity of
ionizing radiation that had inspired the no-threshold idea characteristic of the
SSQuarles, Cleaning Up, pp. 197-200.
^National Research Council, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the
Process (Washington: National Academy Press, 1983), p. 58.
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pollution paradigm. Rather than focusing on the lack of a safe threshold,
however, the Carcinogen Assessment Group borrowed the idea that the rate
of cancer in a population was a function of dosage. The group feared that
dose-response curves, the use of which implied that some risk was acceptable,
would alienate environmentalists. In the interest of political palatability,
therefore, the group tried to make sure risk was not underestimated.60
The development of these guidelines made EPA the first federal agency
to adopt formal methods for assessing risk. The guidelines proposed a two-
step process. First, the agency would determine whether a substance posed a
cancer risk. Second, the agency would decide what regulatory action, if any, to
take. This second step called for quantitative risk assessment, the results of
which would be weighed against a chemical's benefits. When published in
the Federal Register, no mention was made of diseases other than cancer, or of
protecting species other than humans.61 The transformation from ecology to
health, and from pollution to risk, formally had been made. (Figure 2.) How
it would influence the agency's regulatory activities remained to be seen.
^Landy et al., Asking, p. 182; Betty Anderson, address to Society for Risk Analysis, 4 December
1992.
^National Research Council, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government, p. 58; US
Environmental Protection Agency, "Health Risk and Economic Impact Assessments of Suspected
Carcinogens," Federal Register 41 (1976): 21402-21403.
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Institutionalizing Cancer and Risk (1977-1990)
The fate of the agency's emphasis on cancer was linked to national
politics. Jimmy Carter was elected President in 1976 after promising to
streamline the federal government by eliminating duplication among
agencies. EPA was one of the chips in the poker game of governmental
reorganization. Here, the cancer card played as well, and the ecology card as
poorly, as in the courts.
"Environmentalists Come in from the Cold In Carter
Administration," trumpeted National Journal in March 1977. Although
Jimmy Carter had nominated "officers, lobbyists, lawyers and researchers"
from a slew of environmental organizations to fill key administration posts,
the Journal noted that this herd of activists was hardly free to stampede across
the regulatory landscape. "[Y]oung, relatively unknown and particularly
beholden to the President for their new national prominence," the new
regulators would have to follow the lead of their President. Industry
representatives were "cautiously optimistic" that their companies would fare
well under the new President.62
Industry optimism looked even more well-founded because Carter s
reorganization team proposed to consolidate environmental protection and
natural resource management into a large Department of the Environment.
One of the choicest plums for Cecil Andrus, the Secretary of Interior expected
to preside over the consolidated department, was EPA. According to one of
62j. Dicken Kirschten, "Environmentalists Come in from the Cold in Carter Administration,"
National Journal (12 March 1977): 382-384, see p. 382. Organizations represented included
Natural Resources Defense Council Inc., National Audobon Society, League of Conservation
Voters, Environmental Defense Fund Inc., National Wildlife Federation, Izaak Walton League
of America, Environmental Policy Center, Sierra Club, Save America's Vital Environment.
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his aides, Andrus desire to take over EPA was second only to his desire to
have the Forest Service. If this plan went through, the EPA administrator
would no longer report directly to the President. Although Andrus had
labored to create a reputation for himself as an environmentalist, the
Department of Interior's close historical association with producers suggested
that their interests could dominate environmental protection in the proposed
department. Given Carter's campaign promise to simplify government
structure, and his declaration that Andrus was his "best friend/' prospects
surely looked bright to Carter's transition team for a reorganization."63
The uncertainty of EPA's independence played a part in the selection of
EPA's new administrator. The Carter team wanted to find someone who
could work either independently or under a cabinet official, and even gave
Andrus the chance to review and approve the nominee. They looked for a
good manager, but not someone backed by strong environmental and public
interest constituencies. Out of this process emerged Douglas M. Costle, a
thirty-seven-year old lawyer who fit the "young and beholden to the
President" description. Costle had most recently served as commissioner for
Environmental Affairs in Connecticut. A veteran of the Ash Council that
had recommended the creation of an independent EPA to President Nixon,
Costle was assured by Carter assistant Hamilton Jordan only that the
independence of EPA had not been "pre-judged." Andrus himself told Costle,
63Dick Kirschten, "Reorganizing Natural Resources May Be Tougher Than Carter Thought,"
National Journal (15 October 19/7): 1613-1618. For "best friend" quote, see J. Dicken Kirschten,
"Environmentalists Come in from the Cold in Carter Administration," National Journal (12
March 1977): 382-384, see p. 382. Later, National Journal reported that Andrus said he sent a
memo to Carter in January 1977 opposing transfer of EPA to Interior. Dick Kirschten, "DARR,
DEPH, DORE and Other Departments," National Journal (17 December 1977): 1976.
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with whom he had developed a friendship, that he would oppose making
EPA part of Interior.64
Others also took a dim view of reorganization plans, among them
outgoing EPA Administrator Russell Train. At a dinner party, Train
overhead Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.), chair of the Senate committee
overseeing reorganization, reveal to a guest that EPA was going to become
part of Interior. So two days before Carter's inauguration, Train told the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the move would be
"a very backward step." He argued that disputes between EPA and the Army
Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation (both of which would be in
the new department) should be aired in public, not buried inside a
department. Senator Edward Muskie and other members of the panel
strongly agreed.65
But Andrus's assurance and Muskie's support did not necessarily make
EPA safe, and as late as December 1977 Carter's reorganization team was
talking of folding EPA into a Department of the Environment and Public
Health or a Department of Ocean Resources and the Environment.66 Delays
in implementing reorganization plans, however, gave EPA leaders time to
prove themselves in their current location.67 Costle took advantage of this
Dick Kirschten, "Reorganizing Natural Resources May Be Tougher Than Carter Thought,"
National Journal (15 October 1977): 1613-1618, see p. 1616; Landy et al.. Environmental
Protection Agency, p. 39.
