by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
For the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), the "phthalate issue" (pronounced "THAL ate") is just another "scare as usual"--another media fire needing to be extinguished.
The issue has been simmering for several years, but it reached a flash point in the United States in November 1998 when the environmental group Greenpeace issued a report showing that soft vinyl children's toys contain significant levels of toxic chemicals--up to 41 percent by weight. Greenpeace warned that children may ingest the chemicals, known as phthalates, if they put the toys in their mouths. "When children suck and chew on soft vinyl toys, it is similar to squeezing a sponge. Water comes out of a sponge, just as these toxic softeners can leach out of a toy," explained Joe Di Gangi, the author of the Greenpeace report.
Greenpeace was not alone on the issue. Health authorities in several other countries, including Austria, Denmark and Sweden, had already issued regulations banning phthalates. Similar measures were under consideration, along with warning advisories to parents and requests for retailers to voluntarily recall vinyl toys, in half a dozen other European countries and Canada.
ACSH responded to the "scare" the way it has responded on many similar past occasions, by announcing that it was forming a committee to study the question, headed by former U.S. Surgeon-General Dr. C. Everett Koop.
"Dr. Koop will oversee the blue ribbon committee's work and ensure that the most qualified scientists are recruited to look at the science on phthalates," said ACSH president Elizabeth Whelan. "We know that people want to hear from independent scientists and physicians on important safety issues. The committee's report will provide an authoritative point of view on the safety of phthalates in vinyl products."
Most people who read the news probably concluded that ACSH--described in numerous stories as a "health advocacy group"--was some sort of impartial consumer organization that could be expected to look seriously at the issue. Some reports noted vaguely that ACSH "gets some funding from industry." Overall, however, the media did such a thorough job of obscuring ACSH's identity as an industry front group that Plastics News, an industry trade publication, mistakenly credited ACSH for beginning the "barrage" against the plastics industry over the phthalate issue.
In fact, ACSH is anything but a critic of industry. Since its founding in 1978, it has actively courted industry support, offering itself as an off-the-shelf, available-on-demand source of "sound scientific expertise" in defense of virtually every form and type of industrial pollution known to the 20th century.
Following the Money
For public consumption, ACSH calls itself "a science-based, public health group that is directed by a board of 300 leading physicians and scientists . . . providing mainstream, peer reviewed scientific information to American consumers."
When appealing to industry, ACSH uses a different pitch. A revealing reference crops up, for example, in the minutes of a March 16, 1978 meeting of the board of directors of the Manufacturing Chemists' Association (today known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association).
Written in the same month that ACSH began operating, the minutes record an appeal by MCA director William J. Driver, who noted that Whelan had founded "a tax-exempt organization composed of scientists whose viewpoints are more similar to those of business than dissimilar. . . . ACSH is being pinched for funds, but in the interest of independence and credibility will not accept support from any chemical company or any company which could even remotely be concerned with the aims of the council."
Notwithstanding this desire to make ACSH appear independent, Driver added that "Dr. Whelan would be happy to hear from" MCA members who "are interested in the work of the council and know of possible sources of funds."
Shortly after its founding, ACSH abandoned even the appearance of independent funding. In a 1997 interview, Whelan explained that she was already being called a "paid liar for industry," so she figured she might as well go ahead and take industry money without restrictions.
Today, some 40 percent of ACSH's $1.5 million annual budget is supplied directly by industry, including a long list of food, drug and chemical companies that have a vested interest in supporting Whelan's message.
Stacking the Deck
ACSH claims to be an "independent, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization" that adds "reason and balance to debates about public health issues." Whatever "balance" means, however, it definitely doesn't mean ideological neutrality. ACSH is unabashedly right-wing and pro-industry. Whelan makes no bones about her political leanings, describing herself as a lifelong conservative who is "more libertarian than Republican." ACSH's board of directors is also heavily stacked with right-wing ideologues.
Take, for example, ACSH board chairman A. Alan Moghissi. A former official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Moghissi characterizes environmentalism as a belief that "members of endangered species deserve protection and that, because there are billions of humans, humanity does not qualify for protection."
As an "expert on risk assessment," Moghissi appears regularly on rosters of industry-supported "expert panels" that work to undermine environmental regulations. He serves on the advisory board of numerous anti-environmental organizations and right-wing "think tanks," including the American Policy Center's "EPA Watch," the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, and the National Wilderness Institute, a "wise use" anti-environmental organization that calls for abolition of the Endangered Species Act.
