Chromium-Cancer Study a Fraud

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 2, 2006
11:03 AM

CONTACT: Environmental Working Group Bill Walker or Renee Sharp,
(510) 444-0973

Real-Life Epilogue To "Erin Brockovich": Medical Journal Retracts Fraudulent
Chromium/Cancer Study
EWG Investigation Exposes Fakery of
Firm Headed by Bush Appointee


(WASHINGTON, June 2) - In a real-life epilogue to "Erin Brockovich," a
peer-reviewed medical journal will retract a fraudulent article written and
placed by a science-for-hire consulting firm whose CEO sits on a key federal
toxics panel. The retraction follows a six-month internal review by the
journal, prompted by an Environmental Working Group (EWG) investigation.

The July issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
(JOEM), the official publication of the American College of Occupational and
Environmental Medicine, will carry a retraction of a 1997 article published
under the byline of two Chinese scientists, JianDong Zhang and ShuKun Li.

The article appeared to be a reversal of an earlier study by Zhang that
found a significant association between chromium pollution of drinking water
and higher rates of stomach cancer in villages in rural northeast China.
Since its publication, the fraudulent article has influenced a number of
state and federal regulatory decisions on chromium.

"It has been brought to our attention that an article published in JOEM in
the April 1997 issue by Zhang and Li failed to meet the journal's published
editorial policy in effect at that time," says the retraction, written by
JOEM Editor Dr. Paul Brandt-Rauf and obtained by EWG. "Specifically,
financial and intellectual input to the paper by outside parties was not
disclosed."

In an email to the JOEM editorial board, Brandt-Rauf acknowledged that for
legal reasons the retraction is "carefully worded and kept to the barest
minimum of facts." But EWG's investigation, confirmed by a Wall Street
Journal report in December 2005, found that Zhang and Li were not the actual
authors of the article.

Under the state Public Records Act, EWG obtained and posted online documents
from California regulators and court records that showed the article was
actually the work of ChemRisk, a San Francisco-based consulting firm whose
clients include corporations responsible for chromium pollution. The
documents and the story they outline are at www.ewg.org.

"In order to ensure continued faith in the scientific process such serious
breaches of ethics cannot be tolerated," EWG Senior Vice President Richard
Wiles wrote to Brandt-Rauf in December. "The scientific community must be
notified that a paper circulating in the published literature is fraudulent,
the paper must be retracted, and those responsible for the incident must be
appropriately disciplined."

ChemRisk's founder and CEO, Dennis Paustenbach, is a Bush Administration
appointee to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control advisory panel on toxic
chemicals and environmental health. His firm holds a lucrative contract with
the CDC and the Energy Department to investigate radioactive and toxic
releases from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

In this case, ChemRisk was working for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), a San
Francisco-based utility whose dumping of the industrial chemical chromium-6
had contaminated the drinking water of the small town of Hinkley, Calif.
Hinkley residents' lawsuit against the company, which PG&E eventually paid
$333 million to settle, was the basis for the film "Erin Brockovich,"
starring Julia Roberts as the legal investigator who uncovered the dumping.

PG&E hired ChemRisk to conduct a study to counter Hinkley residents' claims
of cancer and other illnesses from chromium-6 in their water. ChemRisk
tracked down Zhang, a retired Chinese government health officer, and paid
him about $2,000 for his original data. ChemRisk distorted the data to hide
the chromium-cancer link, then wrote, prepared and submitted their
"clarification'" to JOEM under Zhang and Li's byline, and over Zhang's
written objection.

Zhang has since died. But JOEM located his co-author, ShuKun Li, who agreed
that the article should be retracted.

Zhang's original work remains the only study of people ingesting chromium-6
in their drinking water. The JOEM article reversing its findings was cited
by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in allowing continued use of
chromium in a wood preservative, and by the Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry in a report that discounted chromium-6 as an oral
carcinogen.

Most significantly, the fraudulent article was cited by a scientific panel
whose 2001 report forced California health officials to revise a
recommendation for how much chromium-6 should be allowed in drinking water.
A member of that panel was ChemRisk's Paustenbach, who has made a career out
of consulting and testifying on behalf of major industrial polluters
including PG&E, ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical.

Independent scientists blasted Paustenbach's 2002 appointment to the Board
of Scientific Counselors for CDC's National Center for Environmental Health
as part of a Bush Administration pattern of packing environmental panels
with industry-friendly experts. EWG has provided CDC with documentation of
ChemRisk's fraud in the Zhang case and demanded that Paustenbach be removed
from his post when his term expires in June, but CDC has refused to take
action.

"It is abundantly clear that CDC's contractor, ChemRisk, does not have the
necessary scientific or ethical integrity to engender public trust," EWG's
Wiles wrote to CDC Director Julie Gerberding in March. "It is also clear
that ChemRisk founder and president Dennis Paustenbach has been directly
involved in the firm's unethical behavior."

EWG has earned a reputation as a watchdog of suspect science. When the group
reported to the EPA a failure by DuPont to disclose internal company tests
of drinking water and workers for a toxic chemical used to make Teflon, the
government sued the company and in 2005 extracted the largest administrative
settlement in history for such offenses.

In 2000, EWG caught ABC News' John Stossel reporting nonexistent test
results in an "investigation" critical of organic food that was broadcast on
the network's 20/20 magazine program. The disclosure forced a rare on-air
retraction and apology from Stossel.

FYI: Paustenbach will be up for reappointment shortly to the CDC panel
mentioned below. Hexavalent chromium is the chemical now favored by the wood
industry to pressure-treat lumber since arsenic was phased out).

RELATED LINK JOEM Notice of Retraction can be viewed here

EWG is a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C., that
uses the power of information to protect human health and the environment