65Dick Kirschten, "Reorganizing Natural Resources May Be Tougher Than Carter Thought,"
National Journal (15 October 1977): 1613-1618, see p. 1615.
^Dick Kirschten, "DARR, DEPH, DORE and Other Departments," National Journal (17
December 1977): 1976.
6^Dick Kirschten, "Reorganizing Natural Resources May Be Tougher Than Carter Thought,"
National Journal (15 October 1977): 1613-1618, see p. 1618.
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opportunity by emphasizing human health, and especially cancer, over
ecological concerns.
In 1976, protecting species other than humans was largely seen as the
bailiwick of the Department of the Interior. Environmental health, on the
other hand, had not yet been claimed by an existing agency, and it was on this
territory that Costle planted the EPA flag. Aside from giving EPA a unique
mission, this emphasis had the advantage of political palatability. Polls
showed that the public continued to support pollution control, but
Washington insiders feared that the public's support was waning in the face
of growing awareness of costs of control. The view inside the Washington
beltway was that something more compelling than "ecological purity" was
necessary to justify EPA's existence.68
Costle set out to convince the public that EPA was not primarily a
"bird and bunny" agency, but a public health agency.69 Costle pushed this
new image hard, touring the country giving a speech on the dangers posed by
toxic chemicals. EPA could not wait for dead bodies to regulate carcinogens,
Costle told the American Chemical Society, especially since cancer was the
second leading cause of death in the country.70 Assistant Administrator
William Drayton announced that programs to measure effects of pollutants
on non-human species-such as the effect of air pollutants on trees, crops, and
6&Landy et al., Asking, p. 41.
69 To this day, EPA employees remember Costle as declaring that EPA was not a "bird and
bunny" agency. Many interpret the remark as a slight of ecological concerns; others believe
that it was Costle's way of distinguishing the agency from others, such as the Fish and
Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, that were explicitly concerned
with non-human species. In general, regulation of non-human species has been a matter of
concern to states rather than the federal government, with migratory and endangered species
being the major exceptions. Interview with Michael Slimak, 8 July 1993.
70Environmental Reporter (15 September 1978): 914.
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natural systems-would be cut in favor of research on human health effects,
and that much of the research on ecological effects would be contracted out.
One reason given for this shift in emphasis was that news about toxic
substances generated cancer scares which led to increased Congressional
funding for EPA.71
Judging from EPA's fate in budget battles, the new strategy was a
winner. The Office of Management bought both the programs and rhetoric
Costle proposed, saying that the reason for environmental protection was to
protect human health. EPA's budget grew 60%, and staffing 20%, between
January 1977 and January 1979.72 It would be inaccurate, however, to attribute
all this increase to Costle's campaign. Concern about toxic chemicals was on
the rise in the country in the mid-late 1970s, leading to passage of a major act
given to EPA to regulate, the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976. To a
great extent, then, Costle could be seen as riding a wave already set in motion
by others.
But there was no denying that Costle made carcinogens a major
concern. In addition to promoting EPA as a public health agency, he also
pushed ahead with the risk assessment framework already under
development. Much of this work was done in collaboration with the Food
and Drug Administration, Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
and Consumer Product Safety Commission. The mechanism for this
collaboration was the Interagency Regulatory Liaison Group, which consisted
71 Dick Kirschten, "EPA: A Winner in the Annual Budget Battle," National Journal (28 January
1978): 140-141. However, Thomas Jorling, who headed the EPA water program, said that this
rhetoric was targeted toward the White House and that changes would not be so drastic as
they sounded.
72Environmental Reporter (26 January 1979): 1763.
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of the heads of those agencies. According to some, one of the motivations for
this collaboration was to show that these agencies could function effectively
without reorganization.73
If preservation of agency independence was one of the motivations,
serious interest in solving regulatory problems was another. Growing out of
informal breakfasts among the agency heads, the Interagency Regulatory
Group became a tool for solving a difficult and common problem: regulating
toxic substances. At first, the group tried to address broad policy issues dealing
with risk assessment, but consensus was impossible with such a diverse
sampling of institutional missions and professional backgrounds. So the
group decided to do something manageable. Risk assessment methods had
been developed more fully for cancer than for anything else, and cancer risk
assessment became the focus.74
In collaboration with scientists from other agencies, the Interagency
Regulatory Liaison Group produced a draft in 1978. The document elicited
controversy over a key point: were quantitative estimates of risk valid? The
draft, which relied heavily on scientific and technical arguments for evidence,
said yes. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which had
been developing separate guidelines that relied on legal and legislative
judgments, said no. Here, then was a clash of the risk paradigm, which
accepted some level of danger, with the pollution paradigm, which sought to
eliminate danger. (Although scientists generally preferred the risk paradigm
and lawyers the pollution paradigm, this division was not absolute. Scientist
^Kirschten, "Reorganizing Natural Resources May Be Tougher Than Carter Thought," p. 1618.