In 1990, Moghissi served on a panel created by the far-right Competitive Enterprise Institute, in league with Consumer Alert and the National Consumer Coalition to challenge the EPA's policy requiring asbestos removal from schools and other public buildings.
Moghissi also chairs the Science Advisory Committee of the Environmental Issues Council (EIC), which was established in 1993 by industry trade associations including the Association of American Farm Bureaus, the Association of General Contractors, the National Cattleman's Association, the American Pulpwood Association, the Natural Gas Supply Association, the United States Business and Industrial Council, the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), as well as the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA).
The purpose of the EIC was to serve as a "new ally against ill-conceived environmental regulation" according to Petroleum Independent, an IPAA trade publication. "The industries represented face common problems," it explained. "The spotted owl might seem to be an active threat only to the timber industry but is in actuality a direct threat to agriculture, mining and virtually any land user. In addition to the Endangered Species Act, all industries are seriously threatened by federal policies regarding wetlands, hazardous waste, and a multitude of other environmental issues."
Other members of the ACSH board of directors include:
- Attorney Jerald Hill, a former long-time president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, which appears in the Heritage Foundation's list of conservative "resource organizations." A recipient of funding from right-wing gazillionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, Landmark has a $1 million annual budget and a reputation as a "conservative's American Civil Liberties Union." It has filed lawsuits against labor unions and school desegregation and has fought for legislation that would allow parents to direct public education funding toward their children's private schools. (Whitewater special investigator Kenneth Starr also has ties to Landmark, which has focused heavily in recent years on hyping the Clintongate scandals.)
- Fredric Steinberg of Mainstreet Health Care, a private HMO in Atlanta, Georgia, who regards Canada's single-payer healthcare system as "the socialized road to medical oblivion."
- Henry Miller, a former FDA official now at the Hoover Institution, who regularly grinds an ax against what he considers the FDA's "extraordinarily burdensome regulations" regarding genetically engineered foods and new drugs. In 1996, Miller also editorialized against the FDA's proposal to regulate tobacco. "The FDA's anti-tobacco initiative . . . has not been without its own costs to American consumers and taxpayers," he stated, describing FDA commissioner David Kessler as "personally consumed by this single issue."
In addition to the board of directors, ACSH also has a 300-member "board of scientific and policy members." As journalist Beatrice Trum Hunter observes, however, "Many of the advisory board members from academia serve in departments of food science and technology, mainly supported by the generosity of commercial food interests."
Other advisors include familiar names from the list of "usual suspects" who appear regularly as scientific experts in a variety of anti-environmental, pro-industry forums: Dennis Avery, Michael Gough, Patrick J. Michaels, Stephen Safe, and S. Fred Singer, to name a few. Several, including Floy Lilley and J. Gordon Edwards, as well as Moghissi, have written articles for 21st Century and Technology, a publication affiliated with lunatic-fringe conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.
PR Connections
The 17-member ACSH board of directors also includes representatives from two PR and advertising firms: Albert Nickel of Lyons Lavey Nickel Swift (their motto: "We change perceptions"), and Lorraine Thelian of Ketchum Communications.
Some 40 percent of ACSH's
$1.5 million annual budget
is supplied directly by industry,
including a long list of food, drug
and chemical companies that
have a vested interest in
supporting Whelan's message.
Thelian is a Ketchum senior partner and director of its Washington, DC office, which handles the bulk of the firm's "environmental PR work" on behalf of clients including Dow Chemical, the Aspirin Foundation of America, Bristol Myers Squibb, the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, the Consumer Aerosol Products Council, the National Pharmaceutical Council, the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association, and the American Industrial Health Council, another industry-funded group that lobbies against what it considers "excessive" regulation of carcinogens. Ketchum boasts that the D.C. office "has dealt with issues ranging from regulation of toxins, global climate change, electricity deregulation, nuclear energy, product and chemical contamination, and agricultural chemicals and Superfund sites, to name but a few."
In 1994, for example, Ketchum's DC office worked on behalf of Dow and the Chlorine Chemistry Council to round up scientists who would challenge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 1994 report on the health effects of dioxin. Even before the report was released, Ketchum swung into action with a 30-city PR blitz designed to undercut press coverage for the EPA report. "We identified a number of independent scientists and took them on the road" to meet with journalists, academics, political leaders and local health officials, Mark Schannon, an associate director of Ketchum's Washington office, said. "Basically what we're trying to do is assure that industry's voice is heard by people who make policy decisions both here and around the country," Schannon said.
