This book presents challenges for some readers. The author can be irreverent or hostile about environmental topics or about the Federal entity, the USEPA. Author Steve Milloy defines himself as a confrontational intervenor against unjustified scares.
Does tone or affiliation negate his criticisms? For many, values, causes, or affiliations can be given more heed than technical substance. There is a frequent human tendency to listen to someone of similar sympathies, whereas to distrust opponents. Should this happen, if the topics involve technical disciplines (like statistics, biology, or economics)? How to separate technical arguments from tribal sympathies? Can this be done?
Milloy discusses particulate matter (PM) 2.5. The USEPA issued air pollution regulations that required costly societal investments to reduce emissions of small airborne particulates. Lower levels of PM 2.5 would save thousands because PM 2.5 kills, at low doses, according to the USEPA. This was premised on extrapolations from two epidemiological studies that compared outcomes for high versus low exposures across several cities.
Reported correlations between PM 2.5 and deaths were modest, 0.26 and 0.17. A principle of statistics is correlations do not establish causality, they may instead owe to co-incidence or unknown causative factors. The detailed data underpinning the two studies was not disclosed by study investigators to enable independent review.
Milloy disagrees that fine particulate matter causes mortality at concentrations commonly inhaled, offering counter-evidence:
-- one cigarette supplies 10,000 times the prevailing dose of 2.5 PM in air, yet smokers do not die owing just to a single cigarette.
• States are legalizing marijuana, providing a four-fold higher dose of 2.5 PM, because joints do not have filters as do cigarettes. Abundant evidence about smoking does not support inhalation of PM 2.5 as a mortal threat. (Set aside Milloy as an annoying satirist of Big Government, do governments allow smokers to kill themselves? Clearly governments authorizing smoking do not regard 2.5 as a threat to the same degree as EPA.)
• Occupational health data about underground miners does not support PM 2.5 as a threat.
• Death data from California showed no correlation with PM2.5 levels in ambient air.
• Surprisingly, EPA funded experiments of people inhaling high doses of PM 2.5 that EPA considered fatal. EPA attorneys argued high doses were safe in the context of individuals undergoing tests, however harmful when lower doses are experienced across large populations.
To suggest low doses (of any substance) are more dangerous than high flunks pharmacology.
The doubletalk idea that individuals are invulnerable to effects only experienced within groups might tickle George Orwell.
Educated in biostatistics, Milloy recognizes unpersuasive reasoning. Unless educated and motivated people like Milloy have the self-assurance to ask annoying questions, weakly justified regulations can go unchallenged. This can in turn injure productive sectors of the economy and degrade the framing of public policy choices.
On the other hand, to consider the possibility of extenuating benefits, even if the evidence justifying PM 2.5 regulations was uncertain, it is still possible air quality may have improved in other ways owing to these regulations. There might be supplementary health benefits provided by cleaner air that are not captured by the PM 2.5 metric? Americans would generally not like to breathe the highly polluted air of China (containing higher levels of PM 2.5 and other airborne substances), even if residents of Beijing are reported to have longer life expectancy.
Nonetheless, regulatory choices are well served to be based on fuller information, incorporating discordant evidence, such as presented by Milloy. This is a nicely readable, concise book. Milloy uses the example of PM 2.5 to offer ideas about how to improve environmental regulations in future. Recommendations include ending the practice of withholding raw data from public scrutiny and accountability.
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Reviews with images
Great Book !!! Exposes the Junk Science the EPA Is Using To Justify Their War On American Coal
This book exposes the junk science the EPA is using to destroy the U.S. Coal Industry. Environmental "Save the Earth" fanatics and greedy crony renewable energy companies are in an unholy alliance to destroy America's most abundant, cheap and reliable source of energy: Coal. The fact is wind and solar are unreliable sources of energy that need a 100% fossil fuel backup which actually increases the amount of CO2 emissions. That is just plain crazy. Hope President Trump reads the book and fires all the EPA environmental fanatics who are trying to destroy America's Coal industry for no discernible impact on climate. The only impact will be to increase the cost of energy for poor, destroy American jobs and line the pockets of wind and solar crony capitalists.
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Critical Thinking at its Best on a Hugely Important Issue for the world.
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