^This account draws on Landy et al., Asking, pp. 172-203, who discuss the Interagency
Regulatory Liaison Group and its cancer guidelines in more detail.
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Umberto Saffiotti of the National Cancer Institute was one the most
outspoken opponents of quantitative risk assessment, believing that the
scientific evidence was inadequate to characterize the magnitude of risk.)75
Despite these conflicts, the Interagency Regulatory Liaison Group
managed to compromise enough to produce a document. One observer
noted that compromise was achieved not through shifts in position, but
through the incorporation of ambiguous language. However, all was not
word smithing. As with EPA's earlier risk assessment guidelines, the
methods were designed to err on the side of safety whenever the science was
in doubt. The document was published in the Federal Register, the President's
Regulatory Council adopted the report as the basis for government regulation
in 1979, and EPA said that it relied on the document. The Occupational Safety
and Health Administration, on the other hand, argued against quantitative
risk assessment in a brief to the United States Supreme Court.76 Consensus
among agencies on regulatory philosophy was not at hand.
Although the pollution paradigm was under strong attack by industry
and many scientists by the late 1970s, the arrival of the Reagan
Administration meant that the highest levels of government would share
that opposition. On the campaign trail, Reagan had been quoted as saying
that if EPA had its way, "[Y]ou and I would live like rabbits," and that trees
75rhe cooperating agencies included Toxic Substances Strategy Committee (under the White
House Council on Environmental Quality), Office of Science and Technology Policy, National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Cancer Institute, and National Institute
of Occupational Safety and Health. The OSHA guidelines were developed under Anson
Keller, the EPA lawyer who had had resigned in protest over the EPA's handling of pesticides.
Landy et al., Asking, pp. 191-193. Here, "lawyers" refers to those working for regulatory
agencies.
7^Landy et al.. Asking, pp. 194-196; National Research Council, Risk Assessment in the Federal
Government, p. 61.
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and plants were the chief cause of air pollution. Large as Reagan's victory
was, it seems unlikely that these positions on the environment were the
reason. Polls showed consistently high public support for environmental
protection despite rising costs.77
Once in office, Reagan appointed Anne Gorsuch to be EPA
administrator. Widely perceived as hostile to environmental protection,
Gorsuch oversaw a period in which the number of cases referred to the
Department of Justice for enforcement declined fifty percent. Agency morale
plummeted, and forty percent of agency personnel left within a year.78 The
Gorsuch team concluded that the agency's cancer risk assessment procedures
were "bad science" and called for their revision, which led to the perception
that EPA was manipulating science for predetermined political ends. This
view was bolstered by an Office of Technology Assessment finding that there
was no scientific basis for EPA's change in cancer risk assessment
procedures.79
Gorsuch's controversial tenure at EPA came to an end in March 1983,
when she resigned after learning that the White House would not defend her
against a charge of contempt of Congress. The contempt charge arose from
her refusal (at the behest of the Department of Justice) to provide Congress
^Landy et al., Asking, p. 245.
^Landy et al, Asking, pp. 245-250. Gorsuch denied hostility to environmental protection and
accused the media of misrepresenting her positions. She pointed out that she had cosponsored
an air pollution bill in the Colorado legislature and the national media reported her as
opposing air pollution control. Anne Burford with John Gfeenyea, Are You Tough Enough?
(New Yorlc McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986).
^Jonathan Lash, Katherine Gillman, and David Sheridan, A Season of Spoils: The Story of the
Reagan Administration's Attack on the Environment (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp.
162-164.
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with documents about alleged problems with Superfund, the program
designed to clean up toxic waste dumps. Gorsuch's resignation crowned a
spate of publicity that charged charged EPA with a host of problems, including
corruption at Superfund, mishandling of the clean-up of dioxin
"contamination" of Times Beach, Missouri, and "capture" of EPA by business
interests.80 With EPA's reputation in tatters, the White House turned to
William Ruckelshaus to replace Gorsuch as EPA administrator.
In his second stint as administrator, Ruckelshaus advocated a sharply
different approach to regulation than in his first. Whereas the pollution
paradigm reigned supreme in the early 1970s, the mid-1980s marked the
formal adoption of the risk paradigm at EPA. Ruckelshaus signalled the new
approach and contrasted it with the old in his first policy address as
administrator, a speech to the National Academy of Sciences: 'Ten years ago .
... I believed it would become apparent to all that we could virtually eliminate
the risks we call pollution if we wanted to spend enough money. When it also
became apparent that enough money for all the pollutants was a lot of
money, I further believed we would begin to examine the risks very carefully
and structure a system which forced us to balance our desire to eliminate pollution
against the costs of its control... I was wrong [emphasis added]." He laid much
of the blame on an attitude in the public "approaching panic" about
pollution.81
®®Landy et al., Asking, p. 251.
81 William D. Ruckelshaus, "Science, Risk, and Public Policy," in Julie Sullivan (ed.). The
American Environment (New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1984), pp. 163-169, 9ee pp. 163-
165. In presenting his plan, Ruckelshaus contrasted the "emotionalism that surrounds the
current discourse" about pollution control with the "idea of science:" that "disciplined minds
can grapple with ignorance, and sometimes win (p. 163)."
