Environmental Protection Agency officials spent millions of tax dollars over a dozen years on an alternative asbestos removal study that “threatened human health,” according to a new report.
The officials conducted the “research for over a decade without appropriate oversight or an agreed research goal,” said the EPA inspector general in a report made public Friday.
“This resulted in wasted resources and the potential exposure of workers and the public to unsafe levels of asbestos,” the report said.
Asbestos was once a commonly used insulation material in millions of structures built across the country before its use was banned by the EPA in 1989, due to its linkage to lung diseases.
A federal court vacated the EPA ban in 1991, but class-action liability litigation has made its use problematic for the construction industry.
The study was conducted by the EPA’s Region 6 and involved a simplified version of the federally approved method of removing asbestos from existing buildings during their demolition.
Both the EPA IG and Government Accountability Office officials expressed concerns in five separate reviews about the way the EPA research was conducted, beginning in 2004.
The research project was finally cancelled in 2011 and the EPA declined to approve the alternative method that was the focus of the study.
“The EPA spent almost $2.3 million in contractor costs and expenses from 2004 through 2012, and $1.2 million in research staff time,” on the project, according to the IG.
But the IG cautioned that “these figures only represent a portion of the cost, since the agency does not track contributions from outside organizations or EPA staff time by project.”
As a result, the GI said, “the high dollar cost, potential public health risks, and failure of the [project] to provide reliable data and results are management control problems that need to be addressed.”
Go here to read the full EPA IG report.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
