Groups battle over regulatory relief

IMAGINE IT'S 1997. The "Risk Assessment and Cost Benefit Act" currently pending in the Senate is the law of the land. And while it benefits industry, you pay the costs.

Your oldest child suffers from food poisoning after eating a fast-food hamburger contaminated with E. coli bacteria. Meat isn't more carefully inspected because the government is still assessing the frequency and severity of meat contamination. It won't finish the study until 1998. Until then, no improved inspections will occur.

Your middle child has severe diarrhea from drinking tap water contaminated with the parasite Cryptosporidium. The local water utility doesn't have to look for the harmful microbe in its water supply because some companies sued to block a proposed monitoring program.

Your youngest child is coughing and wheezing after briefly playing outside because there are unsafe levels of smog. The Clean Air Act requires your community to reduce its smog to safe levels, but a cost-benefit study revealed that the smog clean-up costs were $5 million, while the value of protecting kids' lungs was only $3 million, so the local polluters were off the hook.

Sound farfetched? It's not.

All of these preventable public health problems occurred in the past two years. Contaminated meat killed several children in Seattle, and sickened hundreds of other people.

Tap water laced with bacteria killed 120 people in Milwaukee and Las Vegas, and afflicted thousands more.

Smog shrouded eastern cities issued alerts last summer to warn children and senior citizens to stay indoors.

If the House "Risk Assessment" bill is enacted into law, it will be difficult if not impossible to prevent these and other health problems.

Supporters of the risk bill claim that is designed to reduce bureaucracy by requiring a "risk assessment" and "cost-benefit analysis" for nearly every new public health program. They claim that these studies would help us spend resources more wisely, and find the cheapest way to solve problems.

In fact, the bill would halt efforts to protect people from involuntary risks, such as contaminated food or poisoned water, by increasing red tape!

The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, would need 1,000 new bureaucrats to complete the complicated risk studies required by the bill, at a cost of $220 million. Scientists employed by companies with an economic stake in the outcome would get to review the studies, and could force them to be redone. And there are 60 opportunities for lawyers to sue while protection programs wind their way through this bureaucratic maze.

The cost-benefit provision requires government to balance industries' clean up costs with the benefits to public health. Unfortunately, calculating the cost of a smoke stack scrubber is easier than estimating the value of protecting children from pollution.

What is the price of reducing childhood asthma? Of enabling children to play outside? What is a pure trout stream worth? Under the bill, if the easy-to- measure costs of clean up outweigh the impossible-to-calculate benefits, the health standards can be ignored.

Let's face it nobody likes regulation. But it's necessary to provide safe food, clean water, and clear skies.

If companies adequately inspected their meat and sold smog-free cars, then public health programs would be unnecessary. But they don't. Consequently, health and environmental programs must protect citizens by decreasing contamination and pollution.

The risk bill would entangle this public health safety net in red tape and lawsuits. The public would suffer while polluters gain.

The risk assessment bill is pending before the Senate. To prevent this nightmare, call your senators today to urge them to oppose the Rick Assessment and Cost Benefit Act. Your children's health depends on it.

Copyright 1995
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.