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Ruckelshaus made it his mission to institute a system for balancing
costs and benefits. The method for this endeavor had two steps. The first was
risk assessment, or quantitative scientific estimates of the danger a toxic
substance posed to public health. The second was risk management, or
deciding what to do about the danger. Implicitly acknowledging that this
framework and its language were unfamiliar to most people, Ruckelshaus
said that the agency would make it a priority to find "ways of describing risk
in ways the average citizen can comprehend."82 Fortuitously, the National
Academy of Sciences brought out a book (dubbed The Red Book for the color
of its cover) in 1983 that codified risk assessment procedures. It divided risk
assessment into four steps: hazard identification (deciding whether a
substance could cause harm), dose-response assessment, exposure assessment,
and risk characterization (the probability of harm, which was a function of the
previous three calculations).83 One of the crucial differences between this
approach and the pollution approach was that the latter sought to protect
everyone, whereas risk, which dealt with probabilities, implied that some
level of danger was acceptable.
This regulatory approach was a striking turnabout for Ruckelshaus. In
his first term, Ruckelshaus had followed public opinion, took strong
enforcement actions to eliminate pollution, and supported agency lawyers who
wanted to take tough enforcement actions over agency scientists who wanted to
weigh costs and benefits. The pesticide cases of the 1970s exemplified these
tendencies. Now, Ruckelshaus was arguing that EPA should lead public
opinion rather than follow it, weigh benefits against costs rather than focus
^Ruckelshaus, "Science, Risk, and Public Policy," pp. 163,167.
^National Research Council, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government.
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only on benefits, and elevate scientific over public, statutory, and legal
judgments. Moreover, his statement of EPA's priorities focused entirely on
risks from toxic chemicals to public health, with no mention of their effect on
non-human species.
Why the change? Ruckelshaus later said that many of the assumptions
that had driven environmentalism, Congress, and EPA at its founding were
erroneous, especially the notion that the agency knew how to measure and
reduce pollutants.84 He also identified a growing public awareness that
"exposure to a very large number of unfamiliar and largely untested
chemicals is universal," sparked in particular by awareness of two
"ubiquitous" and carcinogenic substances, asbestos and PCBs. The discovery
by epidemiologists that cancer rates varied with environment, and publicity
of toxic waste dumps, also contributed. Concern about these largely invisible
substances—"unlike the touchable, visible, and malodorous pollution that
stimulated the initial environmental revolution"—moved "the problem of
[scientific] uncertainty from the periphery to the center" and made risk
assessment more important.85
In addition, Ruckelshaus may have developed a greater appreciation
for industry's dislike of hard-line regulation while serving as a senior
corporate executive for Weyerhauser Co. from 1976 to 1983. After contrasting
the extreme environmental point of view, which pushed for elimination of
danger, with the extreme industry point of view, which argued for no control
^Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and Democracy," pp. 21-22.
^Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and Democracy," pp. 25-26. Ruckelshaus noted that EPA had
always been faced with scientific uncertainty, but this uncertainty was "partially masked at
the beginning of EPA by the "blatant" nature of the pollutants the agency was trying to control
[p. 25).
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until the science was absolutely certain, Ruckelshaus presented risk
assessment as the middle ground: "We will emerge from the blind alley and
reforge a practical consensus on the environment only when we are able to
redefine the problem of environmental protection as being 'the management
of risk.'"86
Observers have pointed out other advantages of risk assessment for the
agency. One of Ruckelshaus's responsibilities was to restore EPA's credibility
after the Gorsuch era.87 In presenting his plan, Ruckelshaus alluded to this
goal: "Despite conflicting pressures, risk assessment at EPA must be based on
scientific evidence and scientific consensus only. Nothing will erode public
confidence faster than the suspicion that policy considerations have been
allowed to influence the assessment of risk [emphasis in original]."88
Separating scientific assessment of risk from political decisions about risk
management contributed to this goal.89
Risk assessment provided an important management tool. Assistant
Administrator Milton Russell argued that risk assessment offered a way to
compare programs across statutes and constituencies, thereby avoiding
^Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and Democracy," p. 31.
S^Landy et al., Asking, p. 251.
^Ruckelshaus, "Science, Risk, and Public Policy," p. 167. He also wrote, "Both industry and
environmentalists fear this manipulation [of risk assessment findingsl-from different brands of
administrator, needless to say. Although we cannot remove values from risk assessment, we can
and should keep those values from shifting arbitrarily with the political winds."
Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and Democracy," p. 28.
^Goldstein argues that one of the major reasons for adoption of risk assessment was public
perception that EPA science had been manipulated for political purposes. Bernard D.
Goldstein, "If Risk Management is Broke, Why Fix Risk Assessment?" EPA Journal 19 (no. 1,
1993): 37-38, see p. 37.
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having priorities set by administrative accident or political influence.90 It was
also useful as a counterweight to the cost-benefit analyses conducted by the
Office of Management and Budget, for risk assessment emphasized EPA's
commitment to health (an area on which the federal government had
traditionally spent large amounts of money) rather than focusing only on
economics.91
In proposing risk as a framework for evaluating EPA priorities,
Ruckelshaus was making a paradigm developed for human health the center
of the agency's thoughts. In 1985, he commented that the agency's top leaders
had an almost single-minded focus on health: "What is the impact of all this
chemical loading over the years on the ecological systems in which human
culture is embedded? After decades of so-called pesticide control, we have not
even begun to ask this question. Indeed, it is odd how little time is spent at
the upper levels of EPA thinking about such things and how much time is
spent worrying about tiny increases in the risk of a single human disease. We
need a return to the vision of environmentalism embodied in the documents
that created EPA."92
Although developed to measure danger to human health, the risk
paradigm eventually provided a framework for assessing ecological threats as
well. Outside of EPA, scientists had been developing "environmental risk
analysis," a method for identifying and quantifying the probability of adverse
9®Cited in Norman J. Vig and Michael E. Kraft (eds.), Environmental Policy in the 1990s:
Toward a New Agenda (Washington: CQ Press, 1990), p. 176. Ruckelshaus called risk
assessment "an irreplaceable tool for setting priorities." Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and
Democracy," p. 27.
