Hiding Cancer Information

A public interest group claims industry lobbyists are misusing the Data Quality Act in attempts to bury information on cancer-causing substances. However, it sounds like the act was created just for that purpose.

Public interest advocates warn that corporations are co-opting the federal Data Quality Act to paralyze scientists with frivolous allegations of inaccuracy, driving a stealth assault on public-health research.

In 2000, Congress passed the Data Quality Act under the guidance of lobbyist Jim Tozzi, a former administrator with the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan who now heads the industry-backed Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE). The two-paragraph statute broadly mandates that agencies uphold “the quality, objectivity, utility and integrity of information” they disseminate.

That’s a laudable principle, critics say, but the corporate-friendly Bush administration is promoting exploitation of the law.

“It’s provided a mechanism for industry associations to take another bite of the apple,” says OMB Watch analyst Clay Northouse, “to raise another challenge against a regulation coming into effect and affecting their business practices.”

In fiscal years 2003 and 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Health and Human Services and other federal bodies fielded 80 “substantive” Data Quality Act requests for corrections, more than half of which came from industry, according to the Government Accountability Office. The resulting bureaucratic review process could take as long as two years.

OMB Watch focused on the National Toxicology Program’s biennial “Report on Carcinogens,” which describes 1,700 substances linked to genetic mutations or cancer. Rigorously reviewed by toxicology experts, the research is used by health professionals, community groups and environmental regulators. The upcoming edition has been delayed by more than a year while Health and Human Services mulls 10 data-quality complaints from industries.