It is estimated that there are more than 400,000 "brownfields" in the United States. These are industrial and commercial facilities that are abandoned, idled or underused because owners or developers fear they may be liable for the cost of cleaning up contamination under Superfund, the federal program created in 1980 to clean up toxic waste sites.

• Despite spending more than $20 billion -- including $12 billion from all taxpayers and $7 billion in levies on companies -- Superfund has cleaned up only 83 of more than 1,300 sites that are priorities for cleanup.
• However, many other sites have been identified and cleaned up by private parties, who pay to identify problems and remedy them.

Under Superfund and other laws, both past and present owners and operators of a site, and individuals who generated waste or transported it to the site, are held to strict joint and several and retroactive liability. This means anyone involved can be required to pay the full cleanup costs, even if they played only a small and unintentional role in creating the problem.

The result is lost jobs and vacant buildings in many cities in the Northeast and Midwest.

Source: Michael Harrold, "Brownfields: Superfund's Economic Toxic Shock," Issue Analysis No. 18, December 8, Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, 1250 H Street, NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20004, (202) 783-3870.

A report on the potential health effects of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) or second-hand smoke raises serious questions about the science behind the controversial risk assessment released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in January 1993.

The EPA report concluded that ETS is a known human carcinogen, responsible for about 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year among nonsmokers.

However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) criticized the EPA in its November 1995 review, stating that "...even at the greatest (exposure) levels, the measured risks are still subject to uncertainty" and "it is possible that very few or even no deaths can be attributed to ETS."

• The EPA based its risk assessment on analysis of 30 epidemiological studies of lung cancer among adult nonsmoking women which assumed that if their spouse smoked, they were exposed.
• EPA then carried out a rarely used statistical exercise known as meta-analysis to conclude that ETS increased the overall risk of lung cancer in nonsmoking women by 1.19 to 1.
• The CRS points out that the studies used depended on the recall of participants and that many of the women may have been misclassified in the wrong risk categories, resulting in potentially dramatic overstatements of risk.
• Additionally, the CRS points out that EPA's risk assessment did not account for the substantial dilution and aging of such sidestream smoke compared to even low levels of active smoking.

The CRS and the Department of Energy (DOE) previously released critical reviews of proposed workplace standards for ETS from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The DOE stated that "OSHA did not provide an explicit rationale for the science policy decision that chronic exposure to ETS increases lung cancer risk by 20 to 50 percent."

Source: "Congressional Report Faults EPA on ETS Risk Assessment," EPA Watch, Vol. 4, No. 21, November 30, 1995.

After many years of promise, "bioengineered" agricultural products are now entering the U.S. marketplace. But there is a move afoot -- from a most surprising source -- to increase the federal regulatory burden on this new biotechnology industry.

• Many bioengineered agricultural products are awaiting regulatory approval, including plants engineered to resist insects, viruses and other diseases, and fish and animals engineered for faster growth.
• Currently companies must seek approval from one to three federal agencies: the Food and Drug Administration regulates for food safety, the Department of Agriculture regulates for plant pest control and the Environmental Protection Agency regulates if an engineered plant produces a pesticide or acts as one.
• Some products such as genetically modified corn, which produces a toxin lethal to the corn borer, must run the gauntlet of all three regulatory agencies.

Now, however, a group known as the Biotechnology Industry Association -- a group comprised mostly of large chemical pest control companies -- is proposing extending the governmental review and approval process for bioengineered agricultural products under the EPA.

So what is going on here? It has been suggested that these large companies believe they have the resources to cope with the EPA bureaucracy, whereas the smaller, more entrepreneurial companies do not -- and lengthy regulatory delays could force these upstart competitors out of business.

Source: Prof. F. J. Francis (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), "Strangling Biotech in Nets of Red Tape," Washington Times, January 3, 1996.