91	Richard N.L. Andrews, "Risk Assessment: Regulation and Beyond," in Vig and Kraft,
Environmental Policy in the 1990s, pp. 167-186, see p. 177.
92	Ruckelshaus, "Risk, Science, and Democracy," pp. 37-38.
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changes in the environment from human activities. G.W. Suter and L.W.
Barnthouse at Oak Ridge National Laboratory were leaders in this effort.
They and other Oak Ridge scientists worked on contracts for EPA's Office of
Research and Development. In 1982 and 1986, they estimated risks associated
with indirect coal liquefaction, including risks to fish, algae, timber,
agriculture, and wildlife of deriving oil from shale.93
Inside EPA, scientists began using risk assessment terminology to
characterize threats to non-human species. In 1986, for example, the Office of
Pesticide Programs published ecological risk assessment guidelines that drew
on the methods developed by Barnthouse and others. The Office of Pesticide
Programs defined ecological risk assessment as "estimating the probability or
likelihood of undesirable events such as injury, death, or decrease in the mass
or productivity of game fish, wildlife, etc." The technique was the "quotient
method," in which one calculated the estimated environmental
concentrations of a chemical and divided it by the LC50 level. If the ratio
exceeded certain levels (which varied depending on which organisms were
being studied), then one proceeded to simulated or actual field tests. Up to
that time, the effects of concern had been single species of non-human, non-
target organisms, including endangered or threatened species. Most of the
species studied were chosen because they were important for food or
recreation (including hunting), and because well-defined protocols existed.
^L.W. Barnthouse et al., Preliminary Environmental Risk Analysis for Indirect Coal
Liquefaction. Report to the Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Washington, DC, 1982. Cited in G.W. Suter et al., Environmental Risk Analysis for Oil
from Shale. ORNL/TM-9808. Environmental Sciences Division Publication No. 2605 (Oak
Ridge, Tenn.: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1986); G.W. Suter et al., Environmental Risk
Analysis for Oil from Shale. ORNL/TM-9808. Environmental Sciences Division Publication No.
2605 (Oak Ridge, Tenn.: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1986).
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Among the types of organisms studied were fish, aquatic invertebrates,
mammals, and birds.94
While developing these guidelines, EPA scientists were aware of
difficulties. Health risk assessments dealt with only one species, humans,
while ecological risk assessments theoretically could be concerned with all
other species on earth. The wide range of species potentially affected by a
chemical made testing a tremendous logistical challenge. The only realistic
way to proceed was to select a handful of species for testing with the hope that
they would be "surrogates" for other species. The species selected tended to be
those society had already identified as valuable through legislation. There
was doubt, however, that single-species testing would reveal effects on other
levels of organization, such as ecosystems. Ecological risk assessments also
had the problem of answering the question, "So what?" Was a fifteen percent
reduction in a fish population significant? Perhaps so, perhaps not,
depending on the species of fish and other factors. Also, health risk
assessments dealt with dangers already familiar and of concern to the public,
such as cancer or birth defects. Ecological risks were less familiar, and the
value placed on them by the public was less well-defined.95
Difficult as developing ecological risk assessment was, the framework
equipped EPA scientists with a powerful tool for questioning the agency's
94u.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Hazard Evaluation Division Standard Evaluation
Procedure: Ecological Risk Assessment. EPA-540/9-85-001 (Washington: Environmental
Protection Agency, Office of Pesticide Programs, 1986), p. 1. The Office of Toxic Substances
carried out similar studies using similar methods under the Toxic Substances Control Act For
more on the quotient method and efforts in other parts of EPA, see John Bascietto, Dexter
Hinckley, James Plafkin, and Michael Slimak, "Ecotoxicity and Ecological Risk Assessment:
Regulatory Applications at EPA," Environmental Science and Technology 24 (1990): 10-15.
9^Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances, "State of the Practice: Ecological Risk Assessment
Document," 14 March 1990, pp. 5-6. (Unpublished document obtained from Donald Rodier,
EPA.)
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distribution of resources. Within EPA, a number of ecologically-oriented
scientists felt that the agency had devoted too much money to health issues
and not enough to ecological protection. No one event led to a revival of
interest in ecological protection, but a number of factors likely contributed.
Ruckelshaus's replacement as administrator, Lee Thomas, encouraged
interest in ecological issues. Skepticism about "chemical time bombs" grew as
people began to wonder whether toxic waste sites, which seemed to pose little
risk outside of a limited area, deserved such enormous attention and
resources. Publicity about greenhouse gases and destruction of the ozone
layer stimulated interest in issues beyond cancer. With the blessing of
Thomas, 75 EPA professionals tried to compare agency priorities with their
judgment of areas of greatest importance.96
The result was a multi-volume 1987 publication called Unfinished
Business. The report divided EPA's concerns into four categories: cancer, non-
cancer, ecology, and welfare. Although the scientists used the language of risk
to analyze ecological problems, they found that no general methodology for
ranking ecological risks had been developed. So the ecological working group
developed its own criteria to evaluate the threats posed by 26 "stress agents"
to 16 ecosystems: geographical extent of effect, intensity of effect, length and
frequency of exposure, and reversibility. In the end, the group ranked
ecological problems as high, medium, and low priorities. The project as a
whole concluded that EPA's distribution of resources closely matched the
public's perception of risk, but not the perceptions of scientists. The ecological
'6Landy et al., Asking, pp. 256-257; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Unfinished Business:
A Comparative Assessment of Environmental Problems, vol 1: Overview (Washington:
Environmental Protection Agency, February 1987), pp. i-ii.
