Congressman links fired EPA official to suppressed health report

An investigation into the suppression of a Center for Disease Control (CDC) report on the health implications of pollution in the Great Lakes region may intensify after the recent dismissal of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional administrator for the Midwest.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., is chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations committee looking into the suppressed report. Yesterday, Stupak told the Michigan Messenger that the resignation of Mary Gade “opens a new chapter” in the investigation. Gade resigned last week after EPA officials stripped her of her powers and told her to quit or be fired, creating an uproar in the environmental community and prompting accusations that the Bush administration is playing politics, as previously reported by Minnesota Monitor.

Continued: Click “Read more”“As chairman of the Oversight Committee, I can say we take very seriously anyone being fired for doing their job,” Stupak told the Messenger. “How do you go from being a model career employee to five months later being summarily dismissed?”

According to the Center for Public Integrity, which first obtained a copy of the study, the CDC warns that millions of people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern” in the Great Lakes region “may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.” Researchers also found evidence of low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, as well as elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer and lung cancer.