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working group was enthusiastic about risk as the organizing concept for
ecological protection, and the inclusion of ecological issues as a major
category went a long way toward legitimizing this interest within the
agency.97
The ecological risk framework was taking hold, but a great deal of work
remained in developing and disseminating methods. In 1988, EPA published
Review of Ecological Risk Assessment Methods. After studying 20 ecological
assessment methods, the authors concluded that most methods addressed
threats to populations rather than to communities or ecosystems, and that the
"endpoint" of concern was usually death of the organism. The factor limiting
community or ecosystem analyses was insufficiency of data.98 Soon after, the
agency published a Summary of Ecological Risks, Assessment Methods, and Risk
Management Decisions in Superfund and RCRA. The report concluded that
Superfund sites posed ecological threats, but that effort devoted to reducing
them had varied across sites. The report attributed this variability to "lack of
policy and guidance rather than a lack of ecological expertise among
Superfund professionals." Similarly, it concluded that ecological issues had
not played a significant role in implementation of the Resource Conservation
97U£. EPA, Unfinished Business, p. xiv. It is important to note that risk assessment was
developed as a quantitative procedure, but the method used for Unfinished Business was
qualitative. This indicates, I believe, the extent to which the risk paradigm had spread
throughout the agency: its language was used even when the formal methodology was not.
"®U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Review of Ecological Risk Assessment Methods
(Washington: Environmental Protection Agency, November 1988), pp. 1-3. A 1987 review paper
by a contractor found that there was little agreement about the definition of "endpoint" and
called for the agency to make such a definition a priority. American Management Systems, Inc,
"Review of the Literature on Ecological Endpoints, Work Assignment WA-87-45 for the Science-
Policy Integration Branch Under Contract #68-01-7002," 30 September 1987, pp. 1-3.
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and Recovery Act and cited the need for more policy guidance, data, training,
and methods."
These sorts of structural issues were important, but there was also
room within EPA for individual leaders to take action to protect ecological
values. Despite the formation of an ecological effects branch in the Office of
Pesticide Programs and the collection of data showing ecological effects,
pesticides were not banned for these reasons. (Continuation of the
Department of Agriculture culture, which stressed costs and benefits to
humans, was likely important. In the pesticides office, the ecological effects
people were called "bird and bunny people," a term of "contempt.") In the
mid-1980s, Assistant Administrator for Pesticides and Toxic Substances Jack
Moore and Steve Schatzow, head of the Office of Pesticide Programs, decided
to look at ecological effects of two chemicals in particular, carbofuran and
diazinon.100 Carbofuran was highly toxic to humans in liquid form, but it was
much safer to humans when applied in granular form. It was blamed,
however, for killing bald eagles. Moore did not take action against carbofuran
before leaving EPA, but his successor pushed for its ban and negotiated a
phase-out of most uses.101
^U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Summary of Ecological Risks, Assessment Methods,
and Risk Management Decisions m Superfund and RCRA. EPA-230-03-89-046 (Washington:
Environmetnal Protection Agency, June 1989), pp. 1-37,11-18-22.
lO^The motivations for this are not clear, although the people 1 talked with agreed that
Moore and/or Schatzow said, paraphrasing, "Let's do something about ecological effects."
Interviews with Anne Barton, 25 June 1993, and with Edward Gray and Edwin Tinsworth, 28
June 1993. Barton is now Director, Environmental Fate and Effects Division, Office of
Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances at EPA. Gray and Tinsworth worked on pesticides
in OGC and OPP (respectively) at EPA and then went to work for a consulting firm, Jellinek,
Schwartz, and Connolly.
^interview with Gray and Tinsworth, 28 June 1993. Tinsworth commented: "We think he
[Moore] was bothered by several things about the case [which led him not to ban cartx>furan
before leaving EPA]. First, carbofuran was a good insecticides. It worked well, and EPA had a
good data base on human effects, which were well known and readily available. Second, he
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Diazinon ^was also a granular insecticide blamed for harming birds,
specifically ducks and geese found to ingest the chemical while grazing on
grass. EPA cancelled use of diazinon on sod farms and golf courses, two uses
for which the benefits side of the risk-benefit analysis was weak because
alternative chemicals were available. The manufacturer, Ciba-Geigy,
appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals, a circuit
with a conservative reputation. Ciba-Geigy did not dispute that diazinon
killed birds, focusing instead on the significance of those kills by arguing that
EPA would have to show that diazinon killed birds "more often than not."
The court rejected that argument, finding that EPA needed to find only
"significant probability of unreasonable risk." Sounding surprisingly like
environmentalists, the court concluded that EPA did not have to show harm
to populations of birds, but only to individuals.102
It seemed, then, that judicial standards may have changed between the
1970s and the late 1980s. Whereas the early pesticide cases shifted their
emphasis from ecology to cancer because the latter argument was much
stronger in court, by the late 1980s a reputedly conservative court was willing
to let EPA ban uses of a pesticide solely because it killed some birds. It was not
necessary to show effects on humans or even effects on bird populations.
(The court's finding was therefore more consistent with the pollution
did not trust the objectivity of the ecological effects branch. He believed they were overly
zealous and likely to dwell on data that supported their point of view while downplaying
other studies. Third, it was unclear that cancelling carbofuran would really improve the
environment. Would the insecticide used in carbofuran's place be any better? Fourth, this was a
slippery slope. It was almost impossible to distinguish one chemical from the next on these
criteria—almost all had ecological effects—and did EPA really want to eliminate a whole
category of chemicals?"
102ciba-Geigy v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 88-4361, U.S. Court of Appeals,
Fifth Circuit, 2 June 1989.
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paradigm than the risk paradigm.) Despite that precedent, EPA has not tried
since to ban other pesticides for ecological reasons.
This apparently was not because of a lack of openness to the idea at the
top. Thomas's successor as administrator, William Reilly, was viewed by
agency employees as supportive of ecological concerns. So was EPA's Science
Advisory Board. Reilly asked the board to evaluate Unfinished Business, a
process that resulted in the 1990 publication of Reducing Risk. This report
placed an imprimatur on the use of risk to evaluate the agency's priorities.
While criticizing some of the methods used to create the risk rankings in
Unfinished Business, the board nevertheless gave ecological concerns a
tremendous boost in recommending that "EPA should attach as much
importance to reducing ecological risk as it does to human health risk." The
board argued that productive natural ecosystems were essential for human
health and economic growth, and that they were "intrinsically valuable in
their own right."103
Using the health risk assessment as their model, EPA employees
continued to develop ecological risk assessment methods. In 1991, the agency
issued a Summary Report on Issues in Ecological Risk Assessment, which
suggested changes in terminology from the health framework while retaining
the same fundamental approach and sequence of steps. For example, the
report substituted the term "stress-response" for "dose-response."104 This laid
the groundwork for a 1992 publication, Framework for Ecological Risk
103u5. Environmental Protection Agency, Reducing Risk: Setting Priorities and Strategies for
Environmental Protection. SAB-EC-90-021 (Washington: Environmental Protection Agency,
Science Advisory Board, September 1990), p. 6.
104u.s. Environmental Protection Agency, Summary Report on Issues in Ecological Risk
Assessment. EPA/625/3-91/018 (Washington: Environmental Protection Agency, February
1991).
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Assessment, which formalized the agency's ecological risk assessment
procedure. The report defined ecological risk assessment as: "a process that
evaluates the likelihood that adverse ecological effects may occur or are
occurring as a result of exposure to one or more stressors." The report
divided ecological risk assessment into three phases: problem formulation,
analysis, and risk characterization. (Figure 3.) Each of those phases was then
divided into smaller steps, most of which were analogues of steps in health
risk assessment.105 The idea that risk assessment was the best way to evaluate
and rank environmental problems gained ever greater currency outside EPA
during this same period, with reports by the National Academy of Sciences,
the Carnegie Commission, and Resources for the Future arguing for this
approach.106
By 1993, various programs at EPA-induding the Office of Prevention,
Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency
Response, Office of Water, and Office of Air and Radiation-had undertaken
ecological assessments.107 A group called the Habitat Cluster had developed a
draft strategy to protect and restore natural ecosystems, the Ecosystem
Valuation Forum was trying to quantify "services that ecosystems provide to
society in economic terms," an Ecological Risk Management Communication
Environmental Protection Agency, Framework for Ecological Risk Assessment.
EPA/630/R-92/001 (Washington: Environmental Protection Agency, Risk Assessment Forum,
1992), p. 2.
^National Research Council, Issues in Risk Assessment (Washington: National Academy
Press, 1993); Paul R. Portney, (ed.) Public Policies for Environmental Protection (Washington:
Resources for the Future, 1990); Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government,
(Risk and the Environment: Improving Regulatory Decision Making (New York: Carnegie
Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, 1993).
^Science Policy Staff, "Agency Approaches to Ecological Assessment," EPA Training Under
Development, 30 August 1993. (Draft obtained from Laura Gabanski, EPA.)
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Group discussed issues about ecological risk management, and Geographic
Initiatives tried to create partnerships with government and non-
government agencies to protect particular ecosystems, such as the Chesapeake
Bay.108
Despite these activities, a review of programs across the agency found
that "EPA still lacks a dear ecological mission statement or set of specific
ecological values to protect and apply in Agency analyses and decisions." The
review concluded that there remained a division within EPA between health
and ecological risk assessment, "even though humans are inextricably linked
and dependent upon the long-term health of ecosystems."109
Conclusion
What does the future hold for ecological protection at EPA? The past
offers some hints, but no definitive answers. One consistent pattern is that
EPA's leaders have had an important influence on EPA's priorities and
actions. When Ruckelshaus wanted to emphasize enforcement, the agency
emphasized enforcement. When Costle wanted to emphasize cancer, the
agency emphasized cancer. When Ruckelshaus wanted to emphasize risk,
the agency emphasized risk. When Steve Schatzow wanted to take action
against pesticides for ecological reasons, the agency took action. When Reilly
wanted to see more attention to ecological protection, methods and ideas for
doing so were developed. Administrator Carol Browner's decision to make
108Office of Science, Planning and Regulatory Evaluation and Office of Policy, Planning and
Evaluation, "Ecological Risk Management at EPA," 1 July 1993, p. 1. (Draft obtained from
Michael Brody, EPA.)
109Office of Science, Planning and Regulatory Evaluation and Office of Policy, Planning and
Evaluation, "Ecological Risk Management at EPA," pp. 1,16.
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ecosystem protection one of her four priorities thus has the potential for the
same powerful effect on agency activities.
Important as leadership is, leaders operate within political and cultural
systems that set limits on what they can hope to accomplish. Some
government agencies (such as the Veterans Administration, Department of
Agriculture, and Department of Defense) have bases of political power in
interest groups ready to lobby on their behalf. From the start, however, EPA
tied its political fortunes to the broad public interest and relied for its political
clout on public opinion. Although occasionally strong, public support for
protecting non-human species has fluctuated (or believed in Washington to
have fluctuated), which has made this strategy less than reliable. As Doug
Costle demonstrated, public health, and especially protection from cancer, was
something that had greater political clout than did ecological protection,
especially in times of budget austerity. Protection of the public from cancer
also had greater clout in legal settings, as the pesticide cases of the early 1970s
made clear. Judges were willing to grant EPA broad administrative discretion
to ban substances that might cause cancer in humans, even in the absence of
direct evidence. Evidence of harm to non-human species was subjected to a
higher level of scrutiny. If the past is a faithful guide, today's concern about
the national debt might make protecting "birds and bunnies" a politically
difficult strategy.
On the other hand, history need not necessarily repeat itself. The 1989
appeals court decision in the diazinon case was intriguing: a supposedly
conservative court decided that the agency had the power (even under a cost-
benefit statute) to ban uses of a chemical because it killed some birds, not
because it threatened bird populations or human health. If this reflects a
change in public views as a whole, it may be that support for ecological
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protection is more widespread than in the past. Even as the public might be
more accepting of these sorts of arguments, however, the agency is moving
away from them. The risk paradigm differs from the pollution paradigm in
emphasizing tradeoffs and scientific knowledge, which makes it less accessible
to the general public. EPA has always relied on public opinion for its political
clout. Now, it has set its task to lead, rather than to follow, public opinion.
This is a more difficult task politically.
Above all, EPA's history has been the story of clashes of values. At the
outset, this clash was exemplified in the different approaches taken to
pesticides by the Office of Pesticide Programs and the Office of General
Counsel. One favored a cost-benefit approach and the other a more absolute
approach. One favored an emphasis on humans and the other an emphasis
on other species. The success of ecological protection at EPA will likely rest
on the extent to which the agency can tap values widely held in the public.
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Figures
United States Gross National Product
1950	1970
Year
Figure 1: United States Gross National Product, 1950 and 1970, In Constant
1972 Dollars. (Graph Created from Data in Information Please Almanac
1989 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989), p. 53.
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Paradigm Pollution Risk
Problems
Often visible and
concrete
Often invisible and
abstract
Time frame
Immediate (crisis calls
for action)
Longer (time for study
and planning)
Goal
Stop
Reduce
Standards
Absolute
Relative
Featured rationale
Values
Tradeoffs
Methods
Command
Control
Quick to sue
Markets
Persuasion
Slower to sue
Shorthand for methods
Clean up
Manage
Relationship with
regulatees
Adversarial
Cooperative (with
enforcement as backup)
Calculation
Ignore costs of control
Balance costs of control
Focus of blame
Polluters, especially
industry
Diffuse
Focus of measurement
Source
Receptor
Statutes
EPA:
•	Clean Air Act
•	Clean Water Act
Others:
•	NEPA
•	Endangered Species
Act
•	Migratory Bird Act
•	Bald and Golden Eagle
Act
FIFRA
TSCA
Willingness to regulate
if science is uncertain
Higher
Lower
Exemplars: Individuals
outside EPA
Carson
Commoner
Portney (RFF)
Exemplar: Individual at
EPA
Ruckelshaus I
Ruckelshaus II
Exemplars: EPA offices
at founding
General Counsel and
Enforcement
Pesticides
Exemplars:
Environmental groups
Early EDF
Greenpeace
Center for Resource
Economics
View of nature
Fragile
Resilient
View of human effect
on nature
Disruptive
(Absolute harm)
Variable
(Probability of harm)
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Reliance on public
opinion to drive agenda
Higher (especially as
expressed through
Congress)
Lower (reliance on
expert opinion, with
public education as goal)
Visibility of regulation
to public
Higher (court cases in
headlines)
Lower (negotiation not
in headlines)
Featured professionals
Lawyers
Scientists
Managers
Familiarity of language
to public
Higher (dirty air, dead
animals)
Lower (probability, dose-
response curves)
Tilt in Power
Legislative
Executive
Units of analysis
Often unquantified;
references to values,
lives, and economics
Often quantified in lives
(risk) and dollars (costs
and benefits)
Antecedents
Romanticism (Thoreau)
Preservationism (Muir)
Utilitarianism (Mill)
Conservationism
(Pinchot)
Figure 2: Pollution and Risk: A Comparison of Regulatory Paradigms
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Ecological Risk Assessment
Risk Management
Discussion
Between the
Risk Assessor
and
Risk Manager
(Planning)
Discussion Between the
Risk Assessor and Risk Manager
(Results)
Charactenzam i 1 Characters ion
Exposure
Ecological
Effects
PROBLEM FORMULATION
RISK CHARACTERIZATION
Figure 3: Framework for Ecological Risk Assessment. (Reproduced from U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Framework for Ecological Risk
Assessment, p. 